Why We Love (24 page)

Iago, one of the most treacherous villains in all of Western literature, coveted this rank. He smolders with concealed hatred for Cassio and the Moor. And he vows revenge. Craftily, Iago begins to feed Othello false innuendos about Desdemona’s sexual infidelity with Cassio. The Moor is a naive man, commanding in temperament and swift to action. He soon begins to seethe with jealousy, raging, “I had rather be a toad, / And live upon the vapor of a dungeon, / Than keep a corner in the thing I love / For others’ uses.”
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Finally driven wild, Othello suffocates his adoring and faithful wife.

Historically many societies have fostered this male predilection to guard a mate from poachers or desertion. English common law regarded the slaughter of an adulterous wife as understandable, even justified—if done in the heat of passion.
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Legal traditions in Europe, Asia, Africa, Melanesia, and among American Indians historically also condoned or overlooked murder by a jealous husband.
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And until the 1970s, in several American states it was lawful to kill an adulterous wife.
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At the base of all this violence is a primordial male urge to protect oneself from cuckoldry and hold on to the vessel that may bear their DNA. Not surprisingly, American women—from all ethnic groups and economic backgrounds—are six times more likely than men to be victims in crimes of passion between intimates.
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Feminine Vengeance

Women are far less likely to maim or murder when they are jealous of a rival and fearful of abandonment. They tend to berate themselves for their own inadequacies and try to lure and seduce instead, hoping to recapture their mate’s affections and rebuild the relationship.
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They are also more likely to try to understand the problems and talk things over. But when all this fails, some women stalk. Some 370,000 American men reported being stalked in 1997; most were between the ages of eighteen and thirty-nine—men of reproductive age.
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Unlike men, many female stalkers have other mental problems. Like men, however, they send e-mails or letters, phone ceaselessly, or appear unexpectedly as they obsessively follow a departed mate. I know of one woman who used to sleep on her former lover’s doorstep.

Women also kill rejecting lovers. But far fewer take this drastic step. In 1998, only 4 percent of male homicide victims were killed by a former or current female partner.
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Of all the tales of female mayhem, the most shocking to my mind is that of Medea, the princess of ancient Colchis. As told by the Greek dramatist Euripides in the fifth century
B.C.
, Medea was “mad with love for Jason,” a Greek.
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To help him in his quest to retrieve the Golden Fleece, she was disloyal to her father, set her sisters against her brother and had him slain, and fled her homeland. Then Medea traveled with Jason to settle in Corinth with their two young sons. Alas, the ambitious Jason deserted her to marry the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth. As Medea’s children’s nurse says of Medea, “She will not eat; she lies collapsed in agony, / Dissolving the long hours in tears.”
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Finally the tormented Medea sends Jason’s new wife a wedding present—a poisoned dress that erupts into flames and burns the Corinthian princess and the king to death. But Medea is not through with Jason. She slaughters their two sons, too. In effect, Medea murdered Jason’s living genes and destroyed his reproductive future.

Like love, hate is blind; for some, no form of violence is too extreme. And this violence is driven, in least
in part,
by brain chemistry. As you recall, when lovers are first rejected, they protest—a reaction that is accompanied by soaring levels of dopamine and norepinephrine. These elevated levels of natural stimulants probably give the stalker, the batterer, and the murderer their focussed attention and wild energy. Moreover, rising levels of dopamine often
reduce
levels of serotonin in the brain. And low levels of serotonin are associated with impulsive violence against others.
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Stalkers and murderers are responsible for their crimes of passion, of course. Indeed, we have evolved sophisticated brain mechanisms for
curbing
our violent impulses. Nevertheless, we do carry within us a “fatal reflex,” as psychologist William James called our human ferocity. And some wretched men and women do not contain it: they slaughter their sweethearts.

Others kill themselves.

Love Suicide

Human beings are the only creatures on earth who commit violent suicide in high numbers.

