Oftentimes, we can’t hear the voice of our soul, because we just aren’t adept (yet!) at steeping ourselves in the kind of silence that informs our decisions. Then we start exchanging juicy fluids and reaching orgasmic heights with someone, running the risk of entering into a Twenty-one Day Love Cloud. What is a Love Cloud? Dear ladies, it can occur at any time, and with even the most unoriginal of suitors. To understand this most pheremonal of phenomenon, imagine the following scenario.
You decide to give in to (let’s call him) Marky Mark’s persistent attempts to take you out for coffee. Marky Mark seems about average, not particularly attractive, especially funny, or moderately successful, but nice and available. You go out a few times, and one steamy summer night, things get a bit hot and heavy and you sleep with him. Within the orgasmic flood of several feel-good neurochemicals (dopamine and oxytocin), an odd feeling begins to take over.
The next morning, you wake up to a torrent of thoughts, speculations, fears, hopes, and dreams. Marky Mark snoozes beside you, snoring, impervious to your mental undertakings.
You are officially in the Love Cloud, a twenty-one-day period whereby a woman, flooded with the pleasure chemicals of the night before, begins to swing into full-mama protection mode. During this period, she can suddenly find herself inexplicably and unwaveringly attached to her new partner. And while this may not occur in every situation, most women will admit to having feelings of attachment to their sexual partners, no matter how much they try to convince themselves that it was just a casual role in the hay.
Why is this? Biologically, we are designed to reap offspring, create community and foster connection amongst our tribes. What is more, when we are in the Love Cloud, we begin to actually experience and see our fictitious-Marky Mark as a better version of the pre-sex Marky Mark we went for coffee with the week prior. Dr. Donatella Marazziti, a psychiatrist at the University of Pisa, studied twenty couples who self-described as “madly in love for less than six months.” Now, granted they were Italian, but she found that when analyzing blood samples from the lovers, the serotonin levels of these new lovers were equivalent to the serotonin levels of obsessive-compulsive disorder patients. Another leading researcher in the psychology of love, Ellen Breached, found that newly star-struck lovers often over-idealize their partner, magnifying their virtues and dismissing their flaws. Psychologists suggest that we need these rose-tinted love goggles so that we will stay together and become attached.
From a Tantric perspective, it is super important that we acknowledge the innate wisdom of our bodies, while at the same time being aware of the certain power loss that can occur when we offer our sexual essence to a man who is not prepared to lovingly hold space for our natural need to nest, connect, and remain partnered. In other words, keep your rose-tinted glasses, ladies, but make sure to check in with your Higher Self before you get attached.
Read more in Healthy, Happy, Sexy!
Katie Silcox 