The Best Thing

Note to self:

The best thing…

By Bernadette Kathryn, LMT, IHLC

The best thing to hold onto in life

is each other.

~ Audrey Hepburn

The best thing to hold onto in life is each other ~ we all need hugs, love and each other!

Love is where it is at ~ The latest research claims that romantic love is not so much a swelling of feelings, love is a physical drive that can be as powerful as hunger. The researchers believe that romantic love creates a physical drive which is extremely different from sexual urges. This physical drive compels lovers to hunger for one another for as long as it takes until they can be together.

The lead researcher of the study, anthropologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers University and author of Why We Love, says sex and romance are two different things. And what is commonly thought as the drive for love, is actually three different desires.

• Sex drive – that gets you out there looking for an appropriate mate.
• Romantic love – that giddiness of first love that enables you to focus that mating energy
• Mating system in the brain is attachment

Fisher learned that for men, the most powerful of the three desires may not be sex but romance. The evidence shows that men are strongly wired for romance. Men tend to fall in love quicker than women because they are more visual and men do fall in love as strongly as women, it is an essential part of humanity.

“People don’t die for sex,” she says. “I’ve at looked at poetry all over the world, even as much as 4,000 years ago. People live for love, they die for love, they sing for love, they dance for love.” Both men and women have complicated emotions when it comes to love and romance. Their emotions tend to range from elation to obsessive thinking. Women tend to remember more than men do, they remember all the details of the relationship.

Couples in love for an extended period of time are more apt to move into a state of attachment, Fisher believes. And, the way of preserving that feeling of romance in their relationship is to do novel things together. “One thing that I and my colleagues [on this project] have established is that love does change over time.” And if you do want to continue the elation and focused attention on that person, do novel things with him or her. Keeping your relationship fresh drives up levels of dopamine in the brain, which is one of the main chemicals associated with romantic love.

“People never forget love,” she said.

Family love is feeling the security of love from a spouse, a parent, or a child. This family love is nurturing and is a source of strength that can cast out fear. True family love is a deep desire of every human soul. The greatest joys and deepest sorrows we might experience can be in our family relationships. Many joys in our personal relationships come from putting the benefit of others above our own, that is what love is. And often, the sorrow comes from selfishness, which is much more about fear and separateness, not love and connection.

One of the best things we can do for our family relationships is planning and doing simple things together; family dinners, evenings together and just having fun together; do new things! In our families and loving relationships love is really spelled t-i-m-e. Making time for our loved ones is essential for maintaining healthy connections in our relationships. When we take time to talk with each other, we are solidifying our connections. When we can step back and appreciate each other ~ our similarities and our differences, we create space to learn from our loved ones and become better versions of ourself.