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Love. What is this powerful, elating and heart wrenching emotion? Throughout the history of man and woman, love is described as the source of joy and pleasure, and at the same time suffering and pain. During my life, as long as I can remember, I have seen numerous times love beautifully blooms between couples, and then at times painfully ends.
Our understanding of love and its importance in our lives has come a long way. In 1939, women ranked love fifth as a factor in choosing a husband. By 1990s, love topped the list for both women and men. Young adults now say that their key expectation from marriage is “emotional security.”
Research on love, particularly in the last twenty-five years, has come to view adult love as an attachment which in its core is a strong emotional bound. Dr. Sue Johnson, a pioneer in study of attachment in adult love relationships, has written a great deal about emotional bonds in adult love relationships. The emotional bond meets the human needs for security, protection, and closeness with loved ones. The emotional accessibility and responsiveness of the partners in an adult love relationship forms the basis of the bond between them.
The quality of the emotional bond matters. It is a significant factor in our mental and emotional health. A healthy emotional bond in an adult love relationship offers a safe haven. Spouses and lovers feel comfort and security when they are in each other’s presence. Proximity to a loved one works like a tranquillizer to the nervous system. The feeling of safety is the natural antidote to feelings of anxiety and vulnerability.
Numerous studies show that the love and support couples receive from each other protect them from stress and improves their immune and hormonal system and even their ability to heal when they get ill or injured.
Healthy emotional bonding also provides an emotionally secure base. The secure base encourages and supports partners, lovers and spouses, to be open to new experiences, take necessary action to explore their surroundings and learn more adaptive ways to respond to their environment. The adjustment to the ups and downs of life is facilitated for individuals when they are in a healthy love relationship.
There are many studies that show that positive loving connections in a healthy emotional bonding with our significant other protects us from stress and helps us cope better with life's challenges and traumas.
For example, simply holding the hand of a loving partner can affect us profoundly. It literally calms jittery neurons in the brain. Dr. Coan of the University of Virginia told women patients having an MRI brain scan that when a little red light on the machine came on, they might receive a small electrical shock on their feet - or they might not. This information lit up the stress centers in patients' brains. When the women had partners holding their hands, they registered less stress. When they were shocked, they experienced less pain. The effect was noticeably stronger in the happiest relationships, who scored high on measures of satisfaction with their relationships. The conclusion was that contact with a loving partner literally acts as a buffer against shock, stress, and pain.
When love does not work we hurt. Another study, done by Dr. Eisenberger of the University of California, showed that rejection and exclusion by loved ones triggered the same area of brain, the anterior cingulate, as physical pain does. This part of brain, in fact, turns on anytime we are emotionally separated from those who are close to us. In contrast, when we are close to, held, or are comforted by our partners, we are flooded with the "cuddle hormones" oxytocin and vasopressin. These hormones seem to turn on "reward" centers in the brain, resulting in an increased calm and happiness chemicals such as dopamine and turning off the stress hormones.
Now that you are more aware of the importance of close loving relationships in your overall well being, make an effort to connect more positively to your loved ones
With the Persian New Year upon us, and the gatherings of families and friends, we think about our relationships, and perhaps about those that have ended. We may experience painful memories. It may be a good time to learn about ourselves in connecting emotionally. Perhaps we need to put some pieces of our life together and to be whole before we reach out to join. When you set out to find and create a lasting love relationship, your past, if you are unaware of and have not learned from it, may take over and drive you to repeat the same mistakes. There are several steps to take before looking to find a lasting love relationship. The first of those steps is to know your self. Knowing yourself includes your relationship to yourself. If you are not happy with your self you can not be happy with anyone else. There are ways to learn to be emotionally more intelligent and skilled so you can approach building a relationship more emotionally intelligent. Make the celebration of spring, and the Persian New Year more meaningful by skillfully connecting more positively with your lover, partner, or spouse, family members, and friends.
I would like to recommend a helpful book:
Hold Me Tight, by Dr. Sue Johnson
I wish you happy times in this New Year’s gatherings and satisfaction in your love relationship.
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