Dear Neil: What chemical changes occur when we enter a new relationship and then fall in love? I remember reading an article saying that the changes that occur in the brain when we begin a new relationship are like a continuous feeling of euphoria.
- Curious in Wellington, NZ
Dear Wellington: There is no experience more magical than being smitten and falling in love. The world revolves around the desire for love, and much of the artistry, music and poetry throughout history were inspired by it. Wars fought over it, lives lost because of it and fortunes spent in order to prolong it.
The infatuation stage of a relationship pumps large amounts of the “love cocktail” into our bodies—chemicals such as phenylethylamine (PEA), dopamine and norepinephrine—which are natural amphetamine-like chemicals that our bodies produce. These chemicals make us feel extremely positive, wildly optimistic, unusually hopeful, amazingly euphoric, zapped with energy and full of lust. We don’t need normal levels of sleep, food or perhaps even air when we are smitten, because we feel so completely high on life.
It’s similar to being under the influence. In fact, scientists now believe that the love cocktail is so powerful that it literally transforms us into an actual altered state of consciousness. Which is why, if you say to someone who is smitten: “But he has no job, hasn’t been able to keep a job, is antisocial, doesn’t say anything and has utterly no interests,” your friend is likely to respond: “He’s so affectionate, romantic and hot. It’ll work out just fine.”
PEA, dopamine and norepinephrine pack such a powerful chemical wallop that people who get under their combined influence will undergo significant personality changes. Inhibited and withdrawn people become social and outgoing, people who are normally couch potatoes go out dancing every night and cheapskates become lavish spenders and generous tippers.
PEA stimulates libido, making us more interested in sex. Norepinephrine gives us that “swept away” sensation that feels like a shot of sexual speed. Dopamine makes us more sexually receptive and increases our enjoyment of sex. The three are nature’s one-two-three knockout punch. But a word of caution. This wildly euphoric and giddy feeling can also cause us to do things that we may come to regret, such as quickly getting married and deciding to have a family, or quitting our job and selling our house so we can sail around the world with our new-found soul mate and best friend.
Do not mistake this feeling for true love. Infatuation is just the first stage of love. What comes after infatuation is the “falling in love” stage. And what frequently comes after that is a period of adjustment, disappointment or disillusionment, because who you develop great chemistry with does not mean that s/he will be a good long-term life partner for us, or even a healthy person for us to be around at all. Infatuation is not the same as true love. To keep true love going is going to take patience, communication, accommodation, negotiation, similar goals, compatible temperaments, trust, the benefit of doubt and maturity.
Neil Rosenthal is a licensed marriage and family therapist in the Denver and Boulder, CO, specializing in how people strengthen their intimate relationships. He can be reached at 303.758.8777, or e-mail him from his website www.heartrelationships.com.
Dear Neil: I spend a fair amount of time angry at my husband. When I’m alone, I silently say to myself that my husband has hurt me, or disappointed me or angered me—and I think of all the things he did in our 17 years together that fit those emotions. I then started sharing these emotions about my husband with several close girlfriends of mine. That way no one gets hurt and I get to vent, commiserate with others and receive support for my feelings. Recently. I shared with my husband some of the things us girls talked about and he got furious. He said that I was violating his trust and hurt our marriage. I said, ‘No I’m not, I’m just venting to friends.’ This has caused a rift between us. Do you have an opinion?
- No Harm Meant in CT
Dear CT: It can be helpful to work out how you feel about an issue by talking with others. Nothing is wrong with talking things out with other people—that’s indeed what most counselors and therapists do for a living. But you have to be careful, because your husband could easily feel that you are revealing things to friends that may feel personal and private to him, and you don’t want him to feel that you have breeched trust or have publicly undressed him.
There are actually three issues here. First, that you aren’t sharing information with other people that he would consider personal, private and confidential. Second, you are in the habit of consistently building a case against your husband in your own head. That means that from time to time, you look for more evidence to support your feelings or to justify how you feel. A short step later you will begin to prepare a speech in your head in which you accuse, try and convict your husband of wrong doing, or of being insensitive, selfish or inadequate.
