By the time that each young human is experiencing all of that, certain hardwired responses are also being triggered. Over the eons, the human body has become hardwired to respond in several ways. Consider fear, for example. Little children are not born knowing that they should fear various dangerous things. A toddler will, for instance, walk up to a vicious animal...."nice doggy"......or walk out onto a railroad track to watch the train oncoming.
Conversely, humans also learn to fear things that they should not be afraid of; hence the term "phobia." Two accounts well known to most psychology students should explain that phenomenon. A researcher, using typical conditioning strategies, taught a child to fear a small white, furry object. That learning generalized, however, and the child grew up afraid of things that were white. Then there was the university educated man who realized one day that he had never been out of town so he tried to venture out and could not. He stopped automatically at the railroad tracks and could not get himself to cross them. Considerable instrospection enabled him to remember that, as a child, he had been scalded by the steam of a passing locomotive so he had learned to fear those tracks and would not cross them.
When the brain identifies objects which have come to be feared, certain hardwired physiological processes ensue. Glands release substances, blood is channeled away from systems less critical at that moment, such as the digestive tract, and muscles necessary for escape are enriched with those substances. Much the same process ensues when a person encounters someone to whom they feel attracted.
While children are growing up, they see and hear a lot of other humans. They dislike some of what they observe and they are made to feel secure and/or happy and/or other positive emotions by various humans whom they encounter. As the effects of puberty drive them to be close to someone, for reasons discussed in previous sections, their attention is drawn to anyone who looks, acts, sounds or interacts with them in ways which they remember as being pleasant. Their attention may be drawn by something as inane as a tone of voice similar to that of a hero in a kiddie's TV series but, whatever the attraction, it can set off a release of naturally produced amphetamines that make the individual feel as if the person to whom they are attracted is the one he or she has been waiting for. That reaction is so generic that, all over the world, people know what it means when young folks stand there, gawking at each other, with big, dumb, reflexive grins on their faces.
That situation is sometimes referred to as "love at first sight" or as "infatuation" or as "puppy love." Whatever the title, those who feel those amphetamines or, some say, phenylethylamine (PEA)flowing in their bodies can not be convinced that they are just "moonstruck." It is an experience not unlike the taking of the drug "Ecstacy," which is quite like an amphetamine that makes those coursing with it crave to be rubbed and touched because such intensifies the whole body sensation of pleasure. When they feel like that, they are willing to run away from family and hearth with never a thought for what they are going to eat or where they are going to live or how they will support that herd of little people that will result from what they are thinking about doing with his penis, which is erecting, and her vagina, which is lubricating, for reasons similar to those that account for a shifting of blood flow during bouts or fear or anger. Simply stated, fear, long endured, turns to panic and all of its attendant physical manifestations; anger, persistent, becomes rage including its well-known physiology; and attaction, intensely sated, turns to passion along with all the bodily responses made so familiar in story, song and poem.
While naturally produced amphetamines and opioids are flowing in their systems, the young are so infatuated with each other that they overlook all the negative aspects of their relationship. Then, months or a few years later, the amphetamines wear off and they may suddenly look at each other and wonder, "What the hell did I ever see in that person?"
By that time, of course, they are well into the next steps of the so-called mating drive so, while they may know that they don't want to continue what they are doing, it is not so easy to stop. According to some theories, in extreme cases, people who are very active sexually can become reliant on the above-mentioned chemicals so that they spend as much time looking for their next encounter as heroin addicts devote to securing their next fix.
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