The Medicalization of Love: A Talk by Brian D. Earp (Yale)

Having a think. Get back to you mags.

Thank you Tab… I look forward to reading your response.

I do not know how tumultuous your soul really is but from the outside it appears to have some serenity attached to it so is maybe not as tumultuous as you think it is

At my time in life I am becoming more detached because for me that is a natural process
Just learning to let go by not hanging on too much and accepting mortality as I slowly age

Are you looking for love ? I hope you find it but for me I want for nothing so I cannot complain

I am essentially a dull boring unimaginative soul so small wonder I am on my own but isolation is good for me and so maybe this was always meant to be
A natural organic changing of the mental gears that involves me being alone virtually all the time but without thinking of it in any way at all as negative

Becoming more interested in science and philosophy and religion and history while at the same time avoiding the temptation to take dogmatic positions

Learning to simply listen without the need to immediately have an opinion on it and particularly a dogmatic one whatever it may be
Being able to listen to anyone regardless of whether I will agree with them or not since that simply does not matter to me anymore

A hundred years from now I will be dead and no one will remember me but eventually there will be no one to remember anyone so me no cry
As long as I have enough to get by and my health holds up then I will have zero complaints but if not then so be it as whatever will be will be

Are those psychological classifications fixed or are they subject to change over time
I would say the latter as we are all in a state of evolution and nature is not absolute


This is something I really want to understand more so thanks for starting this thread Mags

Love’s a tough thing to get any kind of grasp on to be honest. It means so many things to so many people. A real blanket term.

I suppose the kind of love that immediately springs to mind is the classic romantic movie kind. And I’m guessing this is the type the pharmacists are busy trying to bottle.

Let’s say they succeed and the fairytale love potion becomes reality, along with its antidote, as if it were a poison lol, though from the op, its not so much presented as an antidote but more as an ameliorative agent to ease the feelings of heartache and loss when love ends or is cut short.

I’ve been heart broken twice. It hurts I’ll admit. Not forever, though who knows…? Those two times were due to break ups from short(ish) relationships. Perhaps my heart only got cracked a little. It was all a long long time ago. Thirty goddamn years. :astonished:

Would I have taken an anti-heartache pill at the time…? Hmm. Dunno. Maybe.

“Love is a religion of two.” Popped into my head fairly early on this morning when I was thinking about what my experience of love has been. Also it struck me that this is one subject that has very, very few experts lol. Say you want to be a doctor. 6 years of medical school, and still all you’re good for is an internship as a glorified stethoscope holder following a real doc around the wards. I didn’t really become anything approaching a good teacher until I’d been doing it for 10 years. How many people experience 10 year plus relationships these days…?

Sorry, wandering. So, on the horror story side. Someone spikes your drink with testube love. Boom, you’re in love with Spike the spiker. Depending on how well, how authentic a breed of love the dose engenders, would you even care if you’d been spiked or not…? Love overcomes all etc.

I don’t think you would. I think you’d go home with spike, and as long as Spike was even a half decent match, didn’t live on skid row with rats and have facial tattoos, I think you’d give it a go. How sad a thought is that. If you are single, you are astonishingly vunerable to love, whether you want it or not, whether you think you are ready or not, deserving or not, doesn’t matter - we are all at home to Mr. Cupid. Thinking back on how some of my relationships began - the utter randomness involved, the awesomely short amount of time it sometimes took to transition from single to not single - We are all potentially only an hour or so away from happy ever after.

Scary thoughts. Your friend tries to rescue you. Tries to give you the antidote. I think many would not only refuse but fight like hell not to take it.

Imagine if you are in a wonderful, loving relationship, something that is possibly the absolute center of your life, and someone comes along with a needle that will suddenly take all that away… If you’re not, imagine then that someone doses you with something and suddenly, you don’t love your mother anymore. Or your sister. Or your child…

How hard would you fight against that…?

Scenario 2. The love addicts. You have your love potion. You have your unlove potion. You have a free weekend, you have Tinder. Why not fall deeply in love, and be over it by work on monday…? Why not do that every goddamn weekend…? Why not get so used to doing that, that when you fall in love the old-fashioned way, by accident, you automatically unlove yourself in the groggy depths of monday morning…?

Scenario 3. For the love of big brother. Trump sees his popularity rating is trailing off. Time to love bomb the country.

The possibilities for abuse are insane.

But then, that movie-star love, that first blooming of love’s sweet blossom, the first embered breath of love’s flame, that kaboom in the club at 3am in the morning. Is that all love is really…?

Eh. Love’s seed perhaps. Love’s conception. Love before it can walk and wipe its own bottom.

