Three Kinds of Love

This is so très kewl!

I was watching on NetFlix a Discovery Channel documentary, The Science of Sex Appeal… research for my next novel.

Anyhow, at one point during the program, anthropologist Helen Fisher said:

I think that we’ve evolved three distinctly different brain systems for love. One is the sex drive, the craving for sexual gratification, associated with testosterone in both men and women. The other is romantic love, that elation, the focused attention, the obsessive thinking of early love. And the third is attachment, that sense of calm and security you can feel for a long-term partner.

(Helen Fisher is the author of Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love and other titles.)

So why is this so très kewl?

Because it proves I’m not crazy. And I might even be a little perceptive.

Here’s what I wrote in Love through the Eyes of an Idiot, long before I had ever heard of Helen Fisher:

And there’s a difference between love, sex, and romance. These three are commonly confused in pop culture, but it is possible to feel romantic longing, for example, without thinking about sex… Sex is sex, but romance is attention and affection and tenderness, kissing your partner’s cheek and running your fingers through her hair and cuddling up to her and caressing her face…

But the most important thing in a relationship is love. And by “love,” I don’t mean romantic feelings, and I don’t mean sexual desire. Love is an unconditional commitment and an action to carry out that commitment. It is not talk; it is not feel; it is do. Unconditional love gives you the confidence and stability to face your partner, to expose your insides to her, to become vulnerable to her, without fear that she’ll hate you or leave you for who you are…

Great minds think like me.

-TimK