How Love Affects Our Health
Love can do interesting things to a person- I think that we can all agree with that. According to the hundreds of romantic comedies that I've seen (I never said that I was proud of that), it makes you light on your feet. You sing in the rain, daydream your way through work, and spend hours in front of the fireplace, gazing into eachothers' eyes. But how accurate are these portrayals of love, really? And, more importantly, what does love do to us on a more physiological level? Below, you'll find three ways that love can affect both your mind and your body:
#1: It can make your brain a little bit fuzzy.
This one isn't a myth- love can definitely cause you to feel a little bit out of it, so to speak. A 2013 study published in the journal Motivation and Emotion found that those who consider themselves to be in love with another person have a more difficult time focusing on tasks and paying attention to their surroundings than those who don't believe that they are in love. While the jury is still out on why exactly this happens, if you do find yourself feeling a tad on the spacey side, try to acknowledge your feelings and then put them aside until you no longer need to focus on important tasks.
#2: Love can potentially make you more aggressive.
We all know the story- the guy who feels the need to puff out his chest and clench his fists every time somebody so much as looks at his girlfriend or wife in the wrong way. So what is this all about? Well, it turns out that the same hormones control both empathy and aggression in the brain. Therefore, our natural instincts are to defend the people that we care about (which can potentially come across as aggression).
#3: It can also cause you to cross the line into infatuation.
Have you ever felt so completely enthralled with another person that you feel yourself crossing over into borderline obsessive territory? Experts believe that this isn't so abnormal, after all. These feelings of infatuation arise because feelings of love can actually trigger the same parts in your brain that would be triggered by an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). If you start to feel as though your feelings for another person are going a bit overboard, try distracting yourself with other things such as work or friends.