Should we be in love ?
In my recent post I mentioned a study that discovered reduced cognitive control in passionate lovers. I’m interested to explore if love, despite the adjective behind it is supposed to reduce the cognitive control !
Lavender .. Orange .. Viridian .. Ecru
Well, the study tried to explore if those passionate lovers can succeed in a Stroop effect experiment and another similar cognitive control experiment. I wonder, What does this mean ? It could mean that such poor (or maybe fortunate !) men and women can’t focus on very detailed and dull tasks. Their hormones and instincts are reshuffling in anticipation of a new order to their lives. They are detailed and dull tasks. But what about important and critical tasks such as heavy machinery ? The Huffington Post short video mentioning the study sarcastically concluded that yes heavy machinery is something we need to avoid until our love settles down a little bit. Well, some would say avoid making decisions when having an emotional crush. Too much excitement or too much pain might drives us into irrational and undesirable results. And that’s a legitimate reasoning !
Love .. exalts !
But would this mean that love destruct us ? shouldn’t it elevate us ? Indeed, love has verity of levels or types that scientists, poets and linguists tried distinguish. However, love is a word that should have common features. Regardless of the adjective you pass before ‘revenge’ or ‘anger’ or ‘upset’ .. You would have a meaning that is applicable whenever that word is used. So what about love ?
We start with passion .. Continue with compassion !
Compassion apparently is different from passion in love psychology ! Psychologist Elaine Hatfield was one of the modern pioneers to study love. I would argue that ‘true’ love to a significant individual should comprise both compassion and passion in two scales that do not conflict against each other. So I once had that passion toward an individual’s mentality, personality, and sweet dark long eye lashes ! That is called passionate love because that love involved “intense feelings and sexual attraction”. Kendra Cherry would categorize this love in the passionate love box rather than the compassionate love box that involves ” feelings of mutual respect, trust and affection”. Check her brief description here about these two types.
Or let me describe describe it with my own words !
Back to that lady with long eye lashes. Psychology expects that passionate love is what happen in the beginning of the relationship and compassionate love might follow that with time.
Or perhaps let me describe it with my own wondering questions !
1- Would you see compassionate and passionate love mutually exclusive; so when one grows the other one shrinks ?
2- Have you loved passionately yet not compassionately ? ( Of course, one-night-stand hookups ! )
3- Well, when I got attracted by the great personality and the initial respect before even seeing those long eye lashes, was it an inappropriate evolution of a healthy relationship ? I’m not really sure !
4- Another question ! Why are we scaling people on passionate love scale without even considering the compassionate love ! These two boxes researchers have put are just interesting enough to break my thought chain and question: Do we build relationships through ‘step-by-step’ love procedure ? if so, someone show all the singles the road map !
5- If my beloved one who I just got attracted to (100% passionate) is not at all on my respect, affliction or trust scales. Is she a beloved person from the first place ? My answer is no. What is yours ?
( if you can have sex with someone who you don’t love, let’s agree that one-night-stands and making ‘love’ is not a love relationship from the first place)
I conclude back to the study, if it completely passionate love, then we are lost. Lost in our desires that will fade away. We are lost with the eye lashes that will not matter at all when that beloved lady who might lose them in her fight against cancer one day. They still don’t matter when a lady shadows such beautiful eye lashes with the ugliness of her distrust and lack of respect. These two cases are distinguished by the amount of compassion that you would put into such relationship.
How pity !
How unlucky that researchers are studying the potential effect of passionate love over insignificant cognitive tasks such as the Stroop effect activity. Passionate love drives us to reproduce, fulfill some of our needs, and explore those who deserve our compassion and dedication. It could be that love is blinding us and making us dumber in ‘silly’ activities.
But..
But without such passionate love, how do you wake up every morning looking for a day full of excitement ? How could you go to work filled with energy and purpose ? Love makes you smarter I believe. You probably don’t focus on silly activities such as saying yellow instead of red or red instead of blue in front of a computer just because your mind is now occupied by more important problems, such as what it takes to afford a house for you and your partner. Or maybe what movie should you pick for tonights date !
Ok, now I admit it, I should stop talking about this subject ! If you reached this portion, let me know how disagreeable my thoughts are.
Sami
