A while back I wrote a piece about this whole idea of 'love' and how it is a series of chemical secretions produced by the brain in order to provide continuity of our species?

Last week I read an interesting article... it had to do with our increasing life-span. The premise being that now we have double the span we enjoyed through most of human history? As biological creatures, we followed the natural order of all living things: Reproduce, live long enough to ensure offspring are able to fend for themselves and then die, allowing the next generation to do the same. So historically, we married and reproduced at a much younger age and subsequently died by the age of 50.

Centenarians are now on the increase as medicine, food and technology have all advanced and combined to prolong life. This of course raised a question in my mind: How is it possible to "fall in love" after the biological clock has run its course?

It throws my earlier presented theory into the scrap heap because logically, once the ability to reproduce is removed, the brain should no longer provide the chemicals which instigate and maintain 'love' and 'bonding'?

I titled this piece Middle Love. This to cover couples who meet and unite after children have been raised and become independent and after the onset of female menopause – sure men can go on to father children a lot longer and with 'technical intervention' so can women nowadays... but let's leave out these and look instead at the average John and Jane.

They meet in their 50's... or 60's... sometimes (increasingly) beyond these decades. Often they are alone, having disposed of their earlier partner(s). Else they are married and find themselves in the difficult predicament of experiencing those emotions they once felt for their partner in another? This could be due to many factors including finding they have outgrown each other, taken different directions, or simply realising that it was the rearing of their children which was the glue holding their marriage together?

I am excluding here what is referred to often as 'mid-life crisis' especially in men. I am excluding their trading their former partner in for a younger model and repeating the family scenario again.

What interests me most is the love created between two people within the same age-group, say John and Jane who are born in the same decade? What attracts them to each other and what is it that leads them to a relationship and commitment? If not a chemical process, then what occurs and what 'binds them' - much in the same manner as during their 'reproductive cycle' years?

Companionship would often be offered up as a reason; people fearing growing old alone? This however is more of a friendship scenario, two people mellowing and supporting each other in their waning years. It does not explain the physical desire and lust and excitement witnessed within these unions.

The article tried to explain somewhat, by inferring our brains are undergoing change and adapting/evolving to accommodate our now longer life-spans. Our brains are supposedly "confused" because the natural order of things has altered, and new issues have arisen which they are trying to resolve?

The previous average fifty year old lifespan precluded this 'middle love'. There was simply no time. Again, discounting the male trade-in option, most couples had just enough time to meet, reproduce, rear, then enjoy some few years of 'old age'. Only now, this previous old age is deemed middle age? And where they once sat around a fire perhaps reading or knitting or resting, now they're partying and hopping in and out of bed with strangers and eventually falling in love again?

Falling in love again? In fact desperate for love again, as witnessed by the number of dating-site over 50's seeking "a serious relationship". My recent foray into that scene certainly contributed to this dilemma.

Whatever evolution is taking place in our brains, it seems we are being given a second go-round; another chance to experience all those youthful yearnings and primal urges and – perhaps this time around, a look at the idea of love differently? That's what fascinates me the most: Is this second love - not dependent on the continuation of our species - an opportunity to create a better version than the original? Freed from responsibilities, nearing or within retirement... affording time without interruption, without 'things' getting in the way, is it possible to create a deeper and more lasting bond?

Most of you know I spent the last decade and a half of my life dedicated to raising my boys. Men and relationships were not on my radar, my focus solely on their well-being and their reaching the point of manhood with values and certainties and abilities to help them navigate their own futures. Well they are almost there now, and moments, I see them having one foot still in childhood but the other in the adult world. Soon, their journeys apart from me will begin in earnest.

Lately too, my radar is picking up signals. There is openness to possibility, a vague and at times persisting thought that were I to stumble across such a possibility, I would consider it? A curious notion and one it seems I have no control over? Is my brain therefore adjusting and in turn secreting another round of those chemicals, urging me to enter the field again?

The idea of falling in love is becoming increasingly acceptable, even expected? I am looking around, picking up these signals, perhaps unconsciously sending some of my own? I know in passing I am being observed, yet where once I walked oblivious now I feel eyes on me, mouths offering up smiles; appraising, running through viable scenarios? Curiouser, (yeah not a word but apt) I've caught myself once or twice smiling back, this done without thinking, a reflex action indicating change is taking place inside me.

I know I am not alone in this; I get the fact many my age and thereabouts are either experiencing or longing for this 'middle love' one way or another. The advent of Social Media and online communication has also widened the pool of possibilities, creating the illusion of connectedness despite any amount of physical distance.

So. The question I need help answering is this: Have any of you felt this middle love or longing and how does it compare to the loves of your youth and by God, are you in control or are you at the mercy of your evolving brain once again secreting seratonin and dopamine and all those other chemicals sending you into a tailspin?

I just turned 56 and the wall above my computer screen has a picture on it and some quotes, the odd poem, bits and pieces of a new self... recreating the wall of my youth? Were you to ask me even a year ago that this would be the direction my life would take I would have emphatically told you, you are crazy. Now it seems I'm the crazy one at the mercy of a second round of secretions?