Hi Pan - Its so good to have you around - I've been re-reading some of your posts over at the other forum. Something that has me focused on these days is where I am at my life and relationship. Your take on hormonal cascade is intriguing:
Phase one is what you’d call “random lust”. Not focused on any particular person, just the drive to have sex, be close, etc. Most married people focus it towards their spouse, but some focus it towards pretty much anyone willing to play.
Oh yes, I remember what this was like
Phase two is the phase of “romantic love”, that excited and tingly feeling where you sit next to the phone with your heart beating and you have a hard time concentrating on anything except your beloved.
I think the sad part of this is that the LBS experiences all this after the bomb, but with a great deal of fear and insecurity at the crux of the raging emotions.
Phase three regulates long-term relationships. It’s nowhere was intense as phase two (or nobody would ever get anything done!), but stands for a calmer and more manageable love.
For me, this is now taking a new life. For NG, I think he just wants to go back to how it was, which alas is no longer possible. I wonder when he will realise this?
All of these phases are regulated by different combinations of hormones. I could list them for you, but it would probably be far too confusing. Not every person we meet automatically triggers all three phases. Phase one is still manageable …people are still able to “walk away” if they try (at least once they’re past a certain age.) Phase two is where things become very tricky, and can easily become completely unmanageable. Yes, one can potentially still walk away, but it’s much, much harder. That’s why it’s often necessary for an affair to “run its course” … until it either reaches Phase three, or fizzles out into nothing.
It seems to me that the hormones involved in phases 1 and 2 have a lot to do with the 'uncertainty' of the other person's feelings. Alas, in a long term relationship, there is inevitably greater understanding, and therefore some of the excitement of conquest, of discovery, is just not there.
