I'll take a nickel bag of dopamine
Our Valentine's Day edition begins with a deft description of the chemistry of love by Neely Tucker, washingtonpost.com:
"Dopamine. God's little neurotransmitter. Better known by its street name, romantic love. Also, norepinephrine. Street name, infatuation. These chemicals are natural stimulants. You fall in love, and these chemicals and their cousins start pole-dancing around the neurons of your brain, hopping around the limbic system, setting off craving, obsessive thoughts, focused attention, the desire to commit possibly immoral acts with your beloved while at a stoplight."
Stacy Innerst, Post-GazetteThe love drug.
Click illustration for larger image.
In other words, love is a drug and hits the same region of the brain affected when someone feels a cocaine rush.
"Passion! Sex! Narcotics! Why do we suspect this isn't going to end well? Because these things are hard-wired not to last. The passion you fulfill is the passion you kill. The most wonderful, soaring feeling known to all mankind . . . amounts to no more than a narcotic high, a temporal state of mania."
Abelard and Heloise
The 12th century's most famous lovers:
Abelard to Heloise: "So intense were the fires of lust which bound me to you that I set those wretched, obscene pleasures, which we blush even to name, above God as above myself."
She to him: "Even during Mass, when our prayers should be purest, lewd visions of the pleasures we shared take . . . a hold on my unhappy soul."
And now, the rest of the story: Abelard was castrated as a result of their affair. Heloise went off to a convent for the rest of her life. Worse, they named their child "Astrolabe." Neely Tucker: "What people! What passion! What the hell were they thinking? Actually they weren't, and neither are you, when you fall passionately in love. Cupid can't last. Oxytocin and other chemicals kick in, running around your brain to make you bond with your lover, producing a mellower, more sustainable relationship. Women: contented sigh. Men: light snoring."
Love tip No. 1 for men
Skip the shower. Counterintuitive, we know, flying in the face of all those deodorant ads. But researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, swear by sweat. They rounded up 48 openly heterosexual women and gave them 20 sniffs of a compound found in male perspiration. The women neither keeled over nor jump the male researchers, but close. They experienced a boost in mood, brain activity and sexual arousal. All these remained elevated for more than an hour, 35 hours short of those Viagra knock-offs, but impressive nonetheless.
For credibility sake, shouldn't this study have been conducted in a crowded rush-hour bus in the dead of summer?
Can we trust a study about humans that doesn't involve rats?
Love tip No. 1 for women
Before you start dating a man, have his immune system checked out. If you want a terrific sex life, go after a man with immune system genes not -- repeat not -- similar to yours. If you have a yen to step out on your husband, don't blame the devil or, for heaven's sake, yourself. It probably just means you have an immune system similar to your husband's and are therefore drawn to sex with other men. This comes from a University of New Mexico study, which found no significant correlation between men's genes and their enthusiasm for sex with their partners, which seems unfair.
Love tip No. 2 for men
From Dr. Raj Persaud, author of the seduction manual, "Simply Irresistible":
Be downright ugly. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), French existentialist novelist, was a geeky looking guy with thick round glasses who smoked like a chimney. Yet, he had not only a steady girlfriend (Simone de Beauvoir) but a string of lovers as well. So, forget witty one-liners, fake flattery and spending hours in the gym. The bottom line: Confident men who like women are liked by women. It's that simple. Also, it helps to be an existentialist.
Is anybody actually working?
You people in the labor force: Try keeping your hands to yourself at least until you knock off from work. Four in 10 workers who responded to a Harris Interactive survey of 1,588 people say they had dated a co-worker; another four in 10 would consider it. As common as office romance is, 41 percent said they believed an office tryst could jeopardize their job or advancement possibilities.
Sign this; I'll explain later
Employers have concerns of their own about workplace canoodling, The Los Angeles Times reports. Some are asking workers, mostly senior executives, to sign "love contracts," which are not as steamy as they sound. The contracts are a formal way for a couple to disclose a relationship and shields the company in case the dalliance sours, heading off a huge liability payout, negative publicity or a sexual harassment lawsuit.
This is how it's done
From an 1820 John Keats letter to Fanny Brawne, when he was 23 and dying of tuberculosis:
"My dear Girl I love you ever and ever and without reserve. The more I have known you the more have I lov'd. Can I help it? You are always new. The last of your kisses was ever the sweetest; the last smile the brightest."
First Published: February 14, 2007, 5:00 a.m.
