The Energies of Love

by Donna Eden

  A Commitment

  Giving your Pact the power of a contract is not an idle choice. Before you commit to the Pact, try it. Experience the structured steps of Stop, Tap, Attune, and Resolve (STAR). Then evaluate. How well did this work for you? Did the experience give you hope? What did you learn for next time? Does it feel promising enough that you want to commit to making the Pact a part of your relationship? If you decide to do so, be prepared to deeply honor your commitment. When you make a promise to one another, particularly when it concerns the well-being of your relationship, keeping that promise affirms your partnership; breaking it erodes trust.

  When you are acting in accordance with the Pact, you are diverted from the downward spiral of relationship conflict and are instead establishing new patterns. With your first success in using the Pact to transform a conflict into enhanced intimacy and understanding, you have created a prototype, a model of successful attunement during a challenging time. The principles of attunement you are developing for difficult moments will echo throughout your relationship, but you don’t have to wait until you are devastated or furious to use them. The more you use them, the less frequently or urgently you will have to invoke your Pact.

  It is not whether you argue or are triggered into flooding with one another that determines stability and satisfaction in a marriage, but how you repair the ruptures to your connection when they do occur. The resolution of each incident involving a breach in your bond has a cumulative impact on your sense of safety and on the way you view one another. It can increase your appreciation and add to your shared trust and bonding—or it can add to a backlog of hurt, negativity, and discouragement, and an escalating focus on what seems wrong with your partner and the relationship while minimizing what is right. Each time you invoke your Pact, you are affirming your intention, right then and there, to resolve this challenge in a manner that restores your connection and enhances your mutual understanding and affection.

  A Weekly Meeting for Appreciation and Taking Stock

  We have one more clause to add to your Pact. Relationships, like any other living entity, require care and feeding. Rather than waiting for encounters that lead to flooding to use the Pact, make it part of your Pact that you set aside an hour per week of protected, sacred time to reflect on (1) how you have enjoyed one another during the week, (2) how you have supported one another, and (3) any problems or resentments that may be brewing. Consider it a date with your surrogate “couples coach.” Have your Pact ready in case you need it to work your way through problems that are identified. Doing this kind of preventive maintenance with your Pact at your side will, paradoxically, mean that you need to invoke your Pact less frequently.

  In a Nutshell

  While you may need to review the detailed instructions provided in this chapter a number of times before the Pact is internalized, here they are in outline form. As you use the Pact, you will no doubt see ways to adapt it to make it more appropriate to your own personal styles, but internalizing this basic structure is a powerful starting point. The Pact, stated as an agreement, is as follows:

  Stop! When either of us is becoming upset or flooding during an interaction, we will interrupt the conversation and invoke the Pact.

  Tap. We will each immediately do the Four Taps and draw on other energy medicine centering techniques presented in this chapter, or others we know to be effective, and use them. We will agree on a time that we will come back together for the next step.

  Attune. Following these exercises, we will energetically attune with one another through a shared activity such as a “here and now” walk, a Spinal Flush, or other energy technique. We will then, from a heart-centered space, review the interaction that just occurred with a strong intention of understanding the other’s emotions, experience, and position. This does not mean that we agree, but that we will step into the other’s shoes with an attitude of curiosity and respect. We will each write this understanding in our partner’s voice.

  Resolve. We will share our written passages about each other’s experience with a firm intention for heart-centered communication, taking opportunities to articulate genuine appreciations along the way. We will continue the dialogue—using the “Do you mean” technique if necessary—until we reach agreement or respectfully agree to disagree.

  Final Piece of the STAR Pact

  We will dedicate at least an hour each week to creating protected, sacred time for appreciatively reflecting on our lives together that week.

  On to Chapter 4

  Your desire to maintain intimacy and a collaborative alliance with your partner is in itself a beautiful intention. It can be powerfully supported by understanding your own and your partner’s Energetic Stress Styles (chapter 1), effective strategies for working with your own style and your partner’s style (chapter 2), and the Pact (this chapter). Next, we shift our focus to the brain chemistry of love, the stages of love, and the yin and yang energies that shape a relationship.

  4

  Different Brains—Different Energies

  Structures, Stages, and Styles of Love and Romance

  Romantic passion harmonizes with myriad other feelings, drives, and thoughts to create different melodies in different keys.

  —HELEN FISHER1

  One of the liabilities for David of being married to a partner who sees energy is that when we would go to a conference or anywhere else where new people entered our worlds, Donna knew if David was attracted to someone before he even had a chance to process the experience, sometimes before he fully recognized what he was feeling, digital that he is. “It’s in your Root Chakra, dear, and it comes straight up to your Heart Chakra and out to her. Your energies and her energies were doing a dance right there during the group lunch for anyone to see.” David, usually quite discreet and private about such matters, quickly learned in the early days of our relationship that there was no place to hide. Donna, accustomed to seeing a million energies dancing among people, did not take it personally, did not view it as a threat, and did not interpret it as anything other than simply the way a healthy, young heterosexual male’s energies connect, merge, and begin to interact with an attractive female’s energies. She was not above teasing David about what she saw, but she held him accountable only for what he did with such energies and the feelings they evoked—not for the fact that they existed.

