Dating. Mating. Relating.

Have you ever noticed that I talk about relationships all day long and I only rarely mention love? And when I do, it is usually to caution that it is a delusion intertwined with sexual attraction. Or, I remind you that love is a verb, not a noun. An action word. Not a state of being. Long term love is an intellectual commitment, I say. Could I sound any more unromantic?

Hey, and speaking of romance, I normally dismiss flowers, chocolate, fine wine, and high heels as  simple accoutrements to delusion. I should also tell you that my “brainy” ideas about love have garnered me a group of male readers who say, “finally a woman who gets it.” Men do love to make rational sense of things that are so irrational.

But do I really get it?

I certainly have some textbook notions about how biology and psychology get all tangled up and sometimes make people do things they shouldn’t be doing. Running off with a paramour when a perfectly good spouse is right in front of you. Staying with an abusive spouse because of love. Jumping into bed with a Casanova because you will be the one to change him. Thinking that a loss of sexual energy is a loss of love. And, my favorite transgression of love’s delusion: Dragging children through our delusions.

Could love really be that dangerous? Must it always involve some form of heartbreak, dysfunction, boredom, loss, or even violence? And if that is the case, why do we march right back into the fire when we should know better?

I have some of the answers.

Psychologists would say that love is a seeking out of early womb experiences and infantile bliss. A baby’s play and cuddling becomes an adult sex life. Parts of our brain consider a lover a kind of mother, a nurturer, a protector, even an executor of boundaries. We feel safe and cared for in a love relationship.

We do it, that is, fall in love because it is the single best chemical high in our lifespan. At least, the best high that both genders can experience. We women, also get to do childbirth, which is pretty darn close to experiencing heaven and hell at the same time. But love is different. It is shared with an adult.

Both genders can experience love together. Love. An unconscious handshake between too souls who agree there is more to this world than work, play, and food.  It is an exchange of mutual projections that when executed well, is better than any Academy Award winning movie. Love may be a delusion but it is one of the best ones we have. And sometimes it’s all we have. With so many people losing faith in old religions, I wonder if love is becoming our new religion. And what is faith after all? Merely a belief in something that we have little scientific proof of. I would venture to say that we have far more proof of love’s power than many religions do in their folklore. The selfless acts of love that happen every day are real, observable, and can bring us to our knees in awe of the God-like powers within humans.

Now I will really go out on a limb and say that Love (look, I’m using a cap now!) can feel like a spiritual experience. All we can hope for, is that each new love relationship will bring us different challenges. We hope that as we grow we will not become trapped in familiar, unhealthy patterns that get us stuck. Delusion or not, love is something we should all sign up for. It’s an antidote to fear, horrific TV news, sickness, and other suffering. Love is the answer. And when life gets us down, when we feel, shame, loneliness, victimized, pressured, indecisive, or angry, love is the only choice that will work every single time. It won’t always have an instant result and it won’t always come back directly to us with the precision of a ping pong ball, but a loving act will change our biology and change the world. One selfless act at a time. Don’t fear love, nor waste it thoughtlessly. It is the biggest gift you will ever receive.

In the last few weeks, three married friends have confided to me that they have searched for, and found, their first love on Facebook. In my small world this number represents a huge trend, so I’m going out on a limb to guess that this is going on all over the country. I am backed up by a recent article on Time.com that quotes other people who are doing it and who don’t live in my neighborhood. So, it’s real. But, why is this happening? And how dangerous is it?

The “why” is pretty simple for me to understand. Our first love affair, whether it was consummated or not, was an enormous emotional event. Those powerful memories of young love and sexual arousal stick for life, so the opportunity to revisit those feelings is pretty darn seductive. Add to that the fact that the largest growing group on Facebook is made up of users aged 35-54. While their college aged counterparts used social networking  to find people in other classes, older Facebookers, use it to find people in other parts of their memory banks. Case in point, although I grew up in several cities in Canada and now live in Los Angeles, I am hosting a cocktail party this week for Facebook friends from my elementary, high-school, and college years. Some live here now and some are flying in. None of them know each other. I am the only connection. I’ll let you know how that one goes.

As for the finding the “first love” trend, there’s even a name for it. The Boston Phoenix calls it “retrosexuals”, meaning people who are opting for recycled love. This is all well and good, if both parties are single. The media is full of stories about divorced people taking a second stab at love with their first fling, but what if there are marriages and vows involved? Oh, yah, that. How dangerous can an innocent email exchange be?

Hugely dangerous. The problem starts when you first hit that “friend request” button. You have betrayed your spouse and are now entering the uncharted waters of an emotional affair. I mean, you’re not looking up the geek from eleventh grade who got you through algebra. You’re looking up the hot guy or gal you once lost sleep over. There is an emotional connection with maybe even some sexual memories attached.

The next problem is what to do when he or she answers your cyber call. Do you start an emailed, intimate foray into your emotional world? Do you look for ways to meet? What about if you keep it boundaried and chat lightly about your family and his/hers? Still dangerous, people. Take the example of a married woman who has found her former homecoming king. Even if she and her husband went so far as to invite he and his wife over for drinks, there’s still an affair if the unsuspecting husband doesn’t know the full value of his wife’s feelings for the man he’s handing a beer to.

