Useless Trivia: 66 facts you didn’t know about Love!

Love is a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes that ranges from interpersonal affection to pleasure. It can refer to an emotion of a strong attraction and personal attachment.[ It can also be a virtue representing human kindness, compassion, and affection—”the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another”.

It may also describe compassionate and affectionate actions towards other humans, one’s self or animals.

Let’s find out more facts about this wonderful feeling!

1. Non-Western traditions have also distinguished variants or symbioses of these states; words like storge, philia, eros, and agape each describe a unique “concept” of love.

2. Love has additional religious or spiritual meaning—notably in Abrahamic religions.

3. This diversity of uses and meanings combined with the complexity of the feelings involved makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, compared to other emotional states.

4. Love in its various forms acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts.

5. Love may be understood as a function to keep human beings together against menaces and to facilitate the continuation of the species.

6. Abstractly discussed love usually refers to an experience one person feels for another. Love often involves caring for or identifying with a person or thing (cf. vulnerability and care theory of love), including oneself (cf. narcissism).

7. In addition to cross-cultural differences in understanding love, ideas about love have also changed greatly over time.

8. Some historians date modern conceptions of romantic love to courtly Europe during or after the Middle Ages, although the prior existence of romantic attachments is attested by ancient love poetry.

9. The complex and abstract nature of love often reduces discourse of love to a thought-terminating cliché. Several common proverbs regard love, from Virgil’s “Love conquers all” to The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love”.

10. St. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, defines love as “to will the good of another.”

11. Bertrand Russell describes love as a condition of “absolute value,” as opposed to relative value.

12. Philosopher Gottfried Leibniz said that love is “to be delighted by the happiness of another.”

13. Meher Baba stated that in love there is a “feeling of unity” and an “active appreciation of the intrinsic worth of the object of love.”

14. Biologist Jeremy Griffith defines love as “unconditional selflessness”.

15. It only takes up to 4 minutes to decide whether you like someone or not. If you want to make a good impression on someone, you’ve only got about 4 minutes to do it. It is believed that it has far more to do with your body language, tone and speed of your voice rather than exactly what you say.

16. Historically, sweat has been an active ingredient in perfume and love potions.

17. Some individuals who claim never to have felt romantic love suffer from hypopituitarism, a rare disease that doesn’t allow a person to feel the rapture of love.

18. “Love” in the sense of “no score” in tennis dates to 1792 and means “playing for love” or, in other words, playing for nothing.i Other scholars claim that “love” as a tennis score is a corruption of the French word for egg, “L’oeuf,” because of the egg’s resemblance to a zero.

19. In Bali, men believed a woman would fall in love if her suitor fed her a certain kind of leaf incised with the image of a god who sported a very large penis.

20. Engagement rings are often worn on the fourth finger of the left hand because the ancient Greeks maintained that that finger contains the vena amoris, or the “vein of love,” that runs straight to the heart. The first recorded wedding rings appear in ancient Egypt, with the circle representing eternity as well as powerful sun and moon deities.

21. If that’s not bad enough, rejection also temporarily lowers our IQ.

22. Getting dumped often leads to “frustration attraction,” which causes an individual to love the one who dumped him or her even more.

23. Seminal fluid can potentially contribute to romantic love. Reports suggest that the liquid that surrounds the sperm contains dopamine (“the pleasure chemical”) and norepinephrine as well as tyrosine, an amino acid the brain needs to manufacture dopamine.

24. The enduring symbol of love, Cupid (or Eros) is said to have come from Chaos (“The Yawning Void”) and represents the primitive forces of love and desire.

25. The term “love” is from the Sanskrit lubhyati, meaning “desire.”

26. The word “lesbian” is derived from the Greek island Lesbos, where the poetess Sappho composed her famous poems to her famous female lovers.

27. Roses are a traditional symbol of love and, depending on their color, can suggest different nuances of love. For example, red roses indicate passion and true love. Light pink suggests desire, passion, and energy; dark pink suggests gratitude. Yellow roses can mean friendship or jealousy. A lavender or thornless rose can mean love at first sight. White roses mean virtue or devotion. Some roses even combine colors to created more complicated meanings.