  David’s energetic response to attractive women was just as inborn as the Energetic Stress Styles discussed in the previous three chapters. This final chapter of Part 1, “The Inherited Aspects of Love,” examines several additional qualities of love and romance that seem built into human nature. It begins by exploring (1) the neurological underpinnings of love, lust, and romance, (2) the stages by which love seems to evolve, and (3) the way that differences in male and female brains and energies impact relationships.

  When we were in college, the word love was not even in the index of most psychology textbooks. Biologists and social scientists have since discovered a great deal about love’s mysteries. We will present pertinent highlights from what has been scientifically established interwoven with our energy perspective. The chapter then sets aside Western science and delves into the energetic forces, described in ancient healing traditions, which operate within each individual and are at the foundation of every relationship. You are familiar with terms like yin and yang, but you may not know that each has five “flavors” or that the interaction of these forces within you and between you and your partner invisibly shapes the way you treat one another.

  This is a chapter of maps more than techniques. Learning about the inherent forces at play when you are in a particular stage of romance or when your partner’s yang seems to be trumping your yin helps you navigate your way through the high adventure called love with greater insight about yourself and empathy for your partner.

  The Brain Structures of Love, Lust, and Romance

  Your brain is designed to work in tand
em with your energies. When David was attracted to someone—when his Root Chakra’s energies involuntarily rushed up to his Heart Chakra and surged out of his body like a heat-seeking missile speeding toward a near-stranger—his brain initiated a series of pre-programmed sequences as well. The urge to mate is a powerful drive for species survival, and nature designed your energy system and your brain to work in sync to be on the ready, with or without your volition.

  Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University who has studied the dating profiles of tens of thousands of people across cultures and has also conducted brain imaging research on couples in various stages of relationship, has identified three potent, independent, but interacting behavioral systems that govern love. A behavioral system grows out of separate brain structures that work together in harmony to produce specific behaviors. Different parts of the brain team up to motivate you to do nature’s bidding. By coordinating neural pathways, hormones, and neurotransmitters, behavioral systems regulate:

  Lust—the craving for sex and the drive to pursue it

  Romance—the rapture, pining, and obsession for one special person

  Deep/Enduring Love—a calmer, more secure lasting union with a partner

  Lust

  Lust serves our deep design to find a partner by keeping us “on the prowl.” Sexual urges pique an interest in mingling with potential partners and cause people to consider many more possibilities than they could ever consummate. Lust in men is directly related to testosterone levels, while in women it is a mix of estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. Men produce far more testosterone than women, but women are much more sensitive to its effects. Meanwhile, oxytocin promotes the desire to bond in men as well as in women.

  Men and women differ, however, in the conditions that will stimulate the chemistry of lust. Men tend to be turned on by visual stimuli, fantasies of beautiful bodies, novelty, and scenarios that involve conquest. A woman’s desire and sexual interest are aroused more by romantic words, images, and themes, by affection, and by fantasies that involve active surrender, though Fisher also points out that this does not mean coercion. In a survey of 3,432 American men and women between ages eighteen and fifty-nine, less than half of 1 percent of men reported enjoying forcing a woman into sex, and less than half of 1 percent of women wanted to be coerced into sex.2 In addition, humans can override or redirect their sexual impulses, regardless of the levels of sex hormones surging through their veins. But once the brain system for romance is fully engaged, it is virtually impossible to ignore.

  Romance

  Romance keeps you focused on one person instead of many potential partners, allowing you to begin to build a relationship. Whatever your selection process in coming to prefer this individual above all others—whether wise or foolish, instant or gradual, impulsive or considered—you are wired to pursue the relationship with extraordinary intensity. Nature pulls out all the stops and laser-focuses your energies. Your bloodstream is injected with a cocktail of powerful chemicals—including the stimulant norepinephrine, the mood elevator phenethylamine, and the motivation enhancer dopamine—whenever you see, smell, hear, or even think about this object of your desire. Your fixation is fueled by powerful feelings such as elation and hope. Potent motivational centers below the limbic and cortical regions of the brain are engaged while parts of the prefrontal cortex shut down, making you less capable of logical decisions. The same systems responsible for the rush of cocaine are, in fact, activated. Marion Solomon and Stan Tatkin explain that in this state the brain “produces a wonderful sense of timelessness and euphoria that involves little thought but intense emotion. Millions of neural networks are activated and the brain centers that mediate emotions, sexuality, and the self begin to expand and reorganize.”3

  • THE ENERGY DIMENSION •

  Lust vs. Romance

  How is a person in lust energetically different from a person in romance?

