Have you ever wondered what love is? Does love brighten your life? Do you want to experience more love in your life? Well maybe this pearl can help you to better understand love and possibly experience more of it.
Opposite to our angry “dark side” that contains our negative anger and director memories is our loving “bright side” that contains our positive relator and socializer memories. The dictionary defines love as: “A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward another human; a sense of underlying oneness.” This is helpful to explain the oneness aspect of love, but it isn’t sufficient to explain the joyous aspect of neither love nor love’s overall genesis.
Most people categorize love with respect to what or who is loved, using such terms as: a parent’s love, the love for a pet or friend and even the love of inanimate objects such as cars, homes, foods, etc. Actually, almost anything we want to identify in loving terms is appropriate since love is both a concept and a feeling. As a concept, “love” can be used as a verb, noun, modifier or whatever we want it to be. As a feeling, love is identified with two emotions. The first is the basic (sensorially-triggered) emotion of joy (felt in your heart), which we will refer to as “Joyful Love”. The second is the rational (frontal cortices) emotion of love (felt in your brain), which we will refer to as “Bonding Love”—it’s that “oneness” referred to in the above definition of love.
We should also mention that what some refer to, as “sexual love” is actually “Sexual Lust” and not love at all. “Sexual Lust” is initially triggered when our joy recognizes a possible connection, which is followed by socializer memories (that are probably sexual in nature) about that connection, followed by a surge of testosterone or estrogen. Even though “Sexual Lust” is initially triggered by joyful recognition, “Sexual Lust” (felt in the groin) is eventually discriminated from “Joyful Love” (felt in the heart) and “Bonding Love” (felt in the brain).
“Joyful Love”
This is the most common source of love since it is wired into our amygdala and triggered by sensory input. The purpose of joy is: to alert us to a possible connection, which causes an epinephrine surge in our heart—this is probably why love is represented by a heart. The epinephrine surge is similar, whether that connection is positive or negative—it is just an alert to a possible connection. The more important that positive (or negative) connection is to us, the greater is the surge of epinephrine. When the positive connection is identified as a “loved one” that epinephrine surge can be immense. Once joy has alerted us to a possible connection our socializer memories sort out whether that connection is positive or negative. If negative, we avoid that connection and if positive we engage that connection. Fun Fact: so-called “love at first sight” is just intense joy, based on socializer memories that confuse that person with a loved one.
Joyful love is probably why some people feel that there are “levels” of love—because the epinephrine surge can be anything from considerable to immense. If you are genetically weak in joy and the socializer style you have fewer joy and socializer memories and most likely experience less joyful love than you could. This is especially true when you are also strong in the opposite fearful/analyzer style with many analyzer memories that make you distrust your feeling of joyful love.
Fortunately, it doesn’t matter what your socializer and analyzer style strengths, since the more you positively interact with and fortify your positive socializer memories (with a spouse, mate, child, parent, friend, etc.), the stronger that epinephrine surge will be when with them. Unfortunately, when you fortify your socializer memories about a negative connection it also elevates your epinephrine surge, possibly leading to anger or fear, which is probably why you naturally avoid them.
Joyful love starts building from a first positive experience with someone and increases with more. I recently became a grandfather and my wife and I have been taking care of our granddaughter, Abby, three days a week since she was three months old. Other than me enjoying her, it gave me an opportunity to experience the growth of her joyful love of me, which is reflected in Abby’s smile—our natural smile is the outward expression of our Joyful Love. At first she didn’t smile at me. Her smile grew with our interaction over the months to the point where she now gives me a huge smile and gets all excited with her arms and legs when we see each other—my smile and joyful love has also grown for her. Abby’s joyful love was pure, containing only positive socializer memories and no negative memories. Unfortunately building up our joyful love for someone that we have some negative memories of is not so fast or easy and the best way to deal with that is to ignore any negative memories and dwell on the positive memories.
Now that you understand what Joyful Love is, let’s move on to the lesser experienced but more powerfully felt Bonding Love. Keep in mind how to tell them apart: you feel Joyful Love in your heart and Bonding Love in your brain—think about that the next time you feel any kind of love. As mentioned, one aspect for identifying Joyful Love is that we smile, which is automatic with the joy reaction—of course, that smile turns to a frown when the connection is deemed negative.
