n his 1999 best-selling book, Love and Survival: Scientific Basis for the Healing Power of Intimacy, Dean Ornish discusses the importance of love and intimacy. He points to a variety of research studies that claim that when people open up to each other, talk to each other, and love each other, they become physically healthier. Following are just a few of these findings from longitudinal research:
• College students who had distant and nonemotional relationships with their parents had significantly higher rates of high blood pressure and heart disease years later than did students who reported close and emotionally connected relationships.
• Heart patients who felt "loved" had 50% less arterial damage than those who said they did not feel "loved."
• Men and women who reported the least social contact died at the rate of three times those who reported the most social contact.
• Women who said they felt "lonely and isolated" were three-and-a-half times more likely to die of breast, ovarian, or uterine cancer.
• Men who said their wives did not show them "love" suffered 50% more chest pain.
• People with heart disease who have a dog have been found to have four times fewer sudden cardiac deaths than those without dogs.
Source: Ornish (1999).
Love. One of the great mysteries of humankind is the capacity to love, to make attachments with others that involve deep feeling, selflessness, and commitment. Throughout history, literature and art have portrayed the saving powers of love. How many songs have been written about its passion, and how many films have depicted its power to change people’s lives? Yet, after centuries of writers discussing love, philosophers musing over its hold on men and women, and religious leaders teaching of the necessity to love one another, how much do we really know about love? Are there different, separate kinds of love—friendship, passion, love of parents—or are they all simply variations on one fundamental emotion? Does love really “grow”? Is love different at 15 than at 50? What is the relationship between love and sexuality?
We go through life trying to come to terms with loving, trying to figure out why we are attracted to certain types or why we fall in love with all the wrong people. The mystery of love is part of its attraction. We are surrounded with images of love in the media and are taught from the time we first listen to fairy tales that love is the answer to most of life’s problems. Why should we not try to understand what love is?