28. European males subconsciously seek out women whose waist circumference is about 70% of their hips. Beauty icons such as Audrey Hepburn, Venus de Milo, and even Twiggy had a waist ratio of exactly 70%.

29. A symmetrical face is associated with fertility, agreeableness, extraversion, and conscientiousness.Men and women with highly symmetrical faces tend to have more lovers to choose from. Additionally, men with symmetrical faces begin to have sex four years earlier, have more sex, and have more affairs than their lopsided peers. Women also tend to have more orgasms with symmetrical men.

30. Some extraordinary research has found that couples who are in love and bond in a romantic relationship synchronize their heart rates after gazing into each others’ eyes for three minutes.

31. When a person falls in love, the ventral tegmental area in the brain floods the caudate nucleus with dopamine. The caudate then signals for more dopamine; the more dopamine, the higher a person feels. The same system becomes activated when someone takes cocaine.

32. Since ancient Greece, the apple has been a symbol of love. The Celts believed that the apple represented love because it lasted so long after being picked

33. Breaking up with someone you love triggers activity in the same part of the brain responsible for physical pain.

34. Many psychological and social research indicates that there is a significant pattern in how people choose people to establish romantic relationships with. This pattern is explained by the Matching Hypothesis, which says that people are more attracted to those that they share a level of attractiveness with, or, in other words, are equally socially desirable. Even if successful couples differ in physical attractiveness, one of them usually compensates for it with other socially desirable qualities.

35. A four-leaf clover is often considered good luck, but it is also part of an Irish love ritual. In some parts of Ireland, if a woman eats a four-leaf clover while thinking about a man, supposedly he will fall in love with her.

36. Some psychologists argue that we fall in love with someone who is similar to the parent with whom we have unresolved childhood issues, unaware we are seeking to resolve this childhood relationship in adulthood.

37. When someone looks at a new love, the neural circuits that are usually associated with social judgment are suppressed.

38. As the well-known saying goes, opposites attract. And research proves that this is partially true. Couples that are either too similar or too different tend not to last very long. Apparently, there always has to be a foundation of similarities, but there also have to be things that the two of you learn from each other.

39. Research has provided evidence that intense, traumatizing events, such as a break-up, divorce, loss of a loved one, physical separation from a loved one, or betrayal can cause real physical pains in the area of one’s heart. This condition is called the Broken Heart Syndrome. Deep emotional distress triggers the brain to distribute certain chemicals that significantly weaken one’s heart, leading to strong chest pains and shortness of breath. The condition is often misdiagnosed as heart attack and tends to affect women more often.

40. Couples at the very beginning of a romantic relationship will be very different a year later. It is estimated that romantic love, which is linked with euphoria, dependence, sweaty palms, butterflies and alike, only lasts about a year. After that first year begins the so-called “committed love” stage. The transition is linked with elevated neurotrophin protein levels in newly formed couples.

41. Women around the world are more likely to fall in love with partners with ambition, education, wealth, respect, status, a sense of humor, and who are taller than they are. Women also prefer distinctive cheekbones and a strong jawbone, which are linked to testosterone levels. During ovulation, women become even more interested in men with signs of testosterone.

42. The Mexican chief Montezuma considered chocolate a “love drug” and drank 50 cups of chocolate a day before visiting his harem of 600 women.

43. Plato asserts in his Symposium that initially all humans were whole, hermaphroditic beings with four hands, four legs, two identical faces on one head/neck, four ears, and both sets of genitals. When these beautiful, strong beings tried to overthrow the gods, Zeus split them into two—men and woman— and created the innate desire of human beings for one another to feel whole again.

44. Love is not necessarily a guarantee that a marriage will last. Other factors include a couple’s age (a husband who is nine or more years older than his wife or who marries before the age of 24 is more likely to divorce), those who are in their second or third marriage, those who had a child before marriage, and finances. Factors not pertinent to success of marriage are the number of children or their ages, the wife’s employment status, and the number of years a wife has been employed.

45, It is estimated that 40–70% of female homicides are committed by their lovers and spouses.

46. In one of many polls on the subject, 60% of married American men say they’ve been unfaithful, compared to 40% of American women.