You are now painting a portrait of your husband as the bad guy in your marriage. But by doing so, you diminish the good feelings you have for him, and therefore cause yourself to feel even worse. When you feel bad about him, you will also feel bad about yourself, because you are committed to him. You are “making a case” against your husband, as if you were in a court of law and he was on trial. But if you win this trial you also lose, because you have now worked yourself into an unhappy state with someone you presumably also love, care about and want to feel closer to. I don’t think doing this is in your own best interests.
Third, the one thing left out of your letter is any attempt to repair the relationship with your husband, and to work through all the hurt, anger and disappointed feelings you have about him. You’re not telling him how you feel, you’re telling girlfriends. And no matter how much your girlfriends commiserate with you, they can’t fix these problems.
But your husband could, and that becomes the solution to your dilemma. Tell him what’s bugging you. But instead of just complaining, tell him also what you’d like him to do differently.
It’s the only way you’re going to heal your marriage.
Neil Rosenthal is a licensed marriage and family therapist in the Denver and Boulder, CO, specializing in how people strengthen their intimate relationships. He can be reached at 303.758.8777, or e-mail him from his website www.heartrelationships.com.
Dear Neil: How do I get over an ex that I am still in love with? I was in a relationship with a woman for about two years before we broke up. We have tried to remain friends, and we meet for coffee from time to time. I am still in love with her, but it is not reciprocated. I often think it would be best if I just didn’t see her at all. But we live only a few blocks from each other, and it’s quite difficult to not bump into her. This is really driving me crazy and I don’t know what to do. I find myself obsessing about her. What would you recommend?
- Can’t Move On in Wellington, NZ
Dear Wellington: The biggest problem you’re describing is that you’re still in love with a woman who is no longer in love with you,and that will bring heartache to anyone. So the first thing you’re going to have to do if you want to stop feeling tortured is to quit meeting with her. It is hurting you, not helping you. The second thing is to find a way to stop loving her.
How do you stop loving someone? Well first, you’re going to have to come to terms with the loss of the relationship. You have to let her go, let go of your attachment to her, let go of your inward hope that the two of you will reconcile, and you have to let go of the dream about her having a place in your future.
Then you need to do some serious soul searching, so you can make peace with the ending of that relationship. Here are my suggestions:
• What would you say your role was in causing the problems in the relationship, or in assisting the relationship to break down? Do a thorough self-examination around this question. Without beating yourself up, make sure you hold yourself accountable for what you said, what you did and how you conducted yourself in the relationship.
• Look at what lessons the relationship has taught you. Is there anything you want to make sure you don’t do next time? What did you learn—about life and about yourself—by being in this relationship?
• Are there any relationship skills you need to get better at, such as being more articulate in your communication or in expressing your anger more appropriately? How could you improve those relationship skills now?
• Look at what you gained by being in the relationship. How are you enriched? Better? Wiser? How did this relationship assist you in being a better you? What did the relationship give you that you feel grateful for?
• Concerning your relationship, what are you willing to forgive her for? What do you want to be forgiven for?
There are also several steps you could take that would assist you in healing:
• Talk about your pain and hurt with someone who is a good listener. Talking is the first step toward healing.
• Create some new goals for yourself, and go after achieving them.• Now is the time to invite new people into your life, to strengthen your existing relationships and to reach out to other people for friendship and support.
• Figure out how to have more fun. Life is about falling down and getting back up again.
Neil Rosenthal is a licensed marriage and family therapist in the Denver and Boulder, CO, specializing in how people strengthen their intimate relationships. He can be reached at 303.758.8777, or e-mail him from his website www.heartrelationships.com.
Dear Neil: Given that you are a marriage and family therapist, I am surprised that you seem to know so little about post-menopausal women. Western post-menopausal women —due to stressful lives, bad diet and lack of exercise—end up with endocrine degeneration, which in turn leads to a significant loss of sexual urge. Foreplay doesn’t work, and sex becomes no fun. This can be quickly corrected by measured and monitored doses of natural hormone treatment.
When reading your recent article advising a husband about his wife’s loss of sexual desire, I was very disappointed to note that you didn’t mention this most likely scenario. Hormonal changes should be eliminated as a cause of low sexual interest in post-menopausal women first, not last.
- Disappointed in New Zealand
Dear New Zealand: I am printing your letter as a representative of several dozen other letters I have received from readers on this subject, all essentially saying the same thing you are saying.
