Love. Oftentimes a mixture of soft gazes, secret glances, and forever yearning or perhaps a torrent of longing, electric tension, and passionate touches. For centuries it has consumed poets and waged wars against its name. All of us are blissfully indifferent and tend to succumb to this emotion without question.However, have you ever stopped to think about why we love? How do we love? What does it really mean to love? A more timeless question, one that even Plato sought to define would be ‘What is love?’. Is it fate, free will, or merely just the result of our biological programming? Is it all just a complex chemical reaction inside our brains? Well, that’s the question we will be dissecting in this article.
The science behind attraction
Everything starts off with a small crush right? Here, attraction may feel spontaneous, however, it is driven by a combination of various subconscious biological cues, brain chemistry, and evolutionary factors that shape our preferences. The moment we develop this romantic interest in a person, our brain’s reward system is activated, flooding our system with neurotransmitters that induce pleasure. A key player in this process is dopamine, a chemical in the brain that acts like a messenger between nerve cells, playing a major role in pleasure, reward, and motivation. Dopamine is part of our brain’s reward system which stimulates us to seek out things that make us feel good, whether it’s food, social approval, one more reel before you sleep, or in this case, love.
Love and its addictive nature
A study using brain scans (fMRI) by anthropologist Helen Fisher observed that when people looked at pictures of someone they love, their ventral tegmental area (VTA – a part of the brain which is responsible for pleasure and motivation) became highly activated. The VTA is filled with dopamine producing neurons, which means love quite literally floods our brain with this ‘feel-good’ chemical. Now interestingly, this is the same brain response that is seen in people who use addictive substances like cocaine. Which explains why love can feel so all-consuming and obsessive, and why heartbreak can feel like withdrawal. Love (or should I say chemicals) hijacks our brain’s reward system, keeping us hooked on the presence of the one we love.
Love and obsession
While our dopamine levels seem to be at an all time high, love also causes a drop in serotonin levels – a neurotransmitter that helps regulate our mood, emotions, and impulse control. A study by psychiatrist Donatella Marazziti observed that people in the early stages of romantic love had serotonin levels similar to those with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which means that they experienced obsessive thoughts about their partners, had trouble focusing on anything else, and usually idealized their romantic partners. This chemical shift could explain why people in love sometimes act irrationally or become completely preoccupied with their partners.
Dopamine isn’t the only chemical at play during this process, another key player is norepinephrine, which is closely related to adrenaline and is responsible for the physical symptoms of love like racing heartbeats, sweaty palms, and heightened focus. This is mainly because norepinephrine is part of our body’s fight-or-flight response, which is usually activated in stressful or high-stakes situations. The excitement and nervousness we feel when we interact with someone we’re attracted to is not just psychological, it is literally a biological response. This heightened state of arousal can also strengthen the attraction between individuals. This is because when we associate excitement or nervousness with a person, our brain may interpret those intense feelings as a deep romantic interest. This is why thrilling or even little anxiety-inducing experiences like watching a horror movie together or going on a roller coaster can make you feel more attracted to each other.
Conclusion? (Maybe not)
Now look, while love is an ethereal concept, it is hard to explain all the chemical operations underlying the process of love in just one article. Yet, even with this understanding, the question remains – does reducing love to just chemistry strip it of its meaning?
Well, this complexity of love only adds another veil of mystery to it. Is love truly real? Does the meaning of love diminish if we think of it as a biological process, or does this biological explanation simply deepen our understanding of how love shapes us as human beings? Well, I do not have the answers to those questions for you today. Perhaps, in the end, it is the very mystery of love that makes it so meaningful and beautiful. Maybe, just maybe, love isn’t just biology – it is fate.