47. Brains in love and brains in lust are not identical. Erotic photos activate the hypothalamus (which controls hunger and thirst) and the amygdala (arousal) areas of the brain. Love activates areas of the brain with a high concentration of receptors for dopamine (associated with euphoria, craving, and addiction) and its relative, norepinephrine.

48. The maple leaf is a symbol of love in China and Japan—and in North America, it was often engraved on beds of early settlers to promote peaceful sleep and pleasure.

49. Scientists suggest that merely staring into another person’s eyes is a strong precursor to love. In an experiment, strangers of the opposite sex were put in a room together for 90 minutes where they talked about intimate details and then stared into each other’s eyes without talking. Many felt a deep attraction for each other, and two married each other six months later.

50. Men in love show more activity in the visual part of the brain, while women in love show more activity in the part of the brain that governs memory. Scientists speculate that men have to size up a woman visually to see if she can bear babies, while women have to remember aspects of man’s behavior to determine if he would be an adequate provider.

51. Men who kiss their wives in the morning are more likely to live almost 5 years longer than those who don’t
Many cultures use knots as symbols of an eternal love that has neither a beginning nor an end. Young Muslim women would send love messages to their lovers using intricate knots.

52. The longer and more deliberate a courtship, the better the prospects for a long marriage. People who have intense, Hollywood-type romances at the beginning are more likely to divorce.

53. Romantic love lasts just over a year, perhaps because the brain cannot eternally maintain a revved-up state of romantic bliss. As romantic love wanes, attachment love, a more stable love, sets in. To keep the passion alive, experts suggest doing satisfying and exciting activities as a couple.

54. High levels of testosterone may suppress oxytocin and vasopressin (chemicals associated with attachment love), which may explain why men with higher testosterone levels tend to marry less often, be more abusive in their marriage, and divorce more. When a man holds a baby, his testosterone goes down, perhaps as a result of increased oxytocin and vasopressin.

55. Women often feel loved when talking face to face with their partner; men, on the other hand, often feel emotionally close when they work, play, or talk side by side.

56. The urge to fall in love is, like sex and hunger, a primitive, biological drive.

57. To remain in love for a lifetime, therapists advise couples to listen actively to your partner, ask questions, give answers, appreciate, stay attractive, grow intellectually, include your partner, give him/her privacy, be honest and trustworthy, tell your mate what you need, accept his/her shortcomings, give respect, never threaten to leave, say “no” to adultery, don’t assume the relationship will last forever, and cultivate variety.

58. Men are more likely than women to be more flexible in their romantic choices when they are looking for short-term relationship—though when they want a long-term mate, they become pickier about basic virtues.

59. Couples around the world who divorce tend to divorce around their fourth year of marriage. After four years, marriages generally stabilize until around eight years.

60. Being in love increases levels of dopamine while a broken heart decreases levels of dopamine. To increase dopamine, rejected lovers should increase their dopamin levels by excercising and enjoy the sun. Smiling also activates nerve pathways that can create feelings of pleasure.

61. One of the greatest predictors of love is proximity. Physical closeness leads to increased emotion, and it is not unusual to hear stories of bosses falling in love with their secretaries. On the other hand, scientists now think that at a critical time in childhood (sometime between ages 4–6), boys and girls who live in close proximity lose their ability to fall in love with each other, perhaps preventing the destructive act of mixing one’s DNA with close kin.

62. Kama Sutra (love + thread, rule) is an ancient text on love in Sanskrit literature written by Mallanaga Vatsyayana around the second century A.D. Kama is the Hindu god of love and also means desire. Sutra is a manual or a guide.

63. The heart is a common symbol of love and can represent the wings of a dove, which was sacrificed in ancient Israel as a gesture of love and which also served as a symbol of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love.

64. Scientists suggest that most people will fall in love approximately seven times before marriage.

65. On average, men around the world marry women who are three years younger than themselves. In the United States, men who remarry usually choose a wife five years younger; if they wed a third time, they often marry someone eight years younger than themselves.

66. Studies show that the risk of a “secret love” being revealed heightens romantic feelings for the partners, thanks to increased levels of phenylethylamine (PEA).