Love Virus
 

read this today. thought I'd share:

"First, begin with the idea that love is dangerous and some people are more vulnerable than others. We’ve called love a virus before, and sadly, your emotional immune system is impaired.

People love to say it’s important to “follow your heart,” but for people like you, that can be deadly; after all, those same people might say that “love is blind,” and when you’re helpless to love, following your blinded heart can lead you right off a cliff.

Maybe a vulnerability to love is a genetic trait that helps people stick together, like the way geese imprint on one another, and it’s a good survival trait under certain circumstances and in moderate doses. Without guidance from your common sense, however, love can overwhelm your ability to think positively, negatively, or at all.

To recover from a love that binds you so powerfully to someone who is nasty, unreliable, and destructive takes lots of time and it hurts. You’re already doing something helpful by dating someone who seems nice, so take it one step further by defining what you mean by nice and checking out whether he fits.

From now on, your definition should never depend on how strongly you love or feel close to someone, because you get love-sick so easily and so quickly that your instincts are shot.

So stop looking to your useless heart for directions and follow the facts. What you want to see is a good track record for reliability in relationships, work, and money management. Then you want to see good evidence that he accepts you when you’re down, prickly, and not terribly responsive. Finally, maybe, you can let yourself start to connect.

Keep working at it until you get it right, and don’t be afraid to ask your friends whether they agree with your findings. The more you practice, the better you’ll get, and the less reactive you’ll be to whether he makes you feel good or your fears make you feel bad.

Along the way, your pain may make you feel needy. Fortunately, however, it sounds like you’ve acquired a healthy sense of self-doubt and wariness and that’s the kind of negative thinking that, in moderation, can be healthy. "


link

I think I have been given the vaccine, at least where it applies to a mate. 15 years with an AW can do that for you.

I am still open to unconditional love for grandkids and that future dog in my life.

WOW what an interesting read! I'm in the biology field and never really thought about a biological basis for love so that point was very interesting to read. I can totally see how that would make sense.. thanks for posting zrx!

thank you, zrx1200R - (I also love Heinlein, and your signature quote.)

That stuff about the emotional immune system and not just following your heart - powerful! Impactful!

I liked it so much, I linked over - thanks for the link - WOW that's a lot of information to take in, all of it enlightening!

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I want to share a couple quotes from Merlin on love, from the movie Excalibur:

Merlin: Now look, I once stood exposed to the Dragon's Breath so that a man could lie one night with a woman. It took me nine moons to recover. And all for this lunacy called, "love, " this mad distemper that strikes down both beggar and king. Never again. Never.

Merlin: You're not listening... well, your heart is not. Love is deaf as well as blind. That's it.

Merlin: Looking at the cake is like looking at the future; until you've tasted it, what do you really know? And then, of course, it's too late.
[Arthur takes a bite]
Merlin: Too late.