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10 Jan 2009 04:37 pm
Elements Of Limerance
What marriage can give you if you're really, really lucky:
A team from Stony Brook University in New York scanned the brains of
couples who had been together for 20 years and compared them with
those of new lovers. They found that about one in 10 of the mature
couples exhibited the same chemical reactions when shown photographs
of their loved ones as people commonly do in the early stages of a
relationship.
Previous research suggested that the first stages of romantic love, a
rollercoaster ride of mood swings and obsessions that psychologists
call limerence, start to fade within 15 months. After 10 years the
chemical tide has ebbed away. The scans of some of the long-term
couples, however, revealed that elements of limerence mature, enabling
them to enjoy what a new report calls "intensive companionship and
sexual liveliness".
The researchers nicknamed the couples "swans" because they have
similar mental "love maps" to animals that mate for life such as
swans, voles and grey foxes.
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