THE SCIENCE OF LOVE
Love can be found in the simplest things in life, like sunsets, getting back home after a long day, or maybe in the cookies your family bakes on special occasions. Love can also be found in complex ways like in movies, books, and people.
Even though we live surrounded by love, we don’t have an exact definition of it. Often, people think that love emerges from the heart, however, the brain is responsible for everything. “From the first spark to the last tear, our brain is guided by a symphony of neurochemicals and brain systems” – TedEd. Today, I will explain the stages of love and the physiological effects that love has on us.
Love and Science
According to scientists led by Dr. Helen Fisher at Rutgers, there are three main categories of romantic love. The first one is lust; it is the sexual desire for another person, and it maintains a physical attraction without getting emotionally involved with them.
When we consider a person attractive, our brain gets altered by hormones like testosterone and estrogen motivating and increasing sexual desires. Usually, most romantic relations don’t get past this stage, however, the ones that do are most likely to be long-term relationships. Certainly, we can lust for someone we are attracted to and vice versa, but one can happen without the other.
The second category is defined by the biochemical researcher Roma Kunde as “the sense of closeness, interest, or desire you feel towards someone”. There are different types of attraction, and everyone experiences it differently, the key is to understand how it works to create self-awareness and develop stronger connections for better relationships.
Attraction is primarily present during the first months of the relationship, called “the honeymoon phase”. The brain produces higher levels of dopamine-related to how people experience pleasure, and norepinephrine, making us feel more energetic and euphoric. Attraction also reduces the hormone that involves appetite and mood, called serotonin. Scientists speculate that this stage is where love begins.
As people get closer and closer in their relationships, the brain floods with oxytocin, a hormone released when one is physically affectionate, and vasopressin, which is the one that creates the desire to protect the people you have attachments with. According to Dr. Helen Fisher, emotional attachments refer to the feelings of closeness and affection that help to sustain a long-term relationship.
While lust and attraction are pretty much exclusive to romantic entanglements, attachment mediates other social relationships like friendships, parent-infant, or even social cordiality. What these have in common is the existence of bonding without other emotions getting in the way. However, we must avoid creating emotional dependencies on these people.
Conclusion
As we realized, neurochemicals are equally complex as the definition of love. Because, even though love makes us feel good and rewarded, we must keep in mind the downsides to this, like drugs. And as a matter of fact, the brain controlling our good and bad may affect how our relationships work. To finish, I want to give you this quote “When you trip over love, it is easy to get up, but when you fall in love, it is impossible to stand again” – Albert Einstein.
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