Why does falling in love makes us feel so dreamy and out of reality?

There is a chemical release in the brain at such time. I think it helps people to be blind to their object of desires bad points. Perhaps it’s natures way of assisting people to fall in love. Because if we were not blind we may just stay single.

Falling in love is like being on drugs, hormones are produced in huge amounts in order to encourage you to pursue the relationship and, ultimately, reproduce (selfish gene and all that).

So you feel like you’re on drugs because you basically are.

Because you ARE in a dream. There’s no such thing as “love.” The concept of courtly love was invented by horny medieval Catholic monks who had never so much as touched a woman, who would sneak into the scriptorium at night and write the medieval equivalent of Harlequin Romances. What you regard as “love” is really just an admixture of glandular squeezings created to intoxicate you into engaging in coitus for the purpose of propagating the genes responsible for those glands.

I have never seen anything noble, nice, pleasant, or positive come out of what people refer to as “love.” On the other hand, I have seen the most astonishing acts of cruelty, malice, selfishness, greed, and irrationality from people “in love.”

@SmashTheState I have never seen anything noble, nice, pleasant, or positive come out of what people refer to as “love.” On the other hand, I have seen the most astonishing acts of cruelty, malice, selfishness, greed, and irrationality from people “in love.”

Wow. I have seen time after time people do amazing things for each other out of love. Stand by their spouses side when they become ill. Think of their spouse first in almost every situation. Think about how they can make their SO happy and feel supported.

I think the problem here is we are using falling in love synonomously with love, when falling in love is more equivalent to lust.

@partyrock There are all sorts of chemicals released. Some are the same as when a mom breast feeds, they are bonding chemicals. And, with romantic love there is the addition of chemicals that rev up our sex drive.

@JLeslie I don’t see “standing by one’s spouse” as a good or desirable thing. It ranks up there with “my country right or wrong” in my books as a noxious social evil wrapped up in saccharine sentiment. I lost many friends to “love” over the years, as the cold calculus of sex makes their new, steady access to poon more important than the more abstract pleasures of friendship. Likewise, having spent my life in poverty, I’ve been forced to live with a long line of roommates, almost all of whom eventually “fall in love” with someone from whom I get absolutely nothing, whom I did not choose, and with whom I would not choose to associate – except that I am now expected to share this person’s company, make this person welcome, and oftentimes live with on a full-time basis with no regard for my needs or desires.

Perhaps I should provide a practical example. I had a girl move in with me as a roommate a few years ago. She wasn’t an ideal roommate, but I could tolerate her. Then her boyfriend got out of prison and I was given a choice: he could move in with us, I could move out, or she could move out and leave me without a roommate and insufficient time to find a new one. I chose to let him move in as the lesser of the evils. Over the next year, he got her hooked on smack, turned my home into a crackhouse, and rang up over a thousand dollars in phone bills. His crackhead friends stole everything which wasn’t nailed down, and I ended up having to sleep with an iron crowbar every night to feel even slightly safe. Out of this Faustian bargain, she got nightly sex with the man she loved… and I just got fucked. A perfect example of how “love” is a greedy, self-centred, ugly, and vicious social evil.

@SmashTheState Ok, so you have proved you have some shitty people around you. We all have examplesmof that. Go hang around couples who have been married for 40 years who worked hard their whole lives and have integrity. Sure some of those couples still hate their spouses, but most of them love their spouses, talk about their spouse being their best friend, remember all the experiences they have weathered together, and all the good times. Building their lives together. The saying “two parts of a whole” is understandable, they are a unit. There are statistics on spouses dying within a year of the other. When that piece of themselves die, when their spouse dies, there is an increase risk they themselves die shortly after. I think that is from love, from a broken heart, from tremendous grief and loss of the person they are so emotionally bonded to.

My husband makes my life better, not worse. I hope you find someone one day who can do that for you, if you seek to be in a relationship.

@JLeslie Your husband makes life better for you. And he will do so, no matter how much misery and hardship it causes to everyone else in his life, and everyone else around him. You seem to be missing the point that this psychotic tunnel-vision you call “love” is inherently selfish, insisting on making itself paramount before everything else.

