Apparently "obsession" is a form of madness. Research using brain scans has also shown that being "in love", suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder and being addicted to drugs activate the same areas of the brain.
Is it any wonder then that there are so many errors of judgement in marriage decisions and relationship breakdowns - because of the intensity of such in-lust feelings or when the reduction of such intensity is misinterpreted as having "fallen out of love"?
Maybe we should all take up the study of biochemistry. If we understood our bio-chemical reaction to others for what it was it would certainly spare us a lot of pain and heartache.
Professor Larry Young, of Emory University in Atlanta, suggests that if the secrets of love are unlocked, the path is then clear for finding ways of enhancing it. He suggests that: "Genetic tests for the suitability of potential partners will one day become available, the results of which could accompany, and even over-ride our gut instincts in selecting the prefect partner".
I don't think so somehow, despite the trauma and expense of divorce. Whilst I find trying to understand the pattern, the process of love and how it evolves fascinating, I suspect that we would find reducing it to that level of "science" all a bit too clinical. We would still prefer to live our love lives in this fog of "romantic mystery".
What if I were able to slip a "love potion" in her drink - and if I could - would she realise that's all it was, would she care?
But I think I would care!
SlightlyInsane
If you think at the lustful-love from an evolutionary perspective, it is the feeling the monogamous homo sapiens feel for the first few years (give or take) just to make it highly likely they'll copulate like mad and thus pass on their genes on to the next generation. People report their love can change when they have children, as now this love is aimed at the child in bringing up their 'genes', as they now no longer need the inter-sexual competitions for reproducing or the intra-sexual competition to win a 'mate'. People want to keep the lust, but unfortunately this mostly dies down after at the 7 year itch usually?
If you look at us at the most basic level we are a set of genes that are trying to keep on replicating themselves, but getting better by mating with specific partners who increase the genetic fitness of our offspring, the meaning of life is to reproduce, and out hormones and chemical imbalances are all geared towards that.
You could state that due to evolution we have not yet fully evolved for this urban lifestyle so we are constantly fighting our natural instincts, with pictures of perfect men and perfect women making us disatisfied with our selves and our partners. Recent studies have stated that where violent movies increase testosterone and agression in males, rom-coms often give women ideals about relationship that are far from the truth but they want to live them non-the-less.
Sorry for writing you an essay! I am also amazed by this chemical imbalance we call 'love' and 'lust'.