It is difficult to obtain accurate accounts of why healthy people kill themselves; solid statistics are lacking. Loss of money, power, status, or respect, or the realization that one will never achieve a long-sought goal can drive a person to quit this life. But most men and women don’t have a lot of money, power, prestige, or goals they can’t attain. They do, however, fall desperately in love. And romantic love, as you know, is associated with high levels of dopamine and probably norepinephrine—brain substances that often drive down levels of serotonin. Not coincidentally, I think, low levels of serotonin are associated with suicide.
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In short, when a love affair turns sour, the human brain is already chemically set up for depression—and possible self annihilation. I suspect many of the men and women around the world who kill themselves do so over lost love. For centuries, the Japanese even glorified this act, regarding “love suicide,” as they called it, as an honorable statement of one’s devotion.
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Attempted
love suicide may even have been adaptive in ancestral times.
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Many suicidal people, largely women, fail to actually kill themselves. And psychiatrists now believe these cases are examples of an extreme strategy that jilted women use to manipulate a lover into returning to the relationship. Alas, many misjudge their tactics and mistakenly kill themselves instead. Suicide is unquestionably maladaptive. Yet it is prevalent everywhere, particularly among men. For these unfortunate people the primordial drive to love triumphed over their will to live.

“How cruel, you say. But did I not warn you? Shall I count for you love’s ways? Fear, jealousy, revenge—pain. They all belong to love’s innocent game.” These words come across the centuries to us from the Celtic legend of Tristan and Iseult. How can you stifle this passion for a partner who has deserted you? How can you induce romantic feelings in someone you find attractive, even jump-start a feeling of romantic rapture in yourself? Perhaps most important, how can one maintain the euphoria of romantic love in a long-term partnership?

I think we can control this passion. But one has to trick the brain.

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Taking Control of Passion:
Making Romance Last

How say you? Let us, O my dove,

Let us be unashamed of soul,

As earth lies bare to heaven above!

How is it under our control

To love or not to love?

Robert Browning

“Two in the Campagna”

“Her whole character seemed to change with her change of fortune. Her sorrows, the depression of spirits, were forgotten, and she assumed all the simplicity and vivacity of a youthful mind.… She was playful, full of confidence, kindness and sympathy. Her eyes assumed new lustre, and her cheeks new colour and smoothness. Her voice became cheerful; her temper overflowing with universal kindness; and that smile of bewitching tenderness from day to day illuminated her countenance.” The handsome, dashing, auburn-haired Mary Wollstonecraft, founder of the British feminist movement in the late eighteenth century, had fallen in love.
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“Love’s weather is so fair,” wrote William Cavendish.
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Indeed, we radiate when we love. We also agonize and hope. Most of all we crave; we want to see and touch and laugh and love and to be loved in return. Fueled by one of nature’s most stimulating chemicals, we galvanize our energy, focus our attention, and seek our prize. Romantic love is an urge, a want, a need—a primordial mating drive that can be, at times, more powerful than hunger.

Addicted to Love

World poetry and literature even refer to romantic passion as a form of hunger. In the Song of Songs, the ancient Hebrew love poem, the woman exclaimed, “I am starved for his love.”
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In the Chinese fable “The Jade Goddess,” Chang Po said to his beloved, Meilan, I “crave to see you.”
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In the Arabian tale, Majnun cried out, “My beloved, send a greeting, a message, a word. I am starving for a token, a gesture from you.”
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And Richard de Fournival in his thirteenth-century book,
Advice on Love,
said of this magic, “Love is an unquenchable fire, a hunger without surfeit.”

Because romantic love is such a euphoric “high,” because this passion is exceedingly difficult to control, and because it produces craving, obsession, compulsion, distortion of reality, emotional and physical dependence, personality change, and loss of self-control, many psychologists regard romantic love as an addiction—a positive addiction when your love is returned, a horribly negative fixation when your love is spurned and you can’t let go.
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Our fMRI experiment on people in love supports this proposition: romantic love is an addictive drug.