Besides putting yourself (and your marriage) in the path of a potential affair, looking up an old flame isn’t always as rosy as the anecdotes in today’s media. All humans change across the lifespan, physically, intellectually and emotionally. You are two very different people now. The likelihood that sparks will fly in your condo as well as they did behind the bleachers, is pretty small. Relationships tend to be time and place sensitive.

So, with all that said, I will now disclose that the only reason I can sit up on this soapbox is because my first love, Carl Brittain, isn’t on Facebook. I know, because I already tried to find him.

Fire up that flame, ladies and gentlemen, at your own risk. Just be prepared to give some business to therapists and divorce attorneys.

There may be no point in marrying rich. Study after study shows that there is no direct correlation between one’s set-point happiness and wealth, except at the very bottom levels, when physical needs — food, shelter, safety — are compromised because of poverty.

But married people who foster intimacy in their relationships, no matter their income level, find not only happiness but health. Research shows that depressed singles receive greater psychological benefit — from things such as intimacy and emotional closeness — from getting married than those who are not depressed.

And for the married population, there’s a psychological benefit to taking those vows. People in committed relationships have been shown to be happier than those who aren’t, despite how satisfying their marriages actually are. Yep, in large group studies, even unhappily married people have a higher set point of happiness than groups of single people.

And happiness is contagious. Research done by an economist at the University of Warwick suggests that if you’re married to someone who is happy, then you are happy as well. The research concludes that happiness, like material things in a marriage, is shared. Marry a happy person and catch the virus!

Let’s face it conflict is part of all intimate relationships. Parents get angry at kids. Wives get angry at wives. Brothers get angry at sisters. When I hear of a couple or family that “never fights” a red flag gets waved for me. And, I am quite assured that they don’t have true intimacy. When two separate people join together for common life goals, clashes are inevitable. But the presence of conflict alone is not an indicator of a relationship’s health. I prefer to focus instead on the  nature of how couples and families make repair. How do couples make up after a fight? With apologies, contrition, consoling and even laughter? Or is the aftermath of anger marked by silence, distance and a new rule to never speak about the subject of the fight?

Learning how to have healthy conflict is crucial to having emotional intimacy. But what exactly is healthy conflict?

Well, for starters, fighting fair means using words that identify your feelings rather than blame and point fingers. Easier said than done. Even though psychotherapists stress that we should focus on our feelings rather than level accusations, even the most educated of us resort to blaming sentences that begin with the word “YOU!” That alone doesn’t indicate a “bad fight” unless it is also followed by vicious name calling. Name calling is a bad sign. It indicates that one partner has temporarily forgotten the other’s identity and has substituted it by a skewed stereotype. It’s hard to drop those evil caricatures once our minds have created them. If you see him as a loser and tell him over and over, you are also rewiring your brain to believe this is true. One other thing to consider is the amount of voice time alloted each arguer. If the yelling is terribly lop-sided and one partner gets more air time, then something else is going on. Either intimidation by the loud mouth, or an emotional retreat by the other. Both things are not fighting fair.

As injurious as a fight can be, the biggest determinant of whether it is a “good fight” is the way repair is made afterward. There are many unique ways that couples come back into relationship after a fight. Notes left by the morning coffee pot, flowers at the office, and my favorite — off-the-charts make-up sex. But the important thing to remember is that love and respect can return.

Dangerous aftermaths include icy treatment for days on end. Little jabs thrown into unrelated conversations. Passive aggressive, retaliatory behavior. And worst of all, a fight that morphs into other fights that get flooded with material from old injuries. “Remember the time you…..”

The best way to learn to have “good fights” is to establish ground rules before any fighting begins. Men love rules of the game. It reminds them of sports and makes fighting a healthy challenge rather than a confusing battle with a scary, invisible opponent. Some ground rules might include, no name calling, no stonewalling, no fighting in front of the kids, no going to bed mad, and most importantly, scheduled make-up time the next day. It is also important to understand that each person has their own fighting style that must be respected. A man who walks out the door for brisk walk during an argument may not be rejecting you, he may be protecting you from a shift from words to action. Some people need a time-out to regroup and think during a fight. The time to talk about fighting styles, of course, is when you are not fighting.

Studies on couples conflict style show that the two most important ingredients to healthy fighting are empathy and humor. When you are feeling unheard, disrespected, or on the losing end of a power struggle, try as hard as you can to put yourself in your partner’s schools. Imagine you are on the other side of the dynamic battling with the likes of YOU. Best of all, is to find comedy in your tragedy. If you can muster the brain power, step outside your fight and imagine you are a fly on the wall. Reframe your dialogue as a script from a Saturday Night Live skit or a prime-time sit-com. Now look how silly you sound!

The most important ingredient during an conflict is the knowledge that love can return and that spirited negotiation is all part of building intimacy. When I once commented to my favorite bickering couple that I notice that there is love behind their arguments, the husband winked at me and said, “Not love. Sport.” Even in conflict there can be a bond and a secret agreement to respect each other.