Falling in love

Do you fall in love with your heart or your brain? According to Syracuse University experts studying neuroscience and mental health, the brain is key when it comes to passion. Their study shows that when you fall in love no less than 12 areas of the brain are activated, all of which work together to release substances including dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline and vasopressin. The result of all that activity is an ecstatic sensation, similar to that of taking cocaine, they claim. The scientists also discovered that there is such thing as love at first sight, since they claim falling in love only takes about a fifth of a second. And those butterflies you feel in your stomach when you first fall for someone? They're triggered by a process in your brain too. The researchers, whose study has just been published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, examined how the brain is involved in the emotion of love and found that different parts of the brain are activated when we feel different types of love. So passionate love is triggered by the area of the brain associated with reward and body image, while unconditional love is sparked by other areas, including the middle of the brain. "These results confirm love has a scientific basis," says Professor Stephanie Ortigue, who led the research team. Professor Ortigue hopes her study will help develop new ways of treating people suffering from emotional stress and depression as a result of a broken relationship.

Adult Game

There is a pattern to the act of falling in love. Express this pattern by using the five expressions of love and you'll write a dramatic romance that will sweep the reader away. Not all people feel love in the same way. One person in a relationship can feel unloved, even when the other person is trying hard to make things work. When writing a romance novel it is important to tap into the elements of love. In real life, a person has one type of expression for their love, but in a novel you need to include all five. If you eliminate one or two of these elements of love then some reader's can't feel the love come through, no matter how well written the story is. Have you ever heard someone complain because your characters jumped into bed too soon? All authors try hard to set this up well and make it realistic. So, what goes wrong? First, the reader needs to feel the emotions. You need to trigger their emotions. This is done by following the characters through the act of falling in love. The first step is the promise. The character has strong feelings, needs, that the other character seems capable of fulfilling. People falling in love start to set ourselves aside and make compromises for the other person. If we are too needy, and go too far, then we risk making a commitment to the wrong person. This is also true in a novel. Be careful if you are writing about a woman who jumps in bed with the man she's just met. Yes, this happens every day, but you are not writing about real life, you are writing a romance. Authors accidentally trigger memories of all the reader's failed relationships by concentrating on the acts and not the method of falling in love. The next steps enables the couple to start dreaming about being loved. This is where they touch for the first time. This leads to the first kiss. The characters may think about what they want, and are pleasantly surprised when the other person gives them what they need. In this step the other person promises, unconsciously, to make up for the pain the other one has endured. If the heroine has been betrayed, the hero must be loyal to a fault. If the heroine has been abused, this new man must live by a strict code of honor. In a good romance novel the dreams slowly become reality. HOME