Saturday. Your best friend has been insisting all week that you not forget about the dinner where she will finally introduce you to her new boyfriend. The time comes, you leave with the desire to give the boy the third degree, which proves that he is worthy of your friend’s love. But when you see him, you don’t need any examination, because you don’t just like him for her sake. You love it for yourself. This is a fictional story, but I’m sure many people can relate to it. And this is what it feels like attraction to friend’s partner This is something much more common than it seems.
This is one of the consequences of something known as mimetic desire. It was first described in the 1970s by the philosopher Rene Girard. But since then, many psychologists and neuroscientists have studied it. They analyzed evolutionary, social and neurological reasons this can lead us to strongly desire what others close to us desire.
We might look at this as something learned, but in fact we are born with it. Just see how a child can pass a toy until another child comes and takes it away. At this point it will become his favorite toy and he will never want to play with anything else. From here, to the desire of a friend’s partner, there is not that much of a difference. But why is this happening? Psychology and neuroscience have the answer.
The Origins of Mimetic Desire
For Girard, this phenomenon consists of two phases. First of all, there is mimesis, with the help of which we tend to imitate people who are close to us. We the people social animals, so we are often infected by the actions of our peers. But then comes the second, much more conflicting stage. The thing is, if another person starts wanting something, maybe we will want it too. Thus mimesis becomes mimic desire.
This applies to both the baby’s toy and the friend’s partner. This happens to us all the time and, as he explains IFLScience psychologist Nicole Monteiro, this is not something we should be upset about. For example, being attracted to a friend’s partner is not a bad thing. It would be dangerous to allow this attraction to carry us away, for it might break ties that unite us with our friend. In fact, since we are social animals, friendship is very important to us as a species. If we pull it away from an impulse based on mimetic desire, we may feel very resentful and lost.
Friend’s partner or simple candy: the key is in the brain
Psychologists have several hypotheses about the origin of mimetic desire. For example, some believe that this may be due to brain reward systems. That is, receiving something valuable for another person activates these systems, promoting dopamine release, which gives us great pleasure. These systems are typically activated by evolutionarily beneficial stimuli, such as sexual intercourse or eating something high in calories. Although they may also react to medications that do not provide any benefit.
In this case, there will be a social component, but nothing more. So the question remains about the specific areas of the brain that are activated mimetic desire. Which region makes us want a friend’s partner?
According to a study conducted in 2012, these are mainly two: mirror neuron system and brain scoring system. The mirror neuron system is activated when a person performs a certain action or observes another person performing the same action. It is thought to be involved in phenomena such as yawning infection. However, it still holds many mysteries.
As for the brain’s evaluative system, it mainly includes the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and ventral striatum, although they are sometimes accompanied by limbic regions. All these regions are somehow connected with emotions and perception of reward. So it makes sense that they would be activated when, for example, we begin to feel attracted to a friend’s partner.
Although this study focused on something much simpler. 116 people Those who took part had to watch videos in which they saw a series of gummies, in different circumstances, but always separated into two paths. Either no one touched them, or a hand was seen manipulating them. After this, the volunteers were asked to rate them on certain parameters and, in general, everyone preferred the candy that the other person took. While they were making decisions, fMRI of the brainwhich demonstrated preferential activity in these regions.
Link to eating disorders
Unfortunately, mimetic desire does not only manifest itself when one is attracted to a friend’s partner. It can also be taken in much more dangerous ways. In fact, Girard himself wrote a book linking it to eating disorders such as anorexia.
These are disorders with multifactorial origin. But often its causes are dominated by the desire to have bodies that are falsely considered normative. The philosopher described this long before the advent of social media, but it has undoubtedly made the problem even worse.
Be careful what you wish for
In the article IFLScience a real example of a singer is given about mimetic desire Eric Claptonwho fell in love with the wife of his best friend, the Beatle George Harrison. Her obsession was so great that she eventually left her husband to marry Clapton.
But this relationship did not last forever. The marriage lasted ten years, after which the singer Tears in Heaven He admitted that his attraction was born out of a desire to have what he had. a powerful man like George Harrison. It should be noted here that a woman is not property, but we will leave that for another article.
One thing is clear: attraction to a friend’s partner can often develop into a temporary relationship. Friendship, if developed, can last much longer. Before we get carried away dopamine and emotionslet’s stop and think about how worth it it is.
Source: Hiper Textual
