MONTREAL—It seems everywhere you look on Valentine’s Day there are images of love: Hearts, chocolates, flowers and cupids.
But what is the stuff of real love?
Is it the way he keeps gazing at his beloved after a kiss.
“I love her every minute since I’ve known her and that's 74 years,” said Al Bernstein, married for 73 years.
Or is it the fact that they've fallen asleep holding hands every night since they wed.
“He's the most wonderful man in the world,” said a chuckling Margaret Bernstein.
To witness such devotion is both beautiful and bittersweet.
“I appreciate my wife, I’ve loved her every minute and I say that I would cater to her for every day that I live,” Al said. He’s now undergoing treatment for cancer and Margaret simply can’t imagine life without him.
“All I could say is he's very special, it's all I could say,” said Margaret.
There are many in the business of love. People like professional matchmaker Susan Alper, who specializes in helping people find long-term love.
“I think everybody wants to be loved unconditionally, but what's unconditional love these days? Everything's so fast, give it a chance,” said Alper.
She says being hit by cupid's arrow, that unmistakable feeling the moment we think we fall in love, doesn't necessarily guarantee happiness, in fact, she thinks it could be just the opposite.
“Remember when you're 20-years-old and you felt that. I always tell people that means, run!”
Those “butterflies in your stomach" are what neuroscientist Jim Pfaus is decoding along with his team at Concordia University.
“Why does the brain respond the way it does? Why does the body respond the way it does? Why is sex something so compelling that you're willing, I don't know, to seize Troy for it?” Pfaus said, listing the questions he is trying to answer.
Pfaus's research suggests who we fall in love with is actually predictable. The rats in his lab are tracked and their relationships controlled by putting a scent on them before they mate. It turns out the rats will always choose to mate with the familiar, something that by their nature they shouldn't do because rats are polygamist.
“But they do, because the brain is not just hardwired for reproduction, the brain is also hardwired for learning and for learning about what makes you feel good,” said Pfaus.
He argues by nature, humans tend to develop a “type,” that's often based on the person they first fell in love with.
“You can hold pictures of the ones you've really felt something for together, and then you're going to feel you are the most superficial person on earth,” said Pfaus.
Your brain effectively learns what has brought happiness in the past, even if that love eventually dies.
“That facial closeness of lovers assures that your face is going to become an archetype especially early on in one's sexual experience, it's going to become an archetype for either bonding to you or bonding to someone who looks a lot like you,” said Pfaus.
The effects of love can be tracked and analyzed in the human brain; scientists can actually see love in a brain scan. While affairs of the heart can be messy, love, as one famous philosopher put it "Is what's left over when being in love has burned away."
Perhaps the real experts on this matter are Al and Margaret, who've conducted a rather special experiment of their own, that's lasted 75 years.
Al remembers it all, especially the day they got married.
”I had a ring that I bought for $5 which she still wears today,” Al said, looking at pictures of their wedding on Sept. 21, 1939.
Asked the secret for their lasting love, they seem almost puzzled at the question.
“What's the secret? It's been happiness. What shall I say? It's been happiness.”
