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(Phatforums News / Match.com) --- Carlo was an attractive man who had been married for 20 years. His kids were out of the house, so he could no longer use them as an excuse for remaining in his unhappy marriage. He forever complained that his wife was a hopeless bore, but he stayed — and had affairs. I asked him, “If you’re so miserable, why don’t you get divorced and marry the mistress you’ve had for the last eight years?” His response was not surprising: “Dr. Gilda, I know that if I married my mistress, she’d turn into another dull wife; our sneaking around keeps our passion going.” I agreed that many people have illicit affairs and remain married. Despite the obvious reasons for keeping a marriage intact, I wondered why people really continue to stay. Helen Fisher’s groundbreaking book, Anatomy of Love, was published in 1992. It taught us that romantic love can only last from 18 months to three years, at best. From the time her book came out, I’ve quoted these findings in my writing, my speeches, and my media appearances. But recently, I interviewed the author for another article I was doing. In our discussion, I recounted the 18-month to three-year limit she placed on romantic love. What a shock to hear her excitedly describe her latest findings that refute her former research! The link between love and addiction Fisher’s team from the Department of Anthropology at the Rutgers Center for Human Evolutionary Studies scanned images of the brains of young couples who were madly in love and had been together for six months. Since more than 100,000 chemical brain reactions fire up each second, the group sought to determine how lovers’ brains reacted to seeing a photo of their beloved compared to one of a stranger. In fact, the lovers’ brains showed activity in the same region as the brains of people who were using addictive drugs, so the team likened romantic love to an addiction. Moreover, this addictive brain activity matched that of someone who had been dumped. So this would explain a rejected party going haywire in attempts to regain a lost love. How long-term relationships affect brain chemistry OK, so these were findings for the young lovers studied. Next, the researchers examined the brain activity for couples aged 40 to 65 who had been married for at least 20 years and were still wild about each other. After viewing their spouse’s photo, each older person’s brain showed vibrancy in the same region as the younger subjects had in the previous study. In addition, there were increased levels of the chemicals serotonin and vasopressin present. (Serotonin maintains happiness and serenity, and vasopressin affects monogamy.) So the major difference between the young lovers and the older ones was that the regions of the older subjects’ brains associated with love anxiety were no longer active! The passion was still there, but accompanying that now was a sense of calm. The researchers concluded that when … [Read more...]