Love

Per the Cambridge Dictionary love is the feeling of liking another adult very much and being romantically and sexually attracted to them. More specifically psychologist Robert Sternberg argued that love has three emotional components: intimacy, passion, and decision/commitment. While many others have categorized and defined love in many different way, it's clear that love is an integral part of the human experience. For a majority of people it's a constant part of their lives, with the first foray happening during or on the onset of puberty. Biologically speaking love has a profound evolutionary wiring mechanism. When a person falls in love the brain releases dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, nerve growth factor, and endogenous opioids. These cause excitement and stimulate the pleasure center of the brain. Pupils dilate, body temperature and heart rate increases. As a relationship progresses, bonding releases oxytocin in females and vasopressin in males. Lust induced by testosterone and estrogen guide the two partners to procreate. Love is has been represented in literature, sculpture, painting, music, and other art forms since time immemorial. In my personal experience, I see my own parents being married and my own siblings getting married or being in long-term relationships. Whether it be strangers on the street kissing in a bus stop on a rainy day or my own friends dating each other, love is ever present. And yet, I have never felt anything approximating the vast breath of descriptions out there. At this rate, I'm unsure if I will ever be capable of such, or will anyone develop an interest in me. Have any lainons experienced their first love later in life? What was the thought process like? How did the relationship progress?

>These cause excitement and stimulate the pleasure center of the brain your brain doesn't have pleasure centers >Lust induced by testosterone and estrogen guide the two partners to procreate. >Lust induced by testosterone and estrogen guide the two partners to procreate. >I have never felt anything approximating the vast breath of descriptions out there. At this rate, I'm unsure if I will ever be capable of such, or will anyone develop an interest in me. you might be gay. >Have any lainons experienced their first love later in life? I have, if 24 counts. >What was the thought process like? It was more like the lack of one. I was completely and utterly unprepared. all of the strategies i had for dealing with people - interpersonally, ethically, emotionally ,etc. were completely useless. I did not consider myself capable of being romantic before this, what i found was not only that every single time I thought about her my heart would flutter as if my chest had butterflies in it, and that i wanted to talk to her every single day for as long as possible. but also that my thoughts about anything could relate back to her - what she thought about it, whether she had experienced before, what her preferences were on that topic. wanting to share every beautiful moment with her. I had also never in my life before imagined what i might be doing with another person in 5 or 10 years. i honestly didn't care for people much at all before i met her. i had dated previously out of a sense of responsibility and mutual understanding of emotional needs (both of mine and somebody else's), and on a dimension of it "making sense" as well as reciprocality of attraction to someone i might find sexually desireable, emotionally comfortable, and overall unannoying. what I learned is that all of that is fake and I couldn't date that way again - i was merely dating out of convenience and not love. A friend of mine was very attracted to a particular idea of scientific theory that, due to the mutual oxytocin release, lesbians create a particular feedback circuit of desire that explains the intensity of attraction felt towards one another and the rationalizations and thought processes at play. this could potentially explain the subculture's uhaul tendency, and perhaps also much more like the subtlety of lesbian romance, and the synchronization and compatibility of two women with one another. how long the sex lacks. that this feedback circuit hijacks, in a way, the expected function of the brain and body. something similar probably occurs for gay males. I do not take much stock in neuro-psychic explanations of love however, they by and large consist of evopsych just-so stories which while certainly criticizeable as obscuring sociological factors, my issue is that they get away from the personality of the experience. the reality as I see it is that there is quite literally nobody else like her, and there never ever will be. >How did the relationship progress? it went horribly. as i said previously, i was totally unprepared, and i did not only not treat her the way she deserved, i did not assert any boundaries for myself or allow myself to be treated well either. i could not even think rationally about her or my own needs or desires and i did not listen when i needed to either. i have a tendency to dwell in my own imagination, this has some benefits (i am told that I am very thoughtful and creative), it also has some weaknesses. the reality is that i felt trapped in my own world and i clung on to her because she made the rest of the world worthwhile. thinking about it overwhelms me, and makes me wish to lie down.

>>94920 Cheers lainon! 27 and counting here. No idea what love is or if I'm capable of it at all. It so happens that my hobbies all stem from a desire for skills and knowledge and so far they've done a great job keeping me preoccupied. Some frens say man should have a family going by 40 or his psyche starts acting up. I hope to prove them wrong or end up not needing to.

>>94920 Look, if you don't have the mood to have that OXYTOCIN or that VASOPRESSIN to trust people you pretty much won't fall in love (aka "due to being too hardened and rugged to love", but modern people keep telling the 2020s term for it is "trauma") OR you probably eay SOY and KAF instead of real food, so you prolly lack some vitamins to get that vasoxy to release. OR you live in "survival mode" in terms of having to deal with soykf here, soykaf there, soykaf outta nowhere... and having no time to relax OR you're adump chap just like myelf who wouldn't realize his thick wooly quilt is way too warm for a good flat, his expensive coat is actually a stupid raincoat that won't dissipate body vapor, and alike) OR a combination of the above >>94924 Kaoru you dumb fuarrrk, never tell this soykaf to stressed out people like... never You're not helping

>>95082 you're right.. i wanted them to be prepared. i think if you arent then love can be something horrible but it can be something beautiful too. i just wish i was ready..