When It Comes to Relationships.....

This is so interesting how a love geek I turn myself into. 2 sides of a coin in regards to the science of Love. As a woman who loves Love and Romance, I am upset that the meaning of this complex and wonderful feeling of falling in love is reduced to a scientific explanation of bio-chemistry. However, the geeky side of me who love Science thinks that this incredibly interesting.

The first scientific premise that I talk about quite often.. The Major Histocompatibility  Complex.. It’s the pheromon, DNA related stuff that attracts and works the same way magnetic poles do, the more different, the stronger the attraction.

“The first study to indicate that chemical signals play a role in attraction was conducted by Claud Wedekind over a decade ago. Women sniffed the worn t-shirts of men and indicated which shirts smelled best to them. By comparing the DNA of the women and the men, researchers found that women didn’t just chose their favorite scent randomly. They preferred the scent of man whose major histocompatibility complex (MHC)—a series of genes involved in our immune system—was different from their own. Having a different MHC means less immune overlap and a better chance of healthy, robust offspring.”

Next, after the attraction, comes the ‘butterflies’. People experience different ‘symptoms’ when they are in love..butterflies in your tummy, your heart beats faster, weak knees, my self? I become clumsier more and more.. i drop things, I spill stuff, and I overblushed and looking like a boiled crab. This “intangible feeling” of falling in love produces “Tangible Physical Output”. Why?

"The available data indicate that romantic love feelings commence
in the region of the lower brain that is known as the hypothalamus. The
hypothalamus is composed of a dense cluster of nerves which controls
hundreds of bodily functions and impacts in a large host of ways the
entire nervous system. Whenever a person subjectively perceives another
human being as romantically appealing a portion of the hypothalamus
transmits a message by way of various chemicals to the pituitary gland.
And in turn the pituatary releases a host of its own hormones which
rapidly suffuse the entire bloodstream. The sex glands respond to these
hormones by rapidly releasing into the bloodstream their own hormones
which have the effect, even among preadolescent children, of creating a more
rapid heartbeat and a feeling of lightness in the head. Simultaneously
the nerve pathways in and around the hypothalamus produce chemicals
that induce-provided that these chemicals continued to be produced over
a long period of time-what people refer to as "falling in love"."

What is the impact of these findings? Apparently, these might help people to track their matches. For instance there are some online dating sites that provide DNA calculation features. I am not surprised if these researches were initiated by a lonely scientist who really needs to get laid, like Wolowitz (except that he’s an engineer), or an extreme scientist who believe that social aspects of dating dont worth his precious scientific life and chose calculation approach to his mating needs, someone like Sheldon Cooper, probably. (jeez, these kind of people are real, we’re fucked)

So, Love, that used to be an exogenous factor… given from heaven.. is now just endogenous stuff created by what is so called brain (I use these economics terms to honor my upcoming exam). Dead end. No more romance.

As far as I believe these scientific measures, No, i still believe that it is not the demise of romance, yet. When it comes to relationship, it is not just about meeting the perfect Mate, it is also about how to keep it intact. How to keep the harmony. And that’s when romance plays its role.. to trick the brain to keep producing that bio-chemical effect… over and over again…