Title is vague. You say “love”, looks like you mostly mean early-stage romantic love, which is a small subset of love.
So then, the idea of love bothers me, because you sort of throw rational thinking out the window, stop asking why something actually matters, and just decide that this significant other intrinsically matters to you.
So, most non-rational people do this about everything, not just (or especially) about love, and I don’t think rational people particularly do this with love.
This article actually explores the brain chemicals involved in love, and suggests that the chemicals are similar to those that appear in OCD.
Chemicals don’t “appear in OCD.” As the article states, OCD is sometimes associated with low serotonin levels, as are many other mental disorders and things that aren’t mental disorders. The only behavioral pattern the article notes that they say resembles OCD is “attempting to evoke reciprocal responses in one’s loved one” which is something that happens in almost all intense human relationships, including mother-infant ones, and also is not actually closely associated with OCD.
Also as the article states, romantic love often moves into a calmer, less obsessive state on its own, so worry about excessive obsessiveness may be unfounded.
The conclusion of this paragraph does not follow from the explanation:
Parts of the brain that are love-bitten include the one responsible for gut feelings, and the ones which generate the euphoria induced by drugs such as cocaine. So the brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but instead like those of people snorting coke. Love, in other words, uses the neural mechanisms that are activated during the process of addiction. “We are literally addicted to love,” Dr Young observes.
While it is true that gut feelings+euphoria ≠ addiction, that doesn’t preclude addiction from using the same brain circuitry. In fact some social psychologists, esp Helen Fisher, speculate that addiction neuron circuits were developed first to support the first stages of romantic love and then co-opted by addictive substances and behaviors.
This framework has been useful in my recent break up because it is intuitively true that addictive cravings are not necessarily a good impulse to follow and satisfying the cravings does not necessarily reduce them in the long term. When I’m ruminating it is handy to be able to mark it as “ignore: meaningless craving.”
Several things:
Title is vague. You say “love”, looks like you mostly mean early-stage romantic love, which is a small subset of love.
So, most non-rational people do this about everything, not just (or especially) about love, and I don’t think rational people particularly do this with love.
Chemicals don’t “appear in OCD.” As the article states, OCD is sometimes associated with low serotonin levels, as are many other mental disorders and things that aren’t mental disorders. The only behavioral pattern the article notes that they say resembles OCD is “attempting to evoke reciprocal responses in one’s loved one” which is something that happens in almost all intense human relationships, including mother-infant ones, and also is not actually closely associated with OCD.
Also as the article states, romantic love often moves into a calmer, less obsessive state on its own, so worry about excessive obsessiveness may be unfounded.
The conclusion of this paragraph does not follow from the explanation:
gut feelings+euphoria ≠ addiction.
While it is true that gut feelings+euphoria ≠ addiction, that doesn’t preclude addiction from using the same brain circuitry. In fact some social psychologists, esp Helen Fisher, speculate that addiction neuron circuits were developed first to support the first stages of romantic love and then co-opted by addictive substances and behaviors.
This framework has been useful in my recent break up because it is intuitively true that addictive cravings are not necessarily a good impulse to follow and satisfying the cravings does not necessarily reduce them in the long term. When I’m ruminating it is handy to be able to mark it as “ignore: meaningless craving.”
http://jn.physiology.org/content/104/1/51.short
http://jn.physiology.org/content/94/1/327.short
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=bUSRsXs2kGEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA87&dq=Helen+Fisher+addiction+love&ots=2HRkw3aRuM&sig=3Fvz0NYzaaxtk0l6meaz7jyN934#v=onepage&q=addiction&f=false