The Chemistry of Love

Another branch of my craft reading has been glomming onto all things Helen Fields has written. Jenny Crusie turned me onto her back during the 2007 novel writing workshop. Dr. Fields studies the brain chemistry of love, and she has so many good things to say I can't begin to summarize them here. But one of her discoveries is just pins down the essence of love for me, so I'll describe it here. She identifies romantic love, that euphoric, obsessive, soul-drenching experience when you first fall in love, as a primal human drive for mate selection. It's like thirst or hunger. Once you fall in love, that's it. That's all you can think about or do until you realize that relationship. And when that relationship isn't consummated or worse, the object of your affection rejects you, your brain pretty much freaks out because it's been so used to the "high" that being in love has given you.

My WIP features a relationship where the heroine rejected the hero ten years earlier, and Fields' observations about what actually happens to a person in this circumstance ring are incredible. To find out, you'll have to read what I do to my poor hero.