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A while back I decided to write this article about /Lovemarks/—a book by the head of the branding firm that came up with the whole Moleskin thing—that was basically outlining this theory of getting the customer to fall in love with the whole brand, really develop a relationship with/a psychological attachment to it. Basically, applying everything I hated about what Seventeen magazine told you about how to snag a hot guy to marketing theory. And I decided to write the article by reading through the rash of books that had come out right around that time about the scientific basis of love—about the advantages and disadvantages of various adaptive behavioral techniques in the ancestral environment and such (the most memorable title was /Lovesick: Love as Mental Illness/). And before I met a boy I kind of liked and decided I didn't really want to be thinking about love as being "designed" to protect paternity and made up of random neural connections, I read a passage that really struck me.
"From this it follows," the book explained, "why people in love look—to the casual observer—crazy. In fact, they are crazy. All these chemical mechanisms that create behavioral patters that are maladaptive in normal life, are perfectly normal to the person in love."
On the heels of a series of self-proclaimed discoveries, I decided the converse must apply to my life. That I'm not crazy at all, I'm simply a great lover (in the grammatically productive sense of that word, not in the idiomatic sense, which would make that statement a gross overcompensation for obvious actual feelings on the subject).
But this morning I realized that this must be why there's always a disconnect—why I only feel empathy for people with crushes, and why people always assume I'm boy crazy. So I guess I'm destined to fall in love with a crazy person—someone with OCD (or the other way, with Asperger's, or NPD, I suppose)—or just resign myself to this disconnect. Or continue only trusting people until that honeymoon stage passes and I'm left standing clueless.
"From this it follows," the book explained, "why people in love look—to the casual observer—crazy. In fact, they are crazy. All these chemical mechanisms that create behavioral patters that are maladaptive in normal life, are perfectly normal to the person in love."
On the heels of a series of self-proclaimed discoveries, I decided the converse must apply to my life. That I'm not crazy at all, I'm simply a great lover (in the grammatically productive sense of that word, not in the idiomatic sense, which would make that statement a gross overcompensation for obvious actual feelings on the subject).
But this morning I realized that this must be why there's always a disconnect—why I only feel empathy for people with crushes, and why people always assume I'm boy crazy. So I guess I'm destined to fall in love with a crazy person—someone with OCD (or the other way, with Asperger's, or NPD, I suppose)—or just resign myself to this disconnect. Or continue only trusting people until that honeymoon stage passes and I'm left standing clueless.
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