Was there ever such a subject that has had the capacity to fascinate, consume and divide, as love? It has been the centrifugal subject for art, music and literature since the first man had his heart broken by the eponymous hominid, “Lucy”. A few million years later, in the ten years it took for Carrie to marry Big, I had grown breasts and been subsequently loved and left by at least five boys. Alas, the path to true love is never smooth but after all the troubles and toils of romance, what can we expect to find at the end of it; in short, asks Lauren De’Ath does love exist?
At this very moment, over 75% of the world’s population believe themselves to be heart-wrenchingly, romantically, deeply, painfully in love. Fact. Via such romantic institutions as Romeo and Juliet, Heathcliff and Cathy and erm, Jack and Rose, it is something of a bizarre entrenched truth that a life without true love is indeed our own end.
Bombarded with amorous pop songs, books and movies we are conditioned to believe that It is at the heart of everything, the moral of the story, all around and lifts us up where we belong; yes, sang Sir Paul, all you need is love... I shall stop with the idioms, I have a feeling some of you are feeling nauseous. “Love sucks,” my friend ventures. “End of.” Better? But it does seem as though the twenty-first century has gone love crazy: romance novels are the most popular genre in the world, online dating site match.com has some 15million users worldwide and even Paris Hilton wanted to ‘settle down’ (for a while, anyway). As human nature would have it, we all like to imagine that our passions in life are lead from the heart, but Love’s big problem however can be likened to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow- it just does not exist as the spontaneous, mysterious, destructive emotion outside of our wistful imaginations.
As any obliging scientist will tell you, unsurprisingly there is no part of our brain called The Love Lobe, rather through a rather more methodical cocktail of chemicals our brain entices us to fall in love for reproductive means. As writer W. Somerset Maugham writes in 1949, love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species- ouch and indeed I stumbled across a successful experiment online that broke Love down into three simple scientific steps (two of their three participating couples went on to get married).
The science of love goes as thus, when Juliet felt that rush of stabbing love the first time she saw Romeo across the crowded room of the Capulet ballroom, it was no doubt down to a chemical kinsmen named Dopamine, working in the same way as cocaine, it releases a pleasure endorphin triggered by the sight of your beloved. Come Act 3, Serotonin creeps in and in the same way as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, makes it nie on impossible to think of anything or anyone but that person. “O Romeo, Romeo, where for art thou Romeo?” By Act 5 the release of Vasopressin during Act 4, a bonding hormone following sex, is entirely pointless as the star cross’d lover’s destiny has been tragically cut short.
Critics of the famed Shakespearean play have condemned the greatest love story of all time as something of a quixotic fraud. Norman Holland, erstwhile critic and Shakespearean devotee claims the story is “nothing more than Romeo’s own wish-fulfilling fantasy.” Indeed, I have vivid recollections of my own Literature teacher slamming the supposed amorous intentions of the play with damning realism, demeaning Romeo as a randy vagabond dallying with a relative minor in the nonplussed twelve year old that is Juliet. “Now is this love?” he called to a rather despondent class. As much as we just adore falling into the pages of a love-story, continues Holland, we shouldn’t expect to find similar breath-taking romances in the real world. “We have to acknowledge that a dramatic character is not like a human being with the same mental processes as its author,” he says.
Western culture has a romanticised view of relationships hence our doleful remarks at the almost business-like way in which our Islamic counterparts are ‘arranged’ their marriage, following the age-old reasoning: ‘But what about love?’ According to the LoveGeist report 95% of the singletons want a relationship, but significantly fewer desire marriage. Has romanticised culturalism led to a generation seeking romance and love rather than long-term commitment? Argues Dr. Helen Fisher, world-renowned New York based biological anthropologist, “Culture sculpts these feelings of love- it gives us energy; makes us feel optimistic, elated, enthusiastic. Why not romance? What Hollywood is doing is merely piggybacking a uniting force that has been around for millions of years; it is impossible for any one person not to feel ‘love’. Legal statements aside romance and love are animal instincts and what people want are exciting relationships, something marriage supposedly contravenes.”
But here is where our argument comes unstuck because whilst we have cultural proof of our own love of love and so enamoured are we with the very idea of love, to admit so is seen as some kind of social blip. To admit to liking someone is seen as soppy and effeminate and the ‘I Love You’ of our grandparents’ generation have been replaced with no-strings casual sex; a rose with a Facebook Poke and The King and I with Heidi and Spender Pratt. There does seem a contradiction in the cultural myth that we do indeed love to love. Is the L-word on the decline, destined to die out on the waves of the digital age?
Continues Helen, “Contrary to belief, romantic love is very primitive; we have proof of love poetry from Ancient Greeks, China, Rome, it has transcended time because it is an instinctive brain system that has lasted and will continue to last for millions of years. We need to feel a certain romance to focus on the mating process, without it you would never be able to dedicate your time to another human being.”
So, is love the great cultural myth of our time, a science promoted to some social obligation? In the words of my grandmother, “All I know is, I’ve been in love with my husband for fifty long years and science or no science that’s all that counts.”
Yeah, I know, just call me Carrie Bradshaw.
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