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There are two different kinds of LOVE, passionate and compassionate. Passionate love is where you are attracted to the person and to the way that they make you feel. Compassionate love is where you love the person for who they are. In the essay Grandma, Gerald, the main character, gradually begins to love his great-grandmother after starting out on rough terms. In the essay Love: the right chemistry Anastasia Toufexis talks about the chemical aspect of love and why people fall in love. In this paper I am going to compare and contrast the two essays and these two different concepts of love.
In the essay, Grandma by Gerald Haslam, Gerald a young boy at the time, meets his great-grandmother for the first time when she moves in with his family. She was known as Grandma to the family. The relationship between the two does not start off very well. Gerald tries to communicate with her, but she only speaks Spanish to him. Grandma is very bitter because she only wants to live in the country were she grew up, not in the city where Gerald's home was. Soon Gerald finds himself hiding from Grandma because he is afraid of her until one day she speaks rudely to him in English, Oh so you want some candy.
Go to the store an buy some. When Gerald reacts with bursts of tears, Grandma comforts him with kind words and a pat on the head. This event changed Gerald's feelings towards his Grandma. They soon became very close as they learned to love each other. One day Grandma fell and broke her hip and soon after died. This was very hard on Gerald but when his family wanted to bury her in the city, he stood up to them and said that she needed to be buried in the country where she wanted to be.
In the essay Love the Right Chemistry, by Anastasia Toufexis, she talks about the chemical side of love. She states that approximately 4 million years ago man developed the notion of romantic love, when male and female partnerships were formed to help raise their offspring. This was the first evidence of love. Anastasia talks about the 4 -year-itch, where after four years of marriage couples tend to breakup. If the couple has another child after those 4 years then they tend to stay together longer in order to raise their child.
Then she goes into talking about how when you see someone and you start to feel symptoms of stress, it is because the chemicals released in your body are the same for stress and for love. The chemicals are amphetamines including, Dopamine, Norepinephrine and Phenylethylamine or PEA. PEA is the main chemical that flows through you when you are attracted to someone. Just like other amphetamines, the high you feel doesnt last because your body builds a tolerance to the chemical. Another chemical that Toufexis talks about is Oxytocin, a chemical that helps women during childbirth and may be linked to cuddling.
Anastasia states that everybody has a built in love map a predetermined idea of what his or her ideal partner is like. Whenever you encounter someone with one or more of these predetermined qualities it signals to your brain and creates what seems like stress. Anastasia Toufexis is saying that the chemicals in the body seem to have dramatic if not absolute control of whom your partner is, how long you are with them, and how you feel about them. The Essay Grandma is about a boy who grows to love his great-grandmother, after a bad beginning.
The boy, Gerald Haslam doesnt love his grandmother at first because he has never met her before so other than being genetically linked they have no other relationship. In Love: The Right Chemistry Toufexis says that love is pre-determined by genes and chemicals. Even though Gerald and his grandma have similar genetics they feel no affection towards each other when they meet for the first time or for sometime after. Nature vs. Nurture.
In Love: The Right Chemistry Anastasia talks about passionate or male / female love, the love between two partners and how the chemical process and love map determine who your partner is. In Grandma, Gerald talks about compassionate love, the love you feel for your family. Gerald didnt love his grandma at first but after spending time with her he grew to love her. Chemicals didnt determine it.
Throughout my life I have loved and been loved, but never more than the love that I have received from my parents. I think that I love my parents for what they have done for me and for the fact that they love me back. As for passionate love, my mom says that I have a Love Map for blondes because every girl I have dated has been blonde. My girlfriend and I have good chemistry because we have been attracted to each other since the first time we met. This leads me to believe that chemicals do have a lot to do with who you are attracted to, but theres still that something you feel inside you whenever your around that person that is way more than just a chemical. It takes both learning about love through your family and having good chemistry with someone to know how to love and be loved.
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Research essay sample on Great Grandmother Passionate Love