And you would be right. Especially regarding women who are going through, or who have gone through perimenopause, menopause, estrogen replacement therapy or surgery to remove ovaries. All of those causes reduce a woman’s testosterone level, which she needs for sexual interest and desire.
Testosterone largely dictates libido in both males and females. Called the “hormone of desire,” it stimulates sexual interest and sensitivity to sexual stimulation.
The signs of testosterone deficiency in both men and women include decreased sexual desire, decreased sensitivity to sexual stimulation, decreased ability to become sexually aroused and a reduced sense of overall well-being, according to Susan Rako, M.D., author of The Hormone of Desire (Harmon Books). She says that by the age of 40, most women produce at least 50% less testosterone than they did when they were 20— and sometimes dramatically less than that—and that testosterone further decreases from there as we age.
We’re talking about replacing testosterone levels a woman once produced when she was younger, to bring her back to the level of libido she had then. In addition, testosterone therapy for women has been shown in studies to increase energy, psychological well-being and bone mass, which helps in the prevention of developing osteoporosis.
If you are a woman in midlife or older, and you’ve noticed a puzzling decrease in sexual interest that is seemingly not related to the quality of your relationship, talk with your doctor or gynecologist about taking testosterone. It can be taken as a pill, a cream or a lozenge. There are also herbs and natural products as alternatives which may be effective. In addition, it would be prudent to have your estrogen and progesterone levels checked also, because there could be a hormonal imbalance further complicating the problem.
Neil Rosenthal is a licensed marriage and family therapist in the Denver and Boulder, CO, specializing in how people strengthen their intimate relationships. He can be reached at 303.758.8777, or e-mail him from his website www.heartrelationships.com.
Let’s say you’re 50 years of age or older. And let’s also say that you’re single and dating, or about to be single and interested in dating again. And finally, let’s also say that you’re unsure about how to evaluate and select someone who will be compatible, appropriate and wise for you, perhaps because you feel you haven’t done a good job selecting a partner wisely in your past.
Here is a continuation of the criteria I suggest you use in evaluating and choosing a potential intimate partner—for people 50 and over. If you can’t answer these questions confidently, you don’t know the other person well enough to make a decision about the future:
• Does s/he offer you partnership and teamwork? Two people working together for a common purpose, instead of your partner basically looking out only for him/herself.
• Do you like her? This is a deeper question than it may appear to be at first glance. I’m not talking about feeling attracted to or sexually interested in her.
• Is he friendly to you? Helpful when you need to talk? A good listener? Compassionate? Kind? Respectful?
• Does she take care of you—or does she primarily expect to be taken care of? If anything terrible happened to you, could you rely on her to be there for you?
• Is he depressed? Volatile? Self-absorbed? Anxious? Compulsive? Screwed-up? If so, are you going to be able to handle this long-range?
• How does she behave at her worst? What’s it like to be with her when she’s sick, in a bad mood, depressed, discouraged, angry, revengeful, rageful, anxious, fearful?
• What are the conflicts between the two of you? How serious are they? Are these areas that could spell trouble down the road?
• Is your partner very hesitant to make a commitment? What experiences about commitment are each of you bringing into the relationship?
• Is he letting his heart get involved with you? Is he emotionally connected with you, or is he primarily with you for fun, sex or companionship? Does he share his inner self with you?
• How willing is she to blend with you? With your tastes, your lifestyle, your family and friends, the realities of your career or your income, your needs, your wants and your dreams?
• How good are his communication, conflict resolution, problem solving and negotiating skills? Is he able to discuss and resolve conflicts and differences as they arise?
• What substances or behaviors is she addicted to? Is this an addiction that could threaten the relationship?
• Do you play well together? How evenly matched are your interests—and in the ways the two of you have fun? How open are the two of you to creating new activities and interests together?
• What are your partner’s attitudes about the frequency and importance of sex? How about the importance of fidelity?
• What priority does he put on your relationship verses the rest of his life?
• Are there any warning signs you notice that could be deal breakers later on?
Neil Rosenthal is a licensed marriage and family therapist in the Denver and Boulder, CO, specializing in how people strengthen their intimate relationships. He can be reached at 303.758.8777, or e-mail him from his website www.heartrelationships.com.
by Neil Rosenthal
