Love - the BioChemical Reaction

I recieved my February issue of National Geographic in the mail and as usual, I am delighted with it. And maybe more so than usual. This month's issue has a photo of a very romantic looking couple and the main article is entitled "Love - the Chemicla Reaction". Ah, yes, a topic near and dear to my heart.

One of the reasons that I can so easily distance love and sex and other emotional responses is the clear knowledge that these are obviously physical - as much as mental - and therefore can exert a much stronger pull. The discovery that sex is one part of the brain and hormones and love another was very helpful and enlightening. There is a huge difference. And the description of love (very much the same as a "crush", which is a crushingly adult term for what is still obviously love) is completely a biochemical reaction. It involves the brain, a complex thing, and does bizarre things to it but it is still a lighting up of the caudate nucleus (in the brain) and lowers one's seratonin levels to match someone with OCD. An interesting correlation: love and mental illness look very much the same.

I would argue about this being love. I love Luis. We have been together 16 years (in March) and while the love has morphed and changed, it is still love and I would not want to envision life without him. But the crush thing happens. Still. Consistently. And I know with my very logical and practical mind that this is not love - I don't know my objects of the crushes nearly that well - but it certainly is no different than that first time I "fell in love" with my downstairs neighbour. Oh, did I mention I was 11 or 12 and he was 30-something? Yes. There it is. I knew it was love. Now, I know better and it is clearly really bad angst (lust) but women aren't wired like men and our fantasies often involve a level of secondary details that make it look more like love. Men want the raw, wanton sex. So do we, but we are envisioning the situations that get us to that point, the scents, sounds, events, etc.

I'm going through the crush thing again, as usual. He's tall, about five years older than me, has some silver shot through the thick, silky enticing black hair (oh, how my fingers ache to run through that hair!). The mostly wonderfully shaped brown eyes. (I normally gravitate toward blue or green eyes but I will happily make an exception for him.) He has a good body. I have no idea what lies beneath but I would be delighted to discover it. He smells delicious. He has the right pheromones! Sure, the fantasies are involved and convoluted and are really full-length feature films, but the simple fact is that I want this man on a purely physical level - I am not the least interested in a forming a romantic attachment to him and am not seeking it. But if he showed up tomorrow at my front door and said, "This is a one-time thing and you can do with me as you will for the next eight hours," I would be deliriuously happy and not turn him down! Sadly, I don't see this happening but there it is.

All the signs and symptoms are there. I think about him at least several times a day. I see him and my pupils dialate and my heart rate is faster and my body is humming like an antenna receiving all the right signals. I have dreams about him - not just the waking fantasies but real, I'm-sleeping-and-he's-intruding-into-my-time dreams about him. I can't wait to see him again. I want to touch him. I want to leap up into his arms and wrap my legs around his waist and not let go. Seeing him and hearing his voice doesn't quench anything - it just works me up more. And the fact is that even if I could have him, it would be a repeated thing as one time of raw, amazing sex would not satisfy - I would want him until I had my fill and who knows how many times or how long that would take! The wet, explosive heat would drive me to want more and more until finally I would be sated. That is not a slow process or a one-time only deal. This I know.

But what relief to know that going through this is not something weird or abnormal. I have met men that have aroused this kind of response in me - there is usually one at every job; one on the squad; one at the New York Renaissance Faire. It is a cycle that I will go through with someone else down the road. For now, my apologies to the object of my unbelievable lust. He'll get through it... and he knows exactly who he is. I've told him I want him.

That's me.