And being asexual for 43 years, it’s considerably unlikely that I’ll experience sexual bonding at this point. It’s this outsider’s view which gives me the ability to be objective about a phenomenon which renders the entire rest of the human race beyond the capacity to be rational on the subject.

@SmashTheState Love is not just about sex. There are many many couples who don’t have sex for various reasons. My own sex life has gone at time for months without sex because of physical reasons. We are still bonded. Parents speak of falling in love with their babies, the love their children.

You originally spoke of a friend being in “love” and getting addicted to drugs and ruining everything around them. She is addicted to him, he is not worthy of love. That is about fucked up people, not love.

And, I wanted to say that I have absolutely no opinion either way whether people should pair up or not. I don’t want you to think I think everyone should find their one true love or anything sickening sweet like that. Many people feel great being single, and I fully support it.

Its really simple…...the alarm is sounded and all the Cupids rush to your heart to attack it with their love-struck arrows.

Ain’t Love Grand???

I don’t even think it has to be as much as falling in love, even just finding a new person that makes you happy and you love being around, that you didn’t have before….it’s a game changer for sure. You can kinda be high just off that feeling I think. I feel like I’ve been high all week, I’m not in love but I started hanging out with this guy just a week ago and I think part of it is he makes me laugh a lot and I feel like I’ve literally been laughing for a week straight. There’s gotta be a chemical element to that too….I guess also, being in love is simply fucking awesome and you kind of are in a dream. :)

Seems like it’s useful to distinguish “falling in love” “being in love” which are whacked-out chemical states, from loving and being committed to your partner, family, friends, which are components of healthy relationships.
p.s. the question is about “falling in love” a known narcotic.

It’s all dopamine, hence the “honeymoon is over” stage most relationships hit somewhere in the first few years. I don’t consider any “relationship” to be reality based until they have been together a minimum of 3–5 years. lol

Love Junkies
There are those who may be addicted to that love “high.” They need that amphetamine-like rush of dopamine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine. Because the body builds up a tolerance to these chemicals, it begins to take more and more to give love junkies that high. They go through relationship after relationship to get their fix.
~from How Stuff Works – Love

I feel like I could be a love junkie sometimes. I fall in love really easily, and lust over people easily, and romanticise things. I get kind of “high” whenever I meet someone I like. I start daydreaming and seem to be out in outer space.

I get the high sensation, being really excited to see them, or hear from them. And then when it doesn’t work it it’s one of the lowest lows I could ever feel.

I’m working on myself. That’s why I asked this question.

Always pursuing love or having the idea of love,relationships,kids, in my head, and wanting to fall madly in love with someone….. ahh… I don’t know. Never mind. Thanks for the responses.

@SmashTheState WTF, cynical much? I think you need to meet some nicer people who can show you just how beautiful love is.

You feel this way when you are falling in love, because you are essentially high on all the hormones and emotions that are running through your head. When I first met my husband, I was stoned out of my mind for several months, with giddiness at finding my perfect mate. He still makes me high sometimes.

Dopamine and oxytocin. It makes an experience similar to an ecstasy high or newborn bonding or even eating chocolate, etc. There are most certainly a such thing as ‘love junkies.’ And why would anyone be ashamed of it…that hormone release is associated with most people’s life goals. I actually have an oxytocin molecule tattoo on my wrist because I’m quite the hormone junkie myself. I got it when I knew my husband was the one and I’m waiting for it to trigger labor so I can hold my son in my arms. “Love” gets you high! Period. And everybody likes to get high on something.

Just watched the commentary by movie director Nacer Khemir about his desert trilogy. In it he notes one of the Persian words for love “Haim” has two other meanings besides love. One is a disease that camels get that causes them to lose their balance and wander off the road. If they are away from the road too long it is certain death in the desert. The other meaning is a wanderer, as in a Sufi mystic, who has no particular path and is only intent on walking / wandering.

It’s only supposed to happen once (or once at a time) experiencing it multiple times (especially while with the one your with) is nothing more than lust which closely resembles love until the next morning.