FROM: Prof. Dr. Walschburger
To: all romantics, inquisitive people and sufferers
Dear Students,
Who doesn't know this: There was a spark, it grabbed us, it captures our imagination, it makes our hearts beat faster, it lifts our spirits: We have fallen passionately in love!
Passionate love is a central theme for young people. People like to appear experienced in dealing with love matters. And yet behind all the clever talk there are great uncertainties and contradictory ideas. In fact, only with the courage to oversimplify can something generally valid be said about this form of love with the brevity required:
We must distinguish between two closely related areas:
In the first area, in conscious thinking, feeling and wanting, what is particularly noticeable is that as lovers we switch from a more rational to a more romantic mode.
We come to the second area when we ask about the function and the conditions under which this massively changed experience arises. It is not just a phenomenon of consciousness; Rather, it gripped us “body and soul”.
We owe it to millions of years of evolutionary adaptation processes that we go from being a toddler with strong parental bonds to an extremely adventurous being in puberty who becomes tired of his parents and finds strangers increasingly attractive. Female and male sex hormones – estrogens and androgens – now stimulate a state in which we are essentially already in love without yet knowing who. They are an important reason why the complicated process of finding a partner and reproduction gets underway and is experienced as happy and satisfying. A whole mix of hormones, especially adrenaline, norepinephrine, dopamine and serotonin, is involved when we are particularly attracted to a particular person, so that he or she magically changes into the “loveliest of the loveliest figures” (Goethe). Other hormones - especially oxytocin and vasopressin - are partly responsible for the deep bond and the great trust that gradually develops.
When the hormonally supported stage of infatuation finally subsides, this becomes the first major test of the relationship, because the glorified view of the partner now gives way to a realistic view again, and his weaknesses and mistakes begin to bother us. From now on, the partners are exposed to a contradiction that can hardly be resolved: on the one hand, you feel at home with your now intimately familiar “individual with a home character” - but as a sexually stimulating partner, he should be at the same time strange and exciting as on the first day.
At this point I would like to leave the partners alone with their problem; they will try to solve it in a variety of ways.
And if you finally ask yourself “how much will it jeopardize my studies if I fall in love?”, then please don’t take it against me if I don’t want to anticipate your own answer here and say goodbye to Goethe: “Rejoicing as high as heaven / saddened to death / happy alone / is the soul that loves.”
Your Dr. Peter Walschburger
Professor of psychology at the Free University of Berlin. His research interests include biopsychology, anthropology and humans as natural and cultural beings.
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FROM: Prof. Dr. Walschburger To: all romantics, inquisitive and suffering people Dear students, who doesn't know this: There was a spark, it grabbed us, it captures our imagination, it makes our hearts beat faster, it lifts our spirits: We have fallen passionately in love! Passionate love is a central theme for young people. Man
