Is romantic love a kind of emotion? Or a series of chemical effects? Helen Fisher, Anthropologist who has been studying romantic love for 45 years unveiled the secret of " Why we love? Why we cheat?." In the beginning of the speech Helen explained that if a person is in love, that is, the person take on the " special meaning." She gave an example of love poem which was written in the renowned Chinese classic" Story in the west wing." and that we tend to aggrandize the person we love and omit their disadvantages. Their existence in the world make every thing unique, and we like everything they like. In Helen's research, it turned out that when we are in love, it activate the brain part which would be stimulated as well when feeling the rush of cocaine. Helen then articulated that love is a drive but emotion. It came from the motor of our craving and its unstoppable. She divided the possible brain system into three parts. Lust, Love and attachment. Lust evolves us to look for mating, romantic love evolves to mate individually, attachment prolong the individual-mating. However, Helen did point out that these three system sometimes work respectively. For instance, we feel attached with a partner, yet we can fall in love with the other person in the same time. That fully proved why are so many people cheating because it is a natural process. Later on she mentioned that by doing something novel or orgasm triggers the dopamine in our brain and thus romantic love. In conclude, she stressed the importance of love and as long as human beings survive these three drives will survive, too.
What can listeners learn from this talk?
In my opinion, I think love is a indispensable element in our lives. Yet the majority of us is baffled by this baffling " emotion", or as Helen called" drive." The listeners could certainly learn from Helen's research and her point of view. For example, we would surprisingly discover that love and sex really doesn't work together sometimes! We also now understand that why people go frantic when in love----chemical effects and dopamine! By knowing these three systems I think we can better figure out some of the problems such as adultery, divorce and depression. I think all of us can not deny the fact that we still have the " animal nature" in the whole love philosophy thing. This is something that we can learn from, learn from our brains, drives , human beings and lives.
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