Its in the eye of the beholder

Love is something that has being keeping me awake at night. We all know the scientific reasons people fall for each other and how they stay loved up. A hedonistic mixture of; the lust hormones, oestrogen and testosterone, that start the attraction. Followed by the deeper attraction builders such as serotonin, dopamine and adrenaline. You then, if you are lucky, move on to the attachment chemicals of oxytocin (The cuddle hormone) and Vasopressin (released after sex that makes you feel very close to your lover)

This is how it works. But I wonder if we all feel love in the same way. When I thought I was in love I often wondered if the word ‘love’ meant the same to me as it did the girl I was in love with. If I said to her ‘picture a row of terrace houses’ I could be confident that our images in our minds would be pretty similar, albeit, not identical. Love, however I couldn’t be certain.
When you are involved in the early stages of love it seems that the two of you are superior to all other couples. That you feel this love is the real deal and only the two of you feel it, when, in reality, every other couple in the Indian restaurant feels the same way.
It isn’t just romantic love. The love parents feel for their children is the same, they feel that their love is superior to others.

So what makes us fall in love? Is it the way people look? I think that it is more how we perceive how people look. It was Proust that claimed ‘classically beautiful women should be left to men without imagination’

In Proust’s times 1871-1922 the ‘classically beautiful woman’ would be women who looked flawless, like a pristine sculpture that was beautiful from every angle, she would defiantly be rich as only the rich could afford to be clean all the time and have no grotesque features or crevices. I want to take the idea of flawless beauty into our centaury. It is no longer seen in sculptures and statues but on the cover of More magazine and Mens Heath magazine. I do not want to jump on the representation bandwagon now and nor do I want to talk about the irresponsibility of Editors putting these models up as the prize. What I do want to think about is how it is not these people we, the masses fall in love with. It seems we need a slight glitch in the make up of our crushes. We like to be able to find beauty with getting to know someone. It is crazy how somebody you once found ugly or a little frumpy can before your very eyes turn into someone you fancy. This usually happens when the personality and common interests (or the soul for any religious readers) gets projected onto the face.
We like this, and we like it if no one else can see it even more because it makes us feel important. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the beholder becomes indispensible to the beauty. Which makes us feel needed.

What I am getting at here is that we do not fall for classic beauties and I think Proust hit the nail on the head with his comment. However, I don’t think it is a lack of imagination that stops people falling for grotesque beauty (By grotesque I don’t mean ugly, I mean not classic, flawless beauty) I think it is a mere laziness that gives up before the, forgive me, soul shines through the face.