How is love associated with the heart?

Question

Why do we always refer to our hearts when we're in love?

Or when we're no in love?

Either way it always goes back to what our heart says....."You broke my heart"

I don't understand....

Answer 1

I love you with all my lungs does not have the same effect lol!  

Answer 2

it actually has to do with the fact that philosophers and physicians from a long time ago up until recently believed that the heart was the organ responsible for all emotions including love but then modern psychologists and doctors found the truth that the emotional system is in the brain

Answer 3

The word heart is often used this way but it's really a metaphor for the soul or being.  The heart, the only moving internal organ was thought by the ancient Egyptians to be the center of a persons living existence and was always left within a mummy. They thought the brain only produced mucus and was pulled out and disposed of.

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Answer 4

Today we know that the brain and the heart have little to do with regulating body temperature.  However, early Greek physicians thought that one of the brain's functions was to cool the blood, and one of the heart's functions was to heat the blood.  It's really a simple mistake to make.  During a gross postmortem examination, the brain is cool and the heart is warm, and blood runs through them both.

This made it easy to associate warm feelings (like love) with the heart, just as it made it easy to associate rational reactions and intellectual prowess with a cool head.

We no longer think that these things are medically true, but they've stayed poetically true.   A loving person has a warm heart, a thinking person has a cool head.  On the other hand, an unfeeling person has a cold heart, and an irrational person has a hot head.  And, if you break my heart, then it stops heating my blood and I can't have the warm feelings I'm supposed to have.

Isn't it strange how bad medicine could turn into good poetic imagery?

Answer 5

When people feel intense emotion it causes their blood flow to change, which is felt in the central nervous system and circulatory system. For this reason ancient cultures tended to believe that the personality or spirit was located in the heart, not the brain.

Being "in love" is simply the sum total of various hormonal changes that the body experiences. Real relationships need more than that type of chemistry to endure. I am not suggesting that chemistry is not a vital part of an amorous relationship; it is.

Belief in "true love" is one of the primary reasons that marriages fail. Many couples become convinced they are in "true love" and form a marriage based on what is really just chemistry, when they have very little in common otherwise. As a result of this about 50 percent of marriages fail within five years.