Love Is Indistinguishable From Manic Love

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Love is so tied in to the reward system. It's effectively indistinguishable from mania. Love is like, okay, you're going to procrastinate. I'm taking a wheel. And that's why love feels like that, where it's just this overwhelming feeling and this drive to connect with the other person. But again, the difficulty there lies in, you know, overtime, typically that mad, passionate love does die down. We usually have this feeling that whatever is going on is going to continue. Being pro active and deliberate really does play a strong part in all our relationships.

Eric Barker is not a people person. “Getting me to write a relationship book,” he says, “is like asking Godzilla to improve the infrastructure in your city.” But he did it anyway. Guided by leading social psychologists, Eric went on a journey to understand what he was getting wrong about relationships — and what he could do to turn things around. The result is “Plays Well With Others,” a guide to friendship, intimacy, loneliness, and belonging that our curator Daniel Pink says will “revitalize your life.”

THIS AND THAT:

Check out Eric’s blog, “Barking Up the Wrong Tree”

Try out Arthur Aron’s intimacy building questions

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