Yaolee Chen

English 306

Essay One (Revision)

Maureen Newline

April 2003

The Images of Romance

Anastasia Toufexis in her article “Love: The Right Chemistry” finds that love and the sex chemistry have not much the differences. Love in a scientific precision is a sex chemistry that has helped the humans to survive, thrive and multiply through thousands of years. The sex chemistry recognizes the allure of each individual as early as 4 million years ago in Africa since mankind are able to walk with the two legs. There is such a thing comes to exist, which the author calls it “love”, when men and women gazed deeply into each other’s eyes. The purpose of this sex chemistry is to pulling males and females into a long-tern partnership for child bearing. But, today, “new ways of making love enabled sex to become a romantic encounter, not just a reproductive act”. The sex chemistry lasts for 4 years in our bodies. Usually, the American marriages can last for 7 years if the second child is born 3 or 4 years after the first baby. And according to the article, 95% of the mammals will find the new partners for more children after the feeling of the sex chemistry is gone. The sex chemistry, which includes dopamine, norepinephrine and especially phenylethylamine (PEA), plays on our feelings to make our heart-bit-rates go faster and to make our skins and faces to turn red in color. Nevertheless, the sex chemistry is not lasting forever. The feeling of sex may turn a man or a woman to fallen in love with another partner, on the other hand. Another set of chemicals give the lovers a sense of security, peace and calm; and it needs the daily hit of narcotics. The sex chemistry drives the brain to have the more intimate attachment fostered and prolonged in our nerves system. And another chemistry, which is called Oxytocin, sensitizes nerves and stimulates muscle contraction. By the sex chemistry, the men fall in love with young ladies age of 17 to 28 quickly, and the women fall in love with men slowly because women in general are looking for men who can provide the security to father the children that the females produce.

John Money of Johns Hopkins University says that a man or a woman cannot “be in love with two people at the same time” (quoted in “Love: the Right Chemistry”). It is, we all have the certain imaged pictures about our partners. The adolescents keep mapping the pictures of their partners while growing up. And in each time, a man falls in love with only one woman and a woman falls in love with only one man. Logically, the adolescents will feel anxious while dating or dancing with their partners because while contacting with their partners, the adolescents are mapping their imaged romance in their brains. Finally, Toufexis talks about her feeling that she is not really satisfied by the idea that love equals to sex chemistry.

Undeniable, the sex chemistry has a great to do with the men and women’s relation in the American society today, and it has a root in the American culture in the 1950s. A distinguished anthropologist, Professor Clyde Kluckhohn of Harvard University, said this about Kinsey’s Report in the New York Time on September 13, 1953: “This book makes an enormous contribution of fact not only to our knowledge of sexual behavior and sexual biology but also to our information on the social organization and cultural patterns of large sectors of our population”. Kinsey is a sociologist, doctor, teacher, theologian, newspaper editor and others (Geddes 11), who uses the biology to explain the human sexual behaviors of the men and of the women. Very similar to Toufiexis’ idea, the marriage in the Kinsey’s definition is made by the desire of making love. A marriage is over when the sex chemistry is gone. In the 1950s, such an idea was condemned by the majority of the married ones but was practiced by the 95% of the men and women in the American society (Geddes 261).

Like Kinsey, Toufexis in her article has mentioned the phenylethylamine, which lasts for only 2 or 3 years in our bodies. And Toufexis also mentions a study of the 62 cultures that the “divorce rates peak around the forth year of marriage”. The reason why the divorce rate peak around the fourth year can be found in Kinsey’s report is that as the sex chemistry is gone, the marriage is over. The history of the American culture in the 1950s shows that a family usually had two kids; and, in most of the cases, the second baby was born two or three years after the first one. The Seven-Year Itch in the Marilyn Monroe instead of the Four-Years Itch in the study of the 64 culture is also explainable: since most of the men had two kids in the 1950s, the men wanted to have children with the other partners when the sex chemistry phenylethylamine was gone. My introducing Kinsey’s report to this essay is to show that the author of the article Toufexis and Kinsey both agree with a certain kind of romance that has come to exist 4 million years ago and is still exist today, a romance, which tells lies to the lovers-- and a romance, which rule over the life of the uncivilized ones but can be easily controlled by the civilized communities (Horwitz 18). A twist concept of love (Stone 44) has its root in Kinsey’s report, which makes “love equal to sex chemistry”.

Under the idea of Kinsey’s human’s sexual behavior, an increasing number of the unfortunate adolescent is emerged in the American society. “ Sexual transmitted disease rates are continuing to rise in the United States” (Lord 21). The number of reported cases of early syphilis in Philadalphia increased 551% from 1985 through 1989 (Centers for Disease Control in 1991). Coincidently, the high school drop out rate reached to 71 % in downtown LA in 1988 (Chan 478). The romance addicts of an increasing number in these years in the American society endure anxiety to find a mate because they think sex and love are the same thing, who “fall madly in love over and over” again (Graham 7). Logically, the American high school student turn to sex for love when the classes they are taking in the schools frustrate them. They look for the partners whom they have mapped in their minds. As Toufiexis’ study shows and I believe, two or three years after they begin to date, the adolescents will turn to the other partners for their imaged romance. For most of the Americans, I believe, the adolescents have no answer for why the American marriage lasts for only 4 years.

Notice what Toufexis has said about this imaged romance in the beginning of her article was in a time and in a place where the men hunting deer in the mountains and the women digging on the grounds for food—where men and women wearing animal skins for clothing—4 million years ago in Africa (Flower 17). The place of its time has no schools, no education, where once human are similar to the animals that men and women have no control to their sexual behaviors. There is a fallacies in the theory both done by Kinsey and Toufexis: it is, in my opinion, the desire of sex controls the behaviors of the animals but the mankind rule over the lust of fresh desires. Toufexis in her conclusion also says that the sex chemistry is not really satisfied to define the word “love. My opinion is, love is more than the right chemistry.

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Works Cited

“Centers for Disease Control in 1991”. Quoted in Outpatient Treatment of Sex

and Love Addicts. Ed. By Eric Griffin. London: Praeger Publishers. 1991. 21.

Chan, Sucheng et al. Major Problem in California History. Boston: Houghton

Mifflin Company. 1997.

Fowler, Ian et al. African Crossroads: Intersections between History and

Anthropology in Cameroon. Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1996

Geddes, Donald P. An Analysis of the Kinsey Reports on Sexual Behavior in the

Human Male and Female. New York: Dutton. 1954.

Graham, Barbara. “The Future of Love: Kiss Romance Goodbye, It’s time for

Real Thing”. Quoted in Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. Ed. By

Laurence Behrens and Leonard F. Rosen. New York: Longman. 2003.

Horwitz, Richard P. Anthropology toward History: Culture and Work in a 19th

Century Maine Town. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1978

Kluckhohn, Clyde. New York Time. Sep.13, 1953.

Lord, William. “A Diagnostic Proposal with Neurochemical Under Pinnings”

Quoted in Outpatient Treatment of Sex and Love Addicts. Ed. By Eric Griffin.

London: Praeger Publishers. 1991.

Money, John. Qouted in “Love: The Right Chemistry” by Anastasia Toufexis. A

handout of English 306 in CSUSB with Professor Dr. Newline. Spring 2003.

Stone, Arthur A. The Science of Self-Report: Implications for Research and

Practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 2000.

Toufexis, Anastasia. “Love: The Right Chemistry”. A handout of English 306 in

CSUSB with Professor Dr. Newline. Spring 2003.