What is Love, Anyway?

Posted on by helpingsoul

What is love is the question?  What should it feel like?  Love hurts as the song goes.  It can be quite painful yet addictive or it can be yearning for something that is intangible?

They say that when you are in love, you are in the same state of mind as people with obsessive compulsive disorder.  A professor at the University of Pisa in Italy studies the biochemistry of love-sickness. She concluded from a study comparing the blood of 24 subjects who had fallen in love, subjects who were obsessive compulsive and another group that were free from both passion and mental illness.   She concluded that levels of serotonin in people with obsessive compulsive disorder and lovers are forty percent lower than those in normal subjects. Thus there is a direct correlation to the chemical profiles between love and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Questions may arise in your own relationship.  Inquires like, “Do I behave in a manner that is inflicted upon a state of temporary mental illness?” or “Who am I?”, “What are my values?”, “What boundaries am I setting if any at all?” and “What am I willing to do for love?”  It could be one, two, or a combination or it may be a stage of exploration to determine who you are, what are your values, and determine what kind of boundaries you want to set in a relationship.  If we aren’t mirrored, validated, and emphasized in childhood from our primary caretakers, we may not have formed a solid sense of self in adulthood to be able to answer these questions without exploring, testing, and deciding through trial and error in our adult relationships.

Life experiences give us the opportunity to decide what we like and don’t like.  As the saying goes, “You never know until you try.”

This is time-honored wisdom that encourages us to be a part of life rather than sit on the sidelines and watch it go by.  Take chances, risks, and  rewards are not far behind.  If anything, knowledge is gained about yourself and others.  Even if the outcome is full of regret,  there is a lesson learned and the new-found knowledge is almost always worth it.

This wisdom can be applied to situations large and small from trying tofu to sailing.  As in my case, it was an exploration into my sexuality, men and gender prejudices.   It is the self-knowledge gained from my experience that is irreplaceable.

It is often said that at the end of our lives we are more likely to regret the things we did not do than the things we did.  Being aware of the opportunities missed might encourage you not to miss them again.

Social Goggles

Posted on by helpingsoul

Society looks through the lens of social goggles; seeing the world as rules are laid out for them. Wandering through a life set by laws, being ‘good citizens’ they wonder why they are unhappy. If you look at the world realistically, consider that the rules are not natural human nature.

Little girls are preprogrammed starting at a young age to stay away from boys and they are bad. An example from my childhood was when I was four a boy similar in age and I was curious. We had never seen each others ‘parts’, slithered to the back corner of my bedroom closet behind the hanging clothes and slipped our pants down to discover the difference. It was purely innocent but soon my Mother discovered us hiding in the closet and yelled at the young boy to get out of the house. She embarrassed and shamed me in front of this blameless boy as he ran home.

Once he left, my Mom stood me in front of her in the living room as she sat on the couch and scolded and told me how wrong it was to pull down my panties in front of a boy. I would be thought of as a “slut” or “whore” and “We don’t want the neighborhood to think of you in that way.”

I remembered feeling horrified and so shameful for what I did. I was confused. I didn’t hurt anyone. How could it be so wrong just to look? I was just a curious little girl.

Perhaps my Mom was jealous, insecure or even selfish because she didn’t want the possibility for guys to like me and she would have to fend off men as I grew older. I know she didn’t want to take away my innocence that parent’s value yet envy so much. They live vicariously through the purity of their children hoping they will see hope ahead even if it is to children’s detriment.

Soon little girls and boys learn to think on their own and rebel from their parents. It is difficult as they explore and find out for themselves what the opposite sex is all about.

Rebellion though may not lead to learning and growing to come into your own. It takes many years to discover who you are. The more you interact and meet people, you learn about yourself and what you like in others but there is still conflict from our preprogramming.

Women are pressured to get married and feel inadequate if they aren’t. When they do get married, there is over a 50% chance you will get a divorce. Why is this? Do we marry and then give up as if we got our price and the competition is over so I don’t need to try anymore. Or do we marry too early, not knowing the person well enough or perhaps even ourselves? I don’t know the exact answer. All I know is that marriage is a value most women posses. Men don’t have the same pressure as females but it is there.

I foresee the solution is to seek outside the rules. Learn who you are first. Become aware of what you like, don’t like and be confident in all that you are. Find a purpose, live out your dreams, desires and fantasies and love will come naturally.

It’s better to live life in your personal set of values than remaining conflicted and angry resulting in a psychological state from unconscious opposition between simultaneous but incompatible desires, needs, drives, or impulses.

If parents just allowed their children to naturally explore the world on their own anger, envy, and rebellion is avoided. Children are innocent; it is a wonderful thing. Don’t take it away from them because you are ashamed of your acts of rebellion and resentment.

If children were loved, supported, and free to roam naturally, bitterness is prevented. Rules are needed for fundamental moral values and etiquette and punishing for demeaning or hurtful behavior and acting out. The best rule is to treat others as you would like to be treated; with mutual respect.

The golden rule is that a person attempting to live by this rule treats all people, not just members of his or her in-group with consideration. The golden rule, with roots in a wide range of world cultures, is well suited to be a standard to which different cultures could appeal in resolving conflicts even in our own head.