Love is a religion of two. I’m old. 50 and a bit. I’ve been married now for 24 years. Couple more years and I will have been married for longer than I’ve not. To the same woman even. :smiley: Attention span of a Brontosaurus, even more so when you think I’ve spend my life in classrooms surrounded by 18 year old students with daddy issues. (Did that sound creepy…? Yeah, it did. Ouch. Sorry, I meant to imply that me and my wife don’t stay together because we are so desperately ugly no-one else could be with either of us and still keep their lunch down, and that we don’t live on a desert island with a collection of feral cats).

We love each other even when we don’t love each other very much. Peaks and troughs etc. We believe in each other I guess is the most honest way to put it. Our house is our church, and our holy book is a photograph album full of pictures of us looking less wrinkly.

That, I think, is beyond the skills of a chemist.

You got me there Surrep… I merely tease, mixed with a large dose of sarcasm. because you do not seem to have a cheery nature… but I could be totally wrong, though it should not be of my concern.

This thread isn’t about my wants… I thought it an interesting discussion point, especially as I had come across the Love Shot song by Exo a few weeks back, and so pondered on how are physiology is being taken over and ruled by synthetic hormones and endocrines… so why not love?

There goes that cheery nature of your’s, again : D… though I can relate on the solitude, but my political interests and family obligations gets me out of the house and into the world, of which I don’t mind.

Why… were you so, prior to the current incarnation of the former you, in being dogmatic… and maybe judgemental?

There is no wisdom in argument, but in more… thoughtful, exchange.

But best to ensure good health, by working on maintaining it, as such things shouldn’t be left to chance… a healthy diet and regular exercise should keep one in good stead.

Findings would suggest that they do change over time and with age, and that we become more introverted with age, which isn’t good news for those who are naturally very introverted… I am, but managed to circumvent those boundaries through gaining interpersonal skills and so then mixing with da homies, but now my psychic leash has pulled my energies back in to its original state of internalisation. I am glad for having had the experience, but I definitely wasn’t and am, no extrovert.

I shall post more pertinent data on the topic, and on personality types on other topics as well. Glad it’s of interest to you, as it is to me.

I think my sense of detachment and isolation might make me less cheery but I am not trying to be miserable at all
I want to avoid any emotional highs and lows and instead be in the middle experiencing neither of those extremes

I walk everywhere averaging maybe two / three miles on my days out and do weights when I am at home
I do not drink or smoke but live mainly on junk food but three out of four is not bad for a man of my age


So many books to read so much knowledge to learn but I carry on regardless

The older I get the more introverted I become but as I simply accept this then it is not actually a problem for me
It is good for my moral development as there is less distraction and I can really gaze long and hard into the abyss

This is actually considered “top secret” information, but mostly, I have loose lips…

Scientists have actually discovered to part of the brain that they need to stimulate with electrodes to FORCE love!

Pff that shit ain’t nothin new, bro. Delgado wuz doing that stuff back in the fitties. Ever seen the video of him turning an angered bull on and off with a remote control?

People think love is untouchable by science. It’s not. Revealing this would fuck a lot of people up.

You drop ecstasy, and fall in love on the dancefloor for a night. It might be indistinguishable from the real thing… until the drug wears off.

As far as I have experienced though, lol, “organic” love seems not to.

Try comparing it to taking steroids for quick muscle mass. It works, the muscles are real. You can stop the steroids, and the muscles will stay, but only if you maintain the lifestyle that requires them to stay. You flop around the house watching netflix and only lifting bags of crisps… then those muscles go.

Relationships are pretty much the same. Sure, maybe you could kickstart one with drugs, but unless both put the maintainance in afterwards, it would fade just like those muscles do. There are reasons people break up, and mostly those reasons aren’t about love. Two people can love each other, and still fuck things up. Money is a real love killer. Children, loss, alcohol, change, not enough change, secrets - all sorts of things. Love is usually the first thing to come, and the last thing to go.

You guys seem to think like a romantic comedy. That love is the be all and end all. It’s not. It’s just the ignition system.

Quote from an article on bbc news. At the moment it’s used for ptsd, but now trials are being done with people who have experienced bad romantic break ups.

Something to read whilst you gaze…

the love language of each introverted myers-briggs personality type

14 pickup lines that introverts will actually love

introflirted.com/page/2/ :laughing:

_
Kenneth Williams, on Love… I am a female version, of he.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9IF-VRQo4A[/youtube]

He was a funny guy. =D>

:slight_smile: His humour was second to none/unmatchable… what a guy. :smiley:

I am like he, in being very private/private lives… and liking men. If he was straight, I would. :icon-rolleyes:

I’ve just realised that he’s very Eastern-European/Mongolian looking… Siberia way or there abouts.