Crushes and Science: Relationship Tips for Everyone
Butterflies in your stomach, uncontrollable excitement to see someone, anxiety and depression, obsessing about someone are all signs of having a crush. Sure, we all have experienced those feelings in our teenage years. It used to be a confusing feeling that eventually led to heartbreaks or simply moving on to the next crush, but what happens when we grow up? Crushes as an adult can be as fun as we were young if you are willing to keep an open mind about it.
It is very common to have a crush on a celebrity, a random person walking on the bridge, a coworker, a politician like Justin Trudeau or in my case food i.e. Biryani (or it might just be my soulmate, I am still mentally debating on that!). Having a crush on someone is beyond our control and a lot of times people in a relationship have crushes on someone other than their significant halves or spouses. Does that mean that they are unfaithful or is it simply harmless? In my opinion, it depends on how the person handles this situation. If a person is aware of their ‘feelings’ and decides to take it lightly and not get too carried away it can be harmless. However, if a person decides to act on those feeling then it means unfaithfulness.
But the bigger question is: having a crush on someone is really under our control? Unfortunately, according to Stephanie Cacioppo, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at The University of Chicago, the answer is NO! but “Maintenance of a crush can be stopped with strong willpower from the frontal lobe, meditation, discipline, and practice,” she said. It might work on human crushes but none of these practices made me stop craving for biryani or daydreaming about it every now and then. Thus, I am almost certain that it is my soulmate. Although, I wonder how will this relationship work though?
On the serious note, once I proceeded with my research on crushes (aka Googling) I learned that it is not as easy to get over your crush as Cacioppo says. According to Dr. Rhonda Freeman, a renowned clinical neuropsychologist, the feelings that we get while having a crush is similar to what individuals addicted to drugs feel. Once the crush is developed the stress and reward systems in our brain are activated, which makes us feel excited, anxious and creates those butterflies in the stomach. In more technical terms, it means during that period our brain releases norepinephrine, dopamine, and endogenous opioids. Norepinephrine is responsible for our heightened attention level, dopamine is responsible for altering our mood and endogenous opioids makes us think that we are attracted to another individual. In a nutshell, we need to quit blaming Bollywood for everything and let these (difficult to pronounce and spell) chemicals take some responsibility. After all, we all are just innocent social animals who are victims of so many external factors.
Fortunately, these reactions in our brain are temporary and can be handled if we follow solid relationship tips. If you want you may actually engage a life coach. Just check out the work history before you make a choice from among the best life coaches in Dubai. Your life coach will help you understand the issues and overcome your weaknesses, build on your strengths so that you have more stability in your life and relationships. Remember once, we proceed further with our initial feelings then a deeper connection is formed that that is when we fall in love and move on to the “bonding phase” and make sure we have lasting relationships. Thus, if you are someone who has a harmless crush on someone, do not worry about it, enjoy this phase, talk about it with your best friends, mentally date them and blame everything on the chemicals and science! We are all sailing in the same boat.