“Bonding Love”
We experience Joyful Love much more than we experience Bonding Love since Bonding Love requires rational thinking instead of just sporadic sensory triggering. Bonding love involves rational relator memories and emotional sorrow, which seems odd but true. Our initial experience with bonding love is the natural oxytocin surge in the brain that bonds a mother and her newborn. Like joyful love, bonding love increases as the mother and child share experiences, which create similar/stronger rational relator memories. Actually, the more shared experiences we have with any person, the greater is the potential of sharing bonding love with them. But we may be getting ahead of ourselves—bonding love is complex unlike natural joyful love and needs a fuller explanation.
The purpose of bonding love is to connect (bond) us with another and think as one. Throughout life, sorrow (whose purpose is: to alert us to a disconnection), triggers our relator style (whose purpose is: to reconnect) because evolutionarily we need to stay connected to socially survive. But this reconnection/bonding isn’t guaranteed. To understand this we need to understand the relator style’s three motivations, which are programmed into our relator style’s frontal cortices; they are:
1) Only other people’s opinions matter (momentarily)
2) Only other people’s needs matter (momentarily)
3) Only other people's decisions matter (momentarily)
When two people simultaneously feel the sorrow of disconnection it triggers their relator style and these three motivations take over their thinking. This similar thinking (as if they are reading each other’s minds) makes them feel as one, bonded, which causes an oxytocin surge in their brains. If only one of the two feels the sorrow of disconnection there is no bonding, no oxytocin surge and thus no reconnection. This usually happens when an angry person causes the disconnection, stays angry and blocks their sorrow through rationalization, leaving the other person who felt the sorrow either wanting or not feeling disconnected any more if their sorrow was quelled.
If you are genetically weak in sorrow and the relator style, you have fewer sorrow memories to trigger sorrow and thus bonding love. This is especially true when you are also strong in the opposite angry/director style with many director memories that oppress your shared sorrow and bonding. If you are a strong director and especially if you are also weak relator, you can share sorrow and experience more bonding love if you work at it. You can create more relator memories by appreciating others—to do this, consider, check off and do the following:
[ ] You can instantly agree with whatever someone suggests—this reaction will negate your anger and related director memories.
[ ] You can be much less judgmental by considering only their point of view by ignoring your point of view.
[ ] You can make their needs important, momentarily forgetting your own and supporting theirs.
The shared sorrow of disconnection is the most prevalent trigger for bonding love, but bonding love can also be triggered without shared sorrow. Sorrow and relator memories actually have only one combined purpose, to share the same thoughts and bond, negating a disconnection. We can also get that bonding oxytocin surge when we instantly, simultaneously share the exact same thought as another. This may seem far-fetched, but it is true, especially in long lasting relationships. This “thought-sharing” bonding love is increased with the longevity of our relationships (no matter what our relator and director style strengths). This is because, over the years or decades, we share many repeated positive experiences that make us think similarly in a given situation. This gives us a greater chance to instantly think the same thoughts that evoke bonding love and that wonderful oxytocin surge.
Believe it or not, there is another, less common way that we can get that oxytocin surge and feel bonding love. We can purposefully use our relator motivations to truly appreciate (recognize the quality, significance, or magnitude of…) others, by making their actions meaningful to us. We can identify and sincerely thank someone for what they have done for us as he or she instantly recognizes our appreciation of them, thus sharing the same thought and bonding with us—try it, you’ll like it.
Bottom line for Bonding Love – Other than having a newborn, there are at least three ways to experience rational bonding love and feel that wonderful oxytocin surge:
1) The shared sorrow of disconnection can trigger bonding love when we truly reconnect with another.
2) We can bond with someone when we instantly share the same thoughts, no matter what those thoughts are.
3) We can purposefully, consistently use our relator memories to truly appreciate another for what they have done (or will do) for us—similar thinking as in 2) above.
Fun Energy Facts: 1) When we have an oxytocin rush in the brain or an epinephrine surge in the heart we clearly emanate positive emotional energy, probably radiated by the pineal gland. This “emotional energy” sharing might actually be what makes us feel bonded. 2) Antithetically, fear and anger emanate negative emotional energy, making us shun those emanating it.
I hope that this discussion helps you to understand what Joyful Love and Bonding Love are and provides you with a path to experiencing more love in your life.
