Loving

Image Credit: Sarah Horrigan, Flickr The one woman I think I loved most in my recent history didn’t quite like me back that way. I was sure she was The One; I was entranced by how her eyes lit up around children and young people, how easy she was to talk to, and how her voice - soft and mellow yet steely when required - seemed to exude this aura of quiet strength. Even her awkward moments seemed cute, the tilt of her chin when she pretended to not see me across the room and the mumbled words when I could tell she was furiously inventing excuses to not meet up. ...

Photo credits - David Goehring, Flickr - - All I remember from the immediate aftermath of hitting the red button which terminates the FaceTime conversation I have been having with G is a feeling of reeling and of sinking, how I imagine the driver of a car suddenly swept off a road into the icy depths of a lake might feel - disoriented, numb and perhaps too taken aback to have any real appreciation of the import of what has just happened. There is good reason to feel this way, given the act - symbolic as it were - is one that brings to an end what has been a good year of sorts, and that only for the third time ever. To reach this place, where what is a painful, hard fought decision has been taken, has required months of agony and wrestling - weighing the pros of trying to save face against the cons of loss, of time and sunken investments. That G and I work, by and large, has made the decision even more difficult; that a milestone birthday of sorts for me has just passed complicates things even more. ...

http://www.ted.com/talks/helen_fisher_tells_us_why_we_love_cheat?language=en On the biology of love (amongst a ton of other fascinating stuff), and the three brain systems that evolve from our human experience of mating and reproduction - lust, romantic love and (long term) attachment.