Directly or indirectly, virtually all “drugs of abuse” affect a single pathway in the brain, the mesolimbic reward system, activated by dopamine.
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Romantic love stimulates parts of the same pathway with the same chemical. In fact, when neuroscientists Andreas Bartels and Semir Zeki compared the brain scans of their love-stricken subjects with those of men and women who had injected cocaine or opioids, they found that many of the same brain regions became active, including the insular cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, the caudate, and the putamen.
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Moreover, the bewitched lover shows the three classic symptoms of addiction: tolerance, withdrawal, and relapse. At first the lover is content to see the beloved now and then. But as the addiction escalates, they need more and more of their “drug.” With time they hear themselves whispering, “I crave you,” “I can’t get enough of you,” even “I can’t live without you.” When the lover is out of touch with the beloved, even for a few hours, he or she longs for renewed contact. Every phone call that is not from the beloved is a disappointment.

And if the beloved breaks off the relationship, the lover shows all the common signs of drug withdrawal, including depression, crying spells, anxiety, insomnia, loss of appetite (or binge eating), irritability, and chronic loneliness. Like all addicts, the lover then goes to unhealthy, humiliating, even physically dangerous lengths to procure their narcotic.

Lovers relapse the way drug addicts do, too. Long after the relationship is over, simple events such as hearing a particular song or revisiting an old haunt can trigger the lover’s craving and initiate compulsive calling or writing to get another “high”: a romantic moment with the beloved. Racine had it right when he called the lover a “slave of passion.”

How can we smooth the journey back to sanity and liberation when our love has been rejected? How do we jump-start romance in someone else or in ourselves? And how can we make this passion last?

Love Sickness: Letting Go

“Nothing can affection’s course control, / or stop the headlong fury of his speed.” Shakespeare believed romantic passion was uncontrollable. I think this addiction can be conquered; it just takes determination and time. A little knowledge of brain function and human nature can be helpful, too.

To begin with, you must remove all evidence of the addictive substance: the beloved. Throw out cards and letters or stuff them in a box and put it out of reach. Don’t call or write under
any
circumstances. And depart immediately if you see your former lover in the office or the street. Why? Because as Charles Dickens said, “Love … will thrive for a considerable time on a very slight and sparing food.” Even the briefest contact with “him” or “her” can fire up your brain circuits for romantic ardor. If you wish to recover, you must expunge all traces of the thief who stole your heart.

Meditate. Develop a few mantras and silently repeat them. Something positive about yourself and your future is best, even if it isn’t true—yet. Something like, “I love being myself with a soul mate of my own.” Pick something that boosts your self-esteem and projects your mind out of the failed relationship and toward one that will succeed. And when you can’t stop thinking about “him” or “her,” dwell on their negative traits. Write down their faults and carry the list in your purse or pocket. You might also try fantasizing. Picture yourself walking arm in arm with someone who adores you and you cherish, the perfect partner. Make it up. And make it good. Someone is camping in your brain; you must throw the scoundrel out.

The Fulbe of North Cameroon do just this. A bedeviled lover hires a shaman to perform rituals to extricate the rejecting lover from their mind.
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The ancient Aztecs used a spell instead. Part of one has been preserved: “Come forth Tlazopilli Centeotl, you will calm down the yellow heart, the green anger, the yellow anger will come out. I shall make it leave. I shall chase it away—I, Spirit in Flesh, I, the Enchanter, through this drink Medicine Spirit, will change this heart.”
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It is very important to stay busy.
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It’s difficult to make plans when you are too depressed to get out of bed. Force yourself. As the Bible says, “Take up your bed and walk.” Do it. Distract yourself. Call friends. Visit neighbors. Go somewhere to worship. Play cards or other games. Memorize poetry or historic events. Learn to draw or to play the guitar. Listen to music. Dance. Sing. Do crossword puzzles. Get a dog or cat or bird. Take that vacation you have always thought about. Write out your plans for the future. Use deep breathing and/or other relaxation techniques. Do anything that forces you to concentrate your attention, particularly things that you do well.