We can think of love as everything good, and learn to feel it, and trust it … even when it doesn’t match the picture we’ve conjured up. Scientists now study and measure oxytocin, or the feel-good hormone, that accompanies love. It’s found naturally when Johnny feels joyful, connected, hopeful, loved. And scientists can watch as it broadens Sally’s outlook and encourages her growth.
Love literally nurtures, sustains, energizes, and inspires you to be your best self, to be bigger than you thought was big. It reduces fear and suspicion, without reducing your ability to calculate risk. It keeps babies, who are dependent on caregivers, alive! It’s the difference between life and death.

We can feel it with strangers, acquaintances, friends, siblings, and parents. But, perhaps, our favorite way to feel love is with somebody who is exclusively ours, somebody who is ours to touch in private places, who reaches the deepest part of who we are, who knows us down to the core, and loves us no matter what. … More

From a reader: “It’s almost Christmas, and unless I fall madly in love in the next couple weeks, I’m going to be alone for the holidays. I’m in hot pursuit of mistletoe!”

Now and again — usually around the holidays, friends getting married and company parties — we get motivated (mostly by our egos and what people think) to find a sweetheart pronto. No problem. Infatuation only needs a few seconds. And, it tastes like a bite of heaven.

Somebody finds us irresistible and quickly develops an insatiable appetite for us. They are interested in every word we have to say, aware of every little movement we make and want to spend every waking moment with us. Finally, somebody recognizes us in all of our glory!

Well, sort of. What they really see is their own salvation. We all have this innate, albeit mostly unconscious, longing to return to the paradise of the womb, where we are connected to both our mothers and the ultimate source, our needs are seamlessly met, nobody’s picking on us and everybody loves us.

Infatuation seems to make everything OK; it gives us somebody to warm up with in the cold, somebody to call when the plane’s late, and somebody to love us when nobody else does … somebody to love us even when we don’t love ourselves.… More

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