Body over mind...

My fence is repaired and my roof is reshingled and I have a cold. A miserable, snotty, icky, don't-feel-good cold. I never can decide if I just don't take care of myself, like eating right and exercising more, or if it's just my time to get it, or if it's the universe-earth-God-whatever telling me to slow down, take some deep breaths, and let my body heal. I don't know.

We humans think we're so powerful, at the top of the food chain for sure, and have the ability to make anything happen. Well, we clearly don't have such power over our bodies. We live, we die. That's it. Meanwhile, we sometimes forget that the body has power over us, and that its ability to keep the heart pumping and the liver detoxifying and the skin protecting us is just out of our hands. Except for the exercise and eating right, and I'm sure those play a big part, but we get lazy and just assume that the body will just keep doing what it's supposed to do. Our genetics play a big part in our health, our DNA carries most of our fate, and our hormones affect our every action. And we have little, if any, control over those things, we just don't.

What's the point, you ask? So we romantics decide that we will seek "the one" and do this dating thing and make the choice ahead of time that we have learned from our past relationships and that this time, really this time, we will not get sucked into a relationship before we really know the guy. We will, no matter how cute and charming and seductive he is, keep our head on straight, keep our eyes open for red flags and then pay attention to them, and make the choice to get involved while fully aware and conscious. We will put off sex until we know him well enough to decide he's a keeper because we know that, once we get naked and have fun, we're hooked.

So I'm home and sick and read that there is a hormone called oxytocin that causes bonding and attachment, like when babies breastfeed, ocytoxin is secreted and bonds the mother to the baby. That's nice, but we're not in that situation when dating. And when we have sex, our bodies secrete oxytocin and that causes us to feel warm and fuzzy toward the guy and want to see him again and sometimes, as we well know, causes us to ignore the red flags and march on anyway. But we've decided to put off sex until we know him well, so that's not a problem. But now I read, and am astonished and my resolve is shaken, that even touching and kissing causes this hormone to flood our bodies. Men, by the way, have testerone which counters the effects of oxytocin so they don't get that bonding and attachment thing happening. But for us? Even stroking our arm or kissing us makes us stupid?

I'm not happy to hear that, since I'm determined to be smarter about my next relationship. But at least I can be happy to know that, even though my determination is strong, if I succumb to the pleasures of a man and get stupid again, it's not my fault!