Falling Out of Love With Love.

My disintegration from being a hopeless romantic is almost totally complete. I used to believe in soul mates, that love conquers all, that all you need is love, and the rest of the whole gamut of catchy song titles and cheesy scribblings on anti-war signs. If I've learned anything this quarter, it's that love is not controlled by some external mystical being; that love can not conquer all things like time, distance and space; and that there is much, much more to life than falling in love. Of course, I'm talking about love in the romantic sense, not in the familial or parental sense.

I'm taking a class this quarter called "Psychology of Emotion." The book's chapter on love claims the feelings of attachment, trust and longing that are associated with love to be caused simply by the increase of oxytocin in an organism. They talked about how scientists injected oxytocin into a female mouse and she immediately showed signed of attachment and trust to a random male they dropped into her cage. It slightly bothers me that something so "sacred" as love can be boiled down to a chemical in your body. It seems as though it's a matter of waiting for your body to release oxytocin in the presence of a girl or boy; that's how you fall in love.

The book also talks about three different types of love. Eros love is based on passion and physicalities, ludus love is a type of "game-playing" love, and storge love is based on friendship. I've always considered myself as a storge type of lover but it has come to my attention recently how many friends I have who are girls, and how much emphasis is placed on meeting girls in bars and clubs especially in college. I feel like the more hectic and busy life becomes, the less time you have to foster a storge type of relationship and love, and if you do try to foster that kind of relationship, you either take too long or are subjected to the friends category. It seems like all people have time for nowadays is the eros and ludus type of love, the kind where you meet people at bars and clubs, inherently based on physical appearances and picking-up "strategies."

I'm also taking a class on Animal Behaviors, and the similarities between animal mating behavior and human mating behavior in clubs is pretty hilarious. Animal mating behavior usually invloves attraction through, for example, the fancy feathers of a peacock or impressing other females with looks and plumage. Afterwards it's about showing the female your fitness by doing some sort of call or doing a sort of mating dance (like the stickleback fish). If the female is impressed, she goes with the male. If not, other males are there to try their hand at impressing the female.

Sound familiar? Clubs sometimes remind me of meat markets. Girls are always on the dance floor dancing and having fun, but standing around the dance floor are always guys who seem to be browsing the selection of girls on the floor and planning their method of attack. It's disgusting. They're dressed up in their fanciest clothes to impress the girl, and try their hand at dancing with the girl. If the girl is impressed with the way her newest suitor dances, then he might just get lucky. If not, she pushes him away and likely another suitor will come and show off his skills soon. This is not how I imagined meeting girls would be like for humans, but it seems like the older we get, the less idealistic and more animalistic we become in that sense.

It scares me that I'm starting to understand and be a part of this new-age love. I calm myself by not calling it love at all, but merely keeping one self entertained between the stages of true love.

Anyway, time to go back to studying "Emotion." Damn you class for turning even happiness into a boring set of chemicals and protoypical changes in expression. Until next time, zai jian!

-Justin

PS My next post will have pictures, I swear! Maybe.