True Love and Dead Butterflies
True Love and Dead Butterflies
By Jill
With all of us being stuck in the house due to COVID-19, naturally, we are all also bingeing on the newest shows on Netflix and Hulu. Beware: there will be spoilers on Netflix’s hottest debut of Love Is Blind. We’re not here to talk about Jessica, but rather a specific scene between Giannina and Damian. During one of Gigi’s many self-sabotaging scenes, she confesses to Damian that she has lost her butterflies. I was sitting on the couch with my husband and matter-of-factly shouted out, “Girl, those butterflies are dead and are never coming back”. My husband looked over at me absolutely broken and said, “Your butterflies are dead?”
Just because my butterflies are a thing of the past doesn’t mean that the love is dead. I’ve reassured my husband by telling him that although I don’t get those early-relationship-butterflies anymore it doesn’t mean that I don’t love him! In fact, if someone was constantly chasing those feelings, maybe they would never be in a serious long-term relationship(ahem, Gigi and Jessica). Never-the-less, I started looking into what causes that butterfly sensation and why does it go away?
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What Makes Butterflies Appear?
Okay, so my butterflies aren’t completely dead. I experience butterflies every time I hit that “Go LIVE” button on Facebook every Friday in our Roc Boudie Tribe (join our tribe today). I also get butterflies when I enter the grocery store nowadays! However, I recognize those as nerves - not love. Let us dive in deep to find out why those butterflies appear and disappear over time. The autonomic nervous system (ANS) quite happily regulates heart rate, blood flow and the distribution of nutrients around the body without you having to consciously intervene in any way. The ANS is divided into two categories: fight-or-flight and rest-and-digest. Both parts of the ANS are constantly active and act in opposition to each other.
When we have adrenaline due to our fight-or-flight mode being activated, the body contracts most of the gut wall to slow digestion. “This reduction in blood flow through the gut, in turn, produces the oddly characteristic ‘butterflies’ feeling in the pit of your stomach. It senses this shortage of blood, and oxygen, so the stomach’s own sensory nerves are letting us know it’s not happy with the situation.”* Okay, so we know that the fight-or-flight response gives us those butterflies and perhaps that is why I get them before going LIVE on Facebook, but what does that have to do with love?
Is it Lust or Love?
Lust can be described as a physical attraction and love can be described as an emotional connection. With these definitions, lust typically happens before love and both of these feelings can be present at the same time. According to Dr. Scott Carroll, a psychiatrist and the author of Don't Settle: How to Marry the Man You Were Meant For, “Dopamine is the first neurotransmitter to respond to seeing an attractive person. You are instantly focused and excited by the person you see. Your norepinephrine levels also increase which further focus you, but also make you nervous and a bit cautious.” ** Perhaps this is why people can become serial daters addicted to that first connection - “love at first sight” - hence why the show, Love is Blind, can be considered a social experiment. Developing an emotional connection before having a physical attraction seems counter-intuitive because it goes against our instincts.
We’ve all had relationships where we are initially physically attracted to a person but later find out their personality is rather dull and unattractive. The butterflies die fast in those relationships! But when the stars align and we find the “best in both worlds,” why don’t those butterflies stick around? Dr. Carroll adds that at around a five-year relationship marker, dopamine and endorphins “drop to only mildly elevated levels compared to the pre-relationship level.”** We become safe and comfortable in our long-term relationships so there is no need for our brain to trigger those rush of chemicals to initiate our “fight-or-flight” responses. Phew, it’s not just me that lost those butterflies, there is scientific proof that it’s completely normal!
Making True Love Last
I am no expert at how to make true love last. However, I can tell you this . . . it takes a lot of work. Once those early relationship butterflies migrate to Mexico you should not be alarmed. Right after I told my husband that I no longer have butterflies, I told him that I am okay with it. I don’t need to have that sensation in order to love him. Love doesn’t have to be exciting ALL the time. With all the highs that come with love, we also need the lows. If I am upset or had a difficult day, he knows me well enough to lift my spirits. When something exciting happens in my life, he is the first person I need to tell so we can celebrate together. If we needed butterflies in the pit of our stomachs to tell us whether or not we were in love, I suspect that nobody would be in a relationship for too long. True love is when we take our rose-colored glasses off and accept our spouse's flaws only to love them entirely for who they are.
Work Cited:
*https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/what-causes-a-butterflies-in-the-stomach-sensation
**https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/why-falling-love-gives-you-butterflies-ncna847951
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