Why don’t men court anymore? The answer from psychology
Are you wondering why men don’t court anymore? Actually, you have a point: unfortunately, courtship lately is often skipped in...
The effects of love on behavior and health
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Only hearts sick with love are healthy (Aïssa MASROUR).This little quote (which is a beautiful antithesis) sums up the contradictory effects of love on our health. And that’s what this article is all about, to make you aware of the positive impacts of love but also of its perverse effects on our fragile little being, even if the game is worth the candle…
1. Love: a natural antidepressant
When we are in love, Cupid’s magic wings transcend us: three pleasant and invigorating hormones called phenylethylamine, oxytocin and dopamine are naturally stimulated in our brains and we feel an intense joie de vivre, a euphoria associated with a feeling of letting go and lightness.
As the song by Edith PIAF says, When he takes me in his arms (…) I see life in pink (…) And as soon as I see him, I feel my heart beating (…). And yes, love makes us alive and changes our vision of the life. We are content to live on love and fresh water, we have less appetite because love feeds us (no more need for chocolate gobbled up during the crises of emotional depression which is very good for our figure ladies!)
We become optimistic and we fly over our daily worries as if we were seeing things from the top of our little love cloud. This state of bliss erases our unnecessary stress and strengthens our immune defenses, we are less fragile and therefore less likely to develop diseases (except STDs, by the way in your love ardor, think well to protect yourself!)
Finally, thanks to this psychic balance, our energy is increased tenfold and we become stronger to face challenges or possible troubles.
2. sex: an elixir of youth
Love fulfills us on a mental level and also protects our body: it is this particularity that makes love a preponderant existential value because it brings its benefits to both our mind and our body, hence this feeling of general well-being.
Without going so far as to say that we have found the Grail, we could characterize sex as being the philosopher’s stone that brings the lengthening of our life span and eternal youth 🙂 It is a sport like any other that practiced regularly and AT ANY AGE has beneficial effects on our heart.
Regular sexual activity helps us to stay healthy.We also preserve ourselves from certain cancers such as prostate cancer for men thanks to orgasm and breast cancer for women thanks to the caress of their nipples which secrete the hormone oxytocin, a precious guarantor of the immune system.
So ladies and gentlemen, if you are not athletic and want to maintain your health, make love regularly!
3. the emotional whirlwind of love
Alas, Cupid does not only bring pleasure and when he shoots his sharp little arrow in our hearts, it is for the best but also for the worst… Love is a drug that can make us rise to the seventh heaven or make us fall to the thirty-sixth below.
And yes, love is a passion and like any passion, it has its downside: the uncontrollable emotional elevator. Our serotonin level (happiness hormone) in our brain is unbalanced: a vicious circle sets in because yes we are happy to have found love but we want to keep it at all costs, we become dependent on this happiness, we do not live the reality of the present moment. Then we make films, we are afraid to lose the loved one and we make ourselves sick.
Our emotions are like a roller coaster oscillating between pleasure, lack, anxiety and sorrow. Our metabolism is completely turned upside down, including mood disorders, eating disorders (food, alcohol…), insomnia, breathing that is sometimes altered by anxiety attacks, especially in cases of sick jealousy, and even somatization (physical reactions to suffering) that can lead to serious illnesses.
To finish on a positive note, despite the emotional turbulence that love brings, always remember this magnificent line from Perdican in Alfred de Musset’s play On ne badine pas avec l’amour: I have suffered often, I have been mistaken sometimes, but I have loved. It is me who lived, and not a false being created by my pride and my boredom. These words illustrate Alfred de Musset’s famous quote, Life is a sleep, Love is the dream of it, and you will have lived if you have loved. CQFD 🙂
