[Women] tend to collect more pieces of data when they think, put them into more complex patterns, see more options and outcomes. They tend to be contextual, holistic thinkers.
Helen FisherRead
The reason you take antidepressants is to feel calm. And romantic love is not calm -it's elation, it's mood swings, and you're killing all that when you take the drug.
Interpretation
Antidepressants can dull emotions, making it difficult to fully experience the highs and lows of romantic love.
In this quote, Helen Fisher suggests that while antidepressants serve to stabilize emotions and induce calmness, they may also suppress the intense feelings associated with romantic love. She highlights the dual nature of love—filled with ecstatic highs and turbulent mood swings—arguing that the use of medication can inhibit one’s ability to engage deeply with these powerful emotional experiences.
In practice
Using this quote in a discussion about mental health and love can help illustrate the complexity of emotions.
[Women] tend to collect more pieces of data when they think, put them into more complex patterns, see more options and outcomes. They tend to be contextual, holistic thinkers.
People live for love. They kill for love. They die for love. They have songs, poems, novels, sculptures, paintings, myths, legends. It's one of the most powerful brain systems on Earth for both great joy and great sorrow.
Your sweetheart calls you by another's name. His eyes linger too long on your best friend. He talks with excitement about a girl at work. And the fire catches. Jealousy - that sickening combination of possessiveness, suspicion, rage, and humiliation - can overtake your mind and threaten your very core as you contemplate your rival.
Any kind of novelty or excitement drives up dopamine in the brain, and dopamine is associated with romantic love.
Most of us make up our minds in the first three minutes of meeting someone whether there's a potential for a relationship.
People have often asked me whether what I know about love has spoiled it for me. And I just simply say, 'Hardly.' You can know every single ingredient in a piece of chocolate cake, and then when you sit down and eat that cake, you can still feel that joy.
If there is a Heaven, I'm sure Rock Hudson is there because he was such a kind person.
I kissed her, a long hard kiss. Because baby didn't know it, but baby was dead, and in a way I couldn't have loved her more.
As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away.
After a long day of trying, to make my songs pay, making love all day against the wall in the hallway.
Ah... romance to me is spontaneity. It's not diamond earrings; it's a bunch of daffodils that's freshly picked from the field.
I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray to your star like a Heathen.
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