Thursday, May 23, 2013

What Science Has to Say About Love


[Originally posted to Tumblr in "Solvings Cubes" on Feb 24, 2013]

Below are some of the chemical and behavioral bases for love. While love feels like magic, it’s really all about what’s swimming around in our brains, and how we use all that brain stuff to make connections.

(I am not a biochemist or anything close to it, and you should take everything written here with that in mind and check the sources for more information.)
We’re going to approach understanding Love here by first meeting the main characters in Love’s chemical background. Then we’ll look at how they interact into feelings, and to tie it all together we’ll examine how these feelings collaborate to create what we would call Love.
Meeting the Players
- michellachristina.com
There are about six characters with which we should be familiar:
Dopamine - The Charmer
You’ve heard of this guy. He’s commonly associated with raw pleasure, and though he is involved in drug addiction and is central to rewarding reactions in our brains, he is much more complicated than that. He plays a role in many central nervous system (CNS) functions from mood to attention, from dreaming to motivation. Dopamine plays a key role in the early stages of love and is less of a party guy the longer a relationship lasts.
Oxytocin -The Cuddler
This little lady causes mothers to lactate in response to her child’s presence and, being abundant in breast milk, facilitates bonding between her and her baby. It also initiates cervical contractions in the second and third stages of labor, creating a bonding experience even before the baby has been seen. Oxytocin is released during orgasm, physical contact with other people, and when eating chocolate (which makes eating chocolate a similar experience to hugging your mother). A famous experiment with a monogamous rodent called the prairie vole revealed that higher levels of oxytocin promoted pair bonding and often the avoidance of other voles, while lower levels caused the voles to grow less concerned with one another, going about vole business on their own. More on oxytocin later.
Vasopressin - The Husband
This chemical only slightly differs from oxytocin in structure. It serves its own purposes throughout the body, mostly responsible for maintaining hydration, but it also works hand-in-hand with Oxytocin to promote complex social bonding behaviors. While oxytocin is more prevalent in female activities and affections, vasopressin has more of an affect on males. The males of the prairie voles mentioned above showed less interest in intimate behavior when their vasopressin was inhibited. (Keep in mind, however, that oxytocin and vasopressin are influential in both males and females).
Norepinephrine - The Flirt
Similar to adrenaline but not quite the same, this guy boosts energy in the presence of a lover. The increased heart rate you might feel around a new love interest or the sweating that might happen when you’re about to see a romantic partner after a long absence is largely a result of released norepinephrine. It’s like anxiety, but in the context of love, it’s more positive.
Testosterone and Estrogen - The Hussies
These two are famous for their role in sexual arousal, and they play precisely that role both in initial and long-term romantic interactions. They initiate the more reptilian side of things, which though simple can lay the groundwork for more complex social development.
Chemicals in the Three Stages of Love
So these are the players. How exactly do they interact? Helen Fischer of Rutger’s University has posited three stages of love, each distinguished by its own behaviors, feelings, and chemical reactions.
Lust
- dribbble.com
The first stage is Lust. According to this theory, lust is always the first step to love, which is why attraction, physical contact, and sex are all important factors in developing and maintaining a romantic relationship. Team Testosterone and Estrogen (TE) are in charge here, telling you that you are sexually attracted to another person. This is a simple response that any organism can experience, which is why it does not take a large amount of work or time for sex to happen.
It should be noted, in my opinion, that though team TE may seem hedonistic and is often seen as less important than other aspects of love, it plays an essential role in connecting partners in the first place. Though love is not equal to sex, it is contingent with physical connection and is more powerfully established with more sex. Sexual compatibility is something that can be tested and built over time, and it is an important factor in determining the happiness of a long-term monogamous couple. These are some reasons why I personally advocate for sex before marriage.
Attraction
The second stage of love is referred to as Attraction, during which a couple becomes infatuated with one another, thinking of little else. This is a time of joy and excitement and is predominantly lead by team Dopamine and Norepinephrine (DN). This is that silly kind of love that is often seen as juvenile because it is not sustainable in the long-term, and there are chemical reasons for this. Over time, other chemicals take over and might be responsible for team DN’s gradual secession of power (though both continue to play roles in love throughout the course of a relationship).
Attachment
- tumblr, no source
The stage we might associate with “true love” is the stage of Attachment, when a relationship withstands the fading of team DN and moves on with the help of a new team: Oxytocin and Vasopressin (OV). Knowing what we do about these two chemicals mentioned above, it is clear what effects they can have when released. Team OV is released in droves during and after sex. Humans and prairie voles are both known for having more sex than is necessary for procreation; meanwhile both species develop relatively strong monogamous bonds. Oxytocin is thought to play a role in deterring partners from cheating and in keeping partners together while apart for long periods of time. Though lengthy absences can cause anxiety due to lack of physical contact, oxytocin present because of intense social connection can reduce these feelings.
Love in the Outer World
It is important to understand that love is not simply something that happens to you - the chemicals involved with such affections don’t do all the work. Love is not only complex because of complex chemical cocktails, but because of the experiences that come in tandem with those reactions.
Psychologist Barabara Fredrickson, author of Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become, has explored the process of creating and maintaining love. In her book, she presents her theory of positivity resonance, in which two people share positive experiences, mirror one another’s biochemistry, and become mutually dedicated to serving one another’s wellness. I recommend reading this book review on the matter since it would take a while to get into it here.
- blogcritics.org
The main point of Fredrickson’s writings is that love is an activity, something in which we purposefully engage and which grows with time, shared experience, and work. She describes it as tantamount to looking into a mirror and seeing one’s feelings, actions, and perceptions in the other person. Love, she says, blends the boundaries of what one perceives as “me” and “not-me.” This motivates us to direct our care and attention to other people as passionately as we normally would for ourselves.
What Science Has to Say About Love
When we build from the most basic chemical events informed by biology and chemistry, up to complex feelings and behaviors better understood through experimentation, we can lift a veil many of us consider to be permanently affixed over our heads.
Love may feel magical and mysterious, but there are identifiable reasons for this. Love is inherently and intensely pleasurable for us because it drastically benefits our wellbeing and our survival, and chemical activity reinforces such things, just as it does when we eat good food. And love is mysterious simply because it is so complex - it involves an infinite amount of releases and receptions, actions and reactions, inner and outer experiences, all of which are interpreted by one of the most complex structures in existence: the brain.
Love does not have to involve spirit in order to be spiritual, nor does it need supernatural explanations to make sense. The answers are here for us to find, in our heads and under our microscopes. And knowing the physical aspects of love by no means deters from its magic feeling -  if anything it adds to it, revealing just how complex and miraculous it is.
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