Love, Relationships, Limerence & Affair Recovery
Health & Fitness:Sexuality
COVID -19 has affected almost every field of life, and relationships are no different. For some people, pandemics offered more relaxation and family bonding opportunities, improving love relationships, while others faced a hard time keeping relationships alive.
All relationships have their challenges, and no doubt, every type of relationship had shown impacts of COVID-19. However, the most obvious and powerful effects have been noted in love relationships. The pandemic has brought additional stress of different kinds to love relationships. Financial hardships that come with job loss or reduced employment make a person emotionally vulnerable, besides disconnection from friends and family adds further fuel to the fire, hence worsening the situation. These have adversely affected most of the relationships.
What makes COVID-19 different from any other ailment is a storm of unexpected and sudden changes that it brought. Couples at home have suffered from feelings of worry, anxiety, depression, and living in close proximity without having enough space and variety of life. Due to the introduction of social activity restrictions, partners have been one of few people in each other’s social circle. With more focus on relationships, partners may be more critical of each other’s petty issues that they may have ignored in normal circumstances.
Reduced availability of personal space at home during lockdowns has led to conflicts. Additionally, the partners have to physically distant from each other during the pandemic as a precautionary measure, hence lack of physical and emotional connection has further deteriorated relationships.
Interestingly “chemistry” with someone leads to love. It changes your body’s chemistry too. According to Psychologists, the mental and physical states of love are broken into three independent but overlapping categories.
· Limerence or Infatuation: Love starts with limerence most of the time leading to a step further, the sexual desire.
· Sexual desire: Limerence and sexual desire brings couples together.
· Attachment: Longing or deep bonding for each other keep couples together for ages.
COVID-19, in one way or another, affected all three categories. Lockdowns have reduced dating and meet-up chances; hence, limerence and sexual desires in relationships were not fulfilled. These two had slowly resulted in reducing attachments of couples.
Love happens less in the heart and more in the brain, contrary to common thinking, or this is how science defines it. Brain chemicals and hormones are triggered in, depending on the category of love, and your body will experience changes in different hormones and neurochemicals. These lead to powerful effects on feelings, thoughts, and behavior. Some of these hormones are,
· Testosterone: It affects sexual desire.
· Dopamine: It motivates someone to pursue a reward, and some people get so addicted to having a surge of dopamine that leads them to have affairs and serial dating.
· Oxytocin: Also known as ‘love hormone” or “cuddle hormone.” It is associated with empathy, trust, relationship building, and sexual activity. However, it has a role in childbirth and breastfeeding too. Levels of oxytocin increase with physical touch like hugging etc. www.nm.org
Interestingly dopamine plays a role in mental health, and a drop in its levels can lead to depression and sadness. This is how anything affecting love relationships leads to mental health issues.
Limerence is a primitive instinct characterized by an increase in dopamine that keeps you motivated. COVID-19, with its uncertainties and stresses, has brought couples and relationships to a monotonous level with a drop in their dopamine levels. Hence relationships are affected at the very first level, keeping new relationships from building and inhibiting the refreshed ph
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