Book A General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon explores the deep biological and emotional roots of connection in humans. The authors argue that love is not just a feeling or social idea, but it's actually a powerful neurological process that shapes who we truly are. They introduce the concept of “limbic resonance," the way two human brains synchronize emotionally when they bond together. Through this resonance, people regulate each other’s moods, each other's sense of safety, and even their physical well-being. The book explains that early relationships literally wire our brains. They teach us how to love, feel, and connect. When love is absent or unhealthy, our emotional systems become misaligned. It often causes long-term struggles with attachment and happiness. The authors combine neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy to show that love is both mysterious and biological. It is basically a kind of emotional synchronization between the minds of people. In essence, the book suggests that love is not a purely spiritual or rational choice but a shared state of consciousness, where two nervous systems temporarily dream the same emotional world together.
Love has always been called many things. Like a feeling, a connection, a miracle, a trap. But what if love is something even stranger than all of that? What if love is not real in the way we think it is? What if it's not something that exists between two people, but something that exists inside both of them, like a shared hallucination? A dream in which two minds accidentally start dreaming together.
We say “I love you,” as if love were a bridge that connects two souls. But maybe it’s not a bridge, maybe it’s an illusion that both people agree to see. Like when you’re half asleep, and someone tells you about their dream, and somehow, you begin to see the same dream in your head. That’s what love could be, two separate brains syncing their imagination for a while, building a private world that feels more real than anything outside of it.
The chemistry of illusion
Science tells us love is chemical: dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin. The brain releases fireworks when we fall for someone. We get addicted, obsessed, blind. The world starts to glow a little more. Every song makes sense. Every color feels warmer. But those chemicals don’t just make us happy; they distort reality. They make us see the person not as they are, but as we want them to be. That’s not so different from a hallucination.
And yet, this distortion feels sacred. We defend it. We call it romance. We write poems about it. But maybe what we’re really doing is protecting our shared illusion, our fragile mutual dream. Because if one person wakes up and if one person stops believing, the entire world they built together begins to fade.
The physics of feeling
There’s something cosmic about love, too. It’s like gravity for the soul. Two people who were strangers suddenly orbit each other. Their thoughts intertwine. Their moods synchronize. Sometimes they even start saying the same things or finishing each other’s sentences. That’s not logic, that’s quantum-level weirdness. Two consciousnesses vibrating at the same frequency for a while.
But the strange thing is: when the connection breaks, it feels like falling out of a dream. You wake up confused, empty, and disoriented. You look around, and everything looks a bit off. The same streets, the same bed, but no magic left. You start to wonder if any of it was ever real. Maybe that’s why heartbreak hurts so much: it’s the pain of waking up.
The dream logic of love
When you’re in love, time behaves differently. Hours disappear in seconds. Minutes stretch forever. Logic stops working. You forgive things that make no sense. You feel closer to another person than you do to yourself. You start thinking in “we” instead of “I.” You build a language only the two of you understand, like inside jokes, nicknames, rituals. It’s dream logic. Nonsense that makes perfect sense when you’re inside it.
But like dreams, love doesn’t always last. And maybe that’s not tragic, maybe it’s natural. Dreams are not meant to be permanent. They exist to remind us of a deeper reality, something wordless and wild inside us. Love does that too. It wakes up something sleeping in us, wonder, desire, empathy, fear, and then leaves us changed, even if it ends.
The beauty of the hallucination
If love is a hallucination, then maybe we shouldn’t be ashamed of it. Hallucinations are not lies; they are the mind’s way of translating what it can’t fully understand. Love could be our brain’s attempt to translate the hunger for unity, the longing to not be alone in this vast, indifferent universe.
When two people hallucinate the same dream, something magical happens; they briefly escape isolation. For a moment, they trick reality. They create a shared space that shouldn’t exist, a world made of laughter, skin, memories, and meaning. And even if it fades, even if one wakes up first, the dream itself was real in the only way that matters: it was felt.
Maybe that’s the point
Maybe love isn’t about truth. Maybe it’s about wonder. Maybe it’s about daring to believe in something unreal because it feels more honest than anything else. Maybe we are all lonely dreamers, trying to find someone whose madness matches ours long enough to build a little world, fragile, temporary, but ours.
So yes, maybe love is just two people hallucinating the same dream. But if that’s true, then let’s not chase “reality.” Let’s keep dreaming. Because maybe that’s what makes us human, our ability to imagine something so powerful that it bends reality itself. To see beauty where there is none. To believe in a shared illusion and call it love.
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