Plato said that \u201cthe God of Love lives in a state of need,\u201d and indeed, many of us would agree with Plato that love is something we need, not just something we want.<\/p>\n
I mean, who here hasn\u2019t fallen madly in love with somebody and felt as if they just couldn\u2019t go on living if that person didn\u2019t love them back?<\/p>\n
In a study cited by Helen Fisher, author of \u201cWhy We Love,\u201d 90 percent of study participants reported having been rejected by someone they were deeply in love with, and they also admitted to having rejected someone who loved them dearly.
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\nPeople do it, animals do it, even insects do it. According to Fisher, entomologists even have special names for the way in which insects choose their partner. It\u2019s impossible to really know what\u2019s going on in their tiny little insect-brains, but sometimes I wonder if it\u2019s so\u00a0different from what goes on in our little brains when we fall in love (or don\u2019t). Fisher said the same regions of the brain are involved whether it\u2019s animals or humans, and with animals like elephants, \u201cyou can see an instant attraction \u2026 love at first sight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fisher also said that \u201cromantic love is one of the most addictive substances on earth.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s true; when we fall in love, dopamine is released into our bloodstream, similar to what happens to us if we consume certain drugs, like cocaine.<\/p>\n
According to Fisher, when we get rejected, or when the person we love doesn\u2019t love us back, the result is quite similar to the withdrawal symptoms one might experience from stopping those same types of drugs. That\u2019s no joke.<\/p>\n
Fisher said that love \u201chas all the characteristics of addiction … you\u2019re willing to distort reality, you\u2019re willing to take enormous risks \u2026 it\u2019s a perfectly wonderful addiction when it\u2019s going well, and a perfectly horrible addiction when it\u2019s going poorly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Getting back to Plato, it seems that he was correct, and it has now been scientifically proven that marriage (and \u201cassociated companionship\u201d) actually contributes to longer, healthier lives for the couples involved, addiction or no.<\/p>\n
One researcher who studied the phenomenon at the German Institute for the Study of Labor concluded that the health benefits of a happy marriage are as significant as giving up smoking (another popular addiction). The study found that married couples live longer, tend to be healthier both physically and mentally, recover from illness more quickly and completely, and are just plain happier.<\/p>\n
Additionally, a study that was done at Duke University Medical Center found that having a romantic partner \u201cprotects against premature death.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s reason enough for me, where do I sign up?<\/p>\n
I suppose we don\u2019t know exactly what it is about marriage or romantic companionship that allows us to live longer and healthier lives, but in an article in \u201cThe Journal of Marriage and the Family,\u201d the author suggests that part of it is that we are \u201caware of and impacted by\u201d the behavior of our significant other.<\/p>\n
In \u201cThe Health Benefits of Marriage,\u201d another article on the same subject, the author notes that \u201cwives tend to discourage smoking, drinking and risk-taking and also [work to] improve their family\u2019s diet.\u201d<\/p>\n
That same article cited a study showing that men actually begin to decrease their \u201cself-destructive patterns\u201d after they get engaged and before they are actually married. According to the author, just the idea of marriage is enough to improve a man\u2019s health.<\/p>\n
Love is good for us, we know that \u2014 we just don\u2019t know exactly why, and that\u2019s okay. After all, we use electricity every day, and we can\u2019t all agree on exactly how that works either. Come to think of it, there might be many more similarities between love and electricity, but I digress.<\/p>\n
While I was working to unravel the connection between health and love, I enlisted the help of my mom, who has been married to the same man for over 30 years. In fact, their 32nd anniversary is on Valentine\u2019s day (congratulations, you two). I suppose if you have been married that long, people like me (who have managed to stay married for all of three years) will regard you as somewhat of an expert on the subject.<\/p>\n
Anyway, Mom agrees that there is a connection between good health and healthy relationships, citing a study that shows that people live longer when they eat food that was prepared by someone who loves them.<\/p>\n
Of course, nothing worth having comes easily, and a successful marriage is no different. My mom told me that \u201cmarriage is really hard work, but it\u2019s good for us.\u201d She said that marriage works when you both give 100 percent, and that \u201cgiving makes us better people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mom illustrated this concept of giving in a relationship with the analogy of the empty box. It goes like this:<\/p>\n
When you get married, the box is empty, and you both put things into it as the years go by. The idea is that in time, the box becomes filled with valuable things, like shared experiences, wisdom, trust, and most of all, love.<\/p>\n
She said that some unfortunate souls have mistakenly embraced the notion that we start out with a full box and then take from it until it is empty. Mom said those people usually abandon ship when there is nothing left in the box for them to take.<\/p>\n
Needless to say, I am inspired by the triumph of my parents\u2019 enduring marriage. Of course, I\u2019m a little saddened to think of all the people out there with empty boxes \u2014 that is a bit of a heartbreaker, especially in light of the fact that love has been proven to add both quality and quantity to our years. It makes me wonder if perhaps love should come with a warning label: \u201cQuitting can be hazardous to your health.\u201d<\/p>\n
Happy Valentine\u2019s day, and good luck to all you lovers out there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Plato said that \u201cthe God of Love lives in a state of need,\u201d and indeed, many of us would agree with Plato that love is something we need, not just something we want. I mean, who here hasn\u2019t fallen madly in love with somebody and felt as if they just couldn\u2019t go on living if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-2R1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10975"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10982,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10975\/revisions\/10982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}