I was scrolling through the psychology news in my Google Reader last night and came across a study finding that “some people are as giddy as teenagers in love, even after two decades of marriage.”  Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine compared the brain activity of people who claimed to be in love for just a few months to long-term lovers who had been together for an average of 21 years. To many people’s relief, they found similar activation in the ventral tegmental area of the brain in both groups. (Apparently this is the area of the brain responsible for triggering the feeling of “romantic love.”) A difference that emerged was that the long-term lovers showed more activity in the part of the brain correlated with calmness and pain suppression, while the new lovers had more activity in the area associated with obsession and anxiety. Though these madly in love long-term partners are thought to be “outliers”, the findings seem to suggest that the feeling of romantic love can last.
My first reaction to reading this, was “great- it is possible”, but then I started wondering about impermanence and our tendency to grasp for people and experiences, to want to pin them down somehow. This study seems to appeal to that part of me- the part that wants to believe certain things can last. It would be interesting to hear more about these “outliers”, about what makes their relationships different. Perhaps they grasp less and are able to “just be” more often. I think relationships require a certain amount of freedom to thrive. It can be hard to not have expectations, but I think that if we can remain in the present and not assume that anything will (or should) last forever, that might be a step in the right direction. I like the idea of choice when it comes to relationships- that if it’s always a choice, it means more to be chosen. I think where a lot of  long-term relationships get into trouble (and perhaps lose the feeling of romantic love) is when the commitment is taken for granted. Though maybe my fondness of choice has something to do with wanting to sustain a bit of the anxiety I associate with early love. What do others think about this?