Reflection on Romance, Love and Attraction: Opinion Essay

Romance is “a feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love” (Q.Miller). At certain ages, it distracts people because it is an issue for them. They do not react in a way that communicates to them the special reality of what romance is. In some cases, the communication between partners is associated with the trade of conversations that they both give to each other. For example, if they received affection toward each other and they respond positively, then that reaction will be a sign of good communication. Love is “an intense feeling of deep affection and strong emotions” (merrium-webster.com). When partners respond with love, there are certain affections, which collaborate with the love that surrounds them. The partners show their love all around. Attraction is “the action or power of evoking interest, pleasure or liking for someone”(Collins-dictonary.com) For example when two people are drawn to each other’s physical looks, that is an example of experiencing an attraction for not only their beauty but also their personality and how they present themselves.

Our ability to feel romantic love develops during adolescence. Teens all over the world notice passionate feelings of attraction. Even in cultures where people are not allowed to act or express these feelings, they are still there. It is a natural part of growing up to develop romantic feelings and sexual attractions to others. These new feelings can be exciting – or even confusing at first. Love is an emotion that can have an extremely powerful affection on the human body. It can make us laugh; it can make us cry. However, at the end of the day, we could never want to live in a world without love. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is when you experience feelings of intense love; the serotine levels are lowered. People might be blind to the less popular traits of your significant other. Low levels of serotonin can also trigger some obsessive behaviors, so they will choose to focus their attention on just the good characteristics. Love can also get on their nerves; blame norepinephrine a hormone that is responsible for all the times their heart has felt like it was going to beat right out of their chest. Why does this happen? Because norepinephrine increases their heart rate. For example, when they have sweaty palms it is not because of the weather this usually because there are experiencing what love is.

Why they feel so excited when they experienced love at first sight? This is because dopamine is released. Dopamine stimulates a feeling of desire in the brain, giving people the sense that they are under your new love’s spell. Also, this neurochemical gives them a feeling of euphoria, which is why their brain also releases dopamine in response to certain drugs or medication. While Dopamine affects them mentally, oxytocin can influence them physically. This chemical releases through touching; it creates a feeling of security and desire to stay in close contact. When people love someone, they express that love through hugging and kissing, which is where testosterone comes in. For example, when couples kiss, this hormone transfers and a greater feeling of attraction is placed inside of each partner. When they have been with someone for an elongated period, their body released endorphins, which are associated with feelings of attachment and comfort. Couples who are engaged or married tend to possess more of this chemical, which is why they feel more attached and cannot picture their lives without their spouses. Love can also have its positive and negative effects. Some of them are that love can help contribute to good health. Personal ties can also help love form close personal bonds with others; as a species, we happen to be quite sociable and often form various relationships in the course of a single lifetime. In contrast, the negative side can cause depression. The fact of the matter is that love is a powerful emotion and one that affects nearly every fiber of your being, so naturally, with unrequited love; you may run the risk of becoming clinically depressed. Stress is also a severe impact; love has also been known to cause stress, especially during the early moments in a relationship. Suicides are a result, the reasons can vary from unrequited love to being cheated or betray by a loved one. This often causes others to experience hopelessness, a feeling of shock and despair as if life no longer holds any meaning. Besides, Psychological effects love is a profound feeling, one that can even help alter your brain chemistry. Therefore, to claim that love can affect one’s mental health would indeed be an understatement. Love can give us a physical reaction. A quickened heart rate, butterflies in our stomachs dilated pupils, sweaty palms, a hard time finding words, the instinctive urge to physically touch are just a few ways in which love can physically affects us. Love, no matter what form it comes in, helps people incorporate safer behaviors into their everyday lives, reduces anxiety (worry, nervousness), and lowers the chance of developing depression or another form of mental illness.

A good romance will improve people’s health and attitude. If it relives pain, increases creative capacity, improves heart health, reduces stress, protects from dementia, strengthens the immune system and simply makes them happy, their defects (such as disappointments, infidelities, dependencies or jealously) may well happen to the background. The analgesic phenomenon of love is possible because intense love activates the same regions of the brain where the drugs intended to soothe the pain act: the brain reward system, which is responsible for generating biochemical benefits to certain stimuli, is activated and reacts to the organism.

“In these reward systems dopamine is generated, a hormone, and at the same time a neurotransmitter chemical messenger that intercommunicates nerve cells- that influences our mood, our gratification, and our motivation, explains medical researcher Sean Mackey, who has directed the Stanford study” (portafolio.com). Adolescence and emerging adulthood are both stages in which romantic relationship plays a key role in developing and can be a source of both well-being and negative outcomes. However, the limited number of studies before adulthood, along with the multiplicity of variables involved in the romantic context and the considerable ambiguity surrounding the construct of well-being make it difficult to reach conclusions about the relationship between the two phenomena. “This systematic review synthesizes the results produced into this topic over the last three decades. 112 studies were included, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P) guidelines. On the one hand, these works revealed the terminological heterogeneity in research on well-being and the way the absence of symptoms of illness are commonly used to measure it, while on the other hand, they also showed that romantic relationships can be an important source of well-being for both adolescents and emerging adults (Int J Environ Res Public Health).

“Sexual attraction in nature refers to the ability to attract the sexual interest of potential reproductive partners. In a human being. It is understood as the ability to generate erotic interest to other people of different or the same sex. The factors that condition sexual attraction are physical attraction; it is based on the criteria of beauty conditioned by society or by fashion. The so-called “physical similarities”. Physiological attractive, unconsciously, men and women who meet look for fertility criteria; people who exhibit good health and good genetics tend to attract others. Women with large breasts, narrow waist, suggestive buttocks, delicate jaws, etc. and men with pronounced jaws, marked cheekbones, athletic build and with the right weight are more attractive to them when they meet each other. Also, when they meet someone, they unconsciously perform a morph psychological analysis of the face, with the symmetry of the face related to sexual attractiveness. Behavior or Gestural Attractive is when they are people who, although they are not beautiful, they have “something” that makes them attractive, their way of looking, walking, laughing, their sympathy, their ways, in short, their body and spoken language, which is nothing more than the form of show our personality to the world and that helps us build our charism, making us “interesting”. That is why funny people are so successful (Dr. Vicente Martinez MD, PhD). “When couples are in a constant state of conflict, it is detrimental to their health and wellbeing. Their blood pressure rises, and they suffer emotionally” (Health Talk). This indicates that not all love relationships can be healthy. Some can be harmful to the person. Also, others could endure certain things that would cause poor health, but others are simply due to these consequences.