  In lust, the person’s energy moves outward, focusing itself on the desired one. This energy is a strong force coming out from the eyes and face (even when the person is trying to act demure) and, at the pelvis, from the Root Chakra. When the person begins to maneuver or strategize, the energy comes out from the Third Chakra (solar plexus). This energy of the Third Chakra—which governs power and pursuit—seems “loud.” Donna can almost “hear it.” Lust activates the Root Chakra, the Third Chakra, and the Penetrating Flow, one of the body’s radiant circuits. The Penetrating Flow is an intense, insistent force that penetrates deeply into our primal energies and moves them out into the world.

  In romance, the energy is very different. It originates in the Heart Chakra in swirls and spirals and figure eights, with all these patterns merging in a unique harmony. It is a higher, uplifting vibration. The energies of each partner seem to surrender to one another in a swooning sort of manner, weaving their way through the person’s entire energy system and tapping into the other person’s aura. Romance drops you into the deepest layers of the radiant circuits, which are the energies of joy, passion, thrill, excitement, and awe. These energies exist only in the present moment but are accompanied by a shift in the sense of time, “for in a minute there are many days” (Shakespeare’s Juliet lamenting Romeo’s imminent departure).

  The brain regions that regulate obsession are also involved in romance.4 When these brain areas are low in the neurotransmitter serotonin, the mind begins to obsess. And indeed, in the early stages of romance, serotonin levels drop, causing you to obsess about your beloved, about how happy this person—and only this person—makes you, and about what you can do to please or impress or attract this enchanter of your soul. Fisher likens it to “someone camping in your head,” and obsession is indeed one of the hallmarks of romance. Beyond all of that, the brain region involved in mystical experiences is activated so that a sense of a love that is larger than life is invoked. Nature mobilizes every biological and energetic resource available to get you to give your all to the task of establishing a relationship with this new potential mate.

  Deep/Enduring Love

  The neural networks involved in a deep/enduring love are designed to keep you in your relationship long enough to raise your children (nature’s evolutionary imperative) and ideally to grow old together (nature’s retirement gift for you). Over time, love becomes deeper and more serene. “No longer do couples talk all day or dance till dawn,” observes Fisher. “The mad passion, the ecstasy, the longing, the obsessive thinking, the heightened energy: all dissolve. But if you are fortunate, this magic transforms.”5 And another kind of magic emerges. Deep feelings of calm, security, and connection are fulfilling joys for your soul. A third neural system has become activated. The prefrontal cortex, the most rational part of your brain, is now in full gear, weighing your thoughts and feelings and modulating your basic drives. Meanwhile, two closely related hormones, vasopressin and oxytocin, which are produced primarily in the hypothalamus and the gonads, keep chemistry-driven passion active even in the calmer delights of a deep and lasting union.

  Experiments with prairie voles illustrate the role of vasopressin in males.6 Prairie voles stay bonded with a single partner for life. But when researchers blocked the production of vasopressin in male prairie voles, the bond with their partner deteriorated immediately. The male lost his devotion to his mate, failed to protect her from new suitors, and would copulate and then abandon her for the next mating opportunity. Louann Brizendine, a neuropsychiatrist at the University of California–San Francisco, describes vasopressin as “the hormone of gallantry and monogamy, aggressively protecting and defending turf, mate, and children.”7 While we like to think that there is some evolutionary distance between male voles and male humans, human sexual practices are influenced by vasopressin as well. The gene for vasopressin comes in two versions, and men who have the longer version of the gene are more likely to be monogamous. As Brizendine notes, “when it comes to fidelity, the joke among female
scientists is that ‘longer is better.’”8 Oxytocin is also involved in deep feelings of attachment for men as well as women. At the most primal level, it stimulates bonding between a mother and her infant, but it builds magnetism between adults as well. At the moment of orgasm, both oxytocin and vasopressin levels increase dramatically. Nature makes a bid for sexual enjoyment to transmute into deep bonding from the get-go.

  • THE ENERGY DIMENSION •

  The Physics of Human Bonding

  One of the strangest findings from quantum physics is that if two subatomic particles interact and are then separated, what happens to one of them after they have been parted influences the other. For instance, if the rotational spin of one of the particles is changed from clockwise to counterclockwise, the other particle’s spin will instantly change as well. Physicists refer to this mutual influence as “entanglement”; Einstein called it “spooky action at a distance.” Once believed to operate only with subatomic particles, such entanglement has been shown to occur with humans as well.

  “Spooky Action” between People

  For instance, in an experiment conducted by Amit Goswami and then independently replicated, two people were taught a meditative exercise where they were instructed to establish a direct communication so they would be able to feel one another at a distance. When they were separated, one was exposed to a strobe light, which evoked a specific EEG pattern in the brain. At that instant, an identical pattern was evoked in the brain of the other person. Imagine what happens after years of intimate communications!