Love is Magic

January 22, 2023

“Love makes the world go ‘round.” With Valentine’s Day around the corner, what better time to talk about love? We all know healthy relationships directly correlate to an individual’s happiness. The keyword is healthy. Relationships need daily care and nurturing to grow and thrive.

What Makes a Healthy Relationship?

Respecting and trusting the people you love, and they return that trust and respect.
Being committed to your relationship.
Being comfortable speaking your mind, even if what you have to say is unpleasant, knowing your loved one will listen with compassion and empathy.
Enjoying each other’s company. It’s healthy for couples to have individual interests and spend time apart, but healthy couples enjoy spending time together and make sure they get those special moments together.

Love has a profound impact on our physical and mental wellbeing. All of us have an intense desire to be loved and nurtured. Love can be considered one of our most basic and fundamental needs.

Since ancient times, humans have been wired to seek out love. And history shows us one way to express love is through letter writing. The earliest known love letters date back to over 5,00 years ago. That means they are probably as old as letter writing itself. In the 18^th century, letter writing flourished and became an essential part of life. This is a beautiful letter from Alexander Hamilton to Elizabeth Schuyler written October 5^th 1780. Alex and Elizabeth met and got engaged while he was an aide to George Washington in Morristown during the winter of 1779-80, and were married the following December.

“You engross my thoughts too intirely to allow me to think of any thing else—you not only employ my mind all day; but you intrude upon my sleep. I meet you in every dream—and when I wake I cannot close my eyes again for ruminating on your sweetness.”

Karl Deisseroth, a professor of bioengineering, psychiatry, and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, gave this quote, love is an “unreasonable bond that becomes reasonable by virtue of its own existence.” https://youtu.be/OaeYUm06in0?t=2332

Scientists have proven humans are biologically designed to connect and attach to other humans in order to thrive in life.

Three Ways your body and brain react to being in love

You feel more attached and safer.
- Curling up on the couch with someone you love releases the hormone oxytocin, or the “cuddle hormone.” Oxytocin has a calming effect and promotes intimacy. It plays a role in social bonding, maternal instinct and reproduction, and sexual pleasure. This hormone substantially increases social attachment and trust among partners, according to a study published in Nature.
You become happier.
- Being in love releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter released in the brain that plays a role in how we feel pleasure. This helps make couples feel happy around one another.
- In 2005, a study published in The Journal of Comparative Neurology scanned 2,500 brain images of 17 individuals who self-identified as being in love. Researchers found that participants who looked at a photo of a person they romantically loved showed brain activity in two areas highly associated with dopamine.
Love keeps you committed.
- The Conversation’s research suggests that magical notions of fated love and soulmates are very common and deeply felt. After you’re through the breathtaking phase of falling for a partner, love helps to ensure commitment in several ways.
- First, it makes other potential mates seem lackluster. People in satisfying relationships rate other good-looking people as less attractive than single people do.
- Second, love causes jealousy, or “mate guarding” defensiveness toward those who might threaten your relationship. This motivates vigilance and defensiveness toward those who might threaten your relationship. In its extreme, jealousy can cause horrible consequences.
- Last but not least, “meant to be” stories people tell about love might increase their confidence in the value of their relationship. There by cementing a long-term commitment to a good partner. “Meant to be” could provide a consistent reason to stick together for the long haul.

Love quotes

“And in the end/The love you make/Is equal to the love/You take.” – John Lennon & Paul McCartney
“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.” – Lucille Ball
“It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” – Rumi
“The art of love is largely the art of persistence.” – Albert Ellis
“The first duty of love is to listen.” – Paul Tillich