love and language

The other day my favorite blogger (although more of a journalist) Sam DeBrito posted a piece revisiting a theme from a previous article about a biochemical interpretation of love made famous by a scientist named Helen Fisher. I'm sure I haven't quite got it right, but she taxonomizes love into three different states, corresponding to three different chemicals in the brain. Roughly, there's lust, romantic love, and attachment. Lust is, well, I'm sure everyone's pretty much familiar with it. Attachment is something cuddly and affectionate that forms over time, like what you'd have with a parent or a teddy bear. But romantic attachment is the weird one - I think she thinks it's evolutionarily useful for bonding to one particular partner and not leaving them when you're raising your kid, or something, but it, of the three, is the most about the other's (or, the Other's, to be Sartrean about it) specificity.

Like, last time I remember a lustful reaction, it was a guy I knew who was of Chinese heritage, and not only did I feel lust toward him, it generalized to all Chinese men. So, not so much about specificity. And the attachment thing, I think that's just a question of doing the hard yards, you could develop feelings of attachment for your worst enemy if you spent enough time together.

But romance. Very specific. It's them you want, only them. You want them around you all the time because of how they make you feel, and when they're gone you ache with a hunger and grief that overcomes you and makes everything else dull. Other people invite you to do things but you don't want to accept because those other people are not as good as your One, your Other, and you'd rather be alone than with anyone but Them. Thoughts of them haunt you all day when they're not around, and you rush to check your email at every opportunity for any little message from them, and you daydream of their face in certain poses showing certain expressions, and you remember how their voice sounded when they said certain words, and it's all a bit creepy and obsessive.

A similar thing is when you find someone who speaks your own personal language. Not just your culture's language, like English or Wisconsinite, but someone who really understands you when you talk. They're not afraid of anything about you, you can (and do) say anything, you can be as exuberant as you want and you don't scare them. They talk back in the same language and they make you laugh. And think, and feel things, and learn things in the very moment that they say them to you. (Hi, JB). (No, not the local one, the philosopher). The experience of having a conversation like that, where you're wholly you and open to them and they're being pretty much them and you just seem to get each other - that's as addictive as the particular curve of your loved one's face as he turns away in the half-light and turns back to you smiling.

I'm lucky to have a few of these folks around. But they do ruin things for ordinary people, who don't speak my own personal language, and who do not mesmerize me and change my life and fill my thoughts. Sure, I should call some of those ordinary folks for the upcoming long weekend, get something or other arranged so I'm not struck with paroxyms of three days of loneliness for lack of planning. But if I can't make a plan with one of those special people, I'm not really enthused about spending any time with anyone else, thanks.