Recently, I watched the movie Little Women. One of the characters, Amy, declares that we have some power over who we love and it doesn't just happen. That got me thinking...what is the science behind falling in love and can we control it? First I needed to understand how the brain falls in love and what the biology behind love was.
To start out with, in many movies and tv shows you will hear a distraught character ask "Should I listen to my heart or my head?" I am here to tell you that falling in love has pretty much nothing to do with your actual heart and entirely to do with your head. Love in its most basic form is the simultaneous release of hormones by your brain.
To start out with, in many movies and tv shows you will hear a distraught character ask "Should I listen to my heart or my head?" I am here to tell you that falling in love has pretty much nothing to do with your actual heart and entirely to do with your head. Love in its most basic form is the simultaneous release of hormones by your brain.
Before the concept of love, was the biological need for all living things to reproduce. Helen E. Fisher of Rutgers university studied the three primary emotional categories that mammals have for mating and reproduction. Those categories are lust, attraction, and attachment. I find this super interesting because even before humans had evolved to have complex emotions they were always looking for partners to gratify not only their reproductive needs, but their emotional needs as well. Lust, attraction, and attachment are all controlled by different hormones released by both the brain and reproductive systems. Lust is controlled by the release of sex hormones from both the male and female reproductive organs. Whereas attraction and attachment are controlled by hormones released from the hypothalamus of the brain.
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| Hypothalamus location |
The three emotional categories represent the three different way mammals' emotions have evolved to seek reproduction. In terms of how humans fall in love, these are the three factors that drive humans to seek out different partners in life.
When you began to fall in love many different hormones are released. In the beginning stages of falling in love the excitement and intense happiness is driven by the release of dopamine. When your body secretes a large amount of dopamine it triggers the release of noradrenaline. The combination of these two hormones is what scientists call "The elixir of love." The simultaneous release of these hormones cause joy, an increase in energy, decrease in appetite, and an increase in concentration. When you're falling in love, you often cannot think about anything other than the person you're falling in love with, and this is due to the increase in concentration that comes with the simultaneous release of dopamine and noradrenaline.
After this stage people's dependency and attachment grows gradually with the release of oxytocin and vasopressin. The release of oxytocin leads to the growth of meaningful relationships, oxytocin is the hormone that is released when mothers give birth and the hormone that bonds people together.
As for whether or not you can control falling in love, there is no scientific evidence behind that. You can control what situations you put yourself in with other people, but once the brain gets going, hormones are released and a bond starts to form.
Love has inspired greats pieces of art and has caused people to do outrageous things. Love is both the entity that binds all human beings together but also the scientific combinations of neurotransmitters. My newfound scientific knowledge of love only adds to the concept of what it is. This quote by the Nobel-Winning Physicist articulates my fascination of having a dual sided view on many things because of my knowledge of science. "I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower". It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts." Thinking of love in the terms of a scientific concept is comforting to me in the troubling times our world is currently facing. Love is just as guaranteed as the concept of gravity and to me that keeps me at ease.
This whole topic is super interesting. I love how you got the idea from Little Women, great movie. Also, the way you said that a release of oxytocin is what bonds mother and child together, and how love is something that can make us do crazy things but it is just a bunch of hormones being released.
ReplyDeleteOLIVIA! I looveee this article! Especially the last line-"Love is just as guaranteed as the concept of gravity and to me that keeps me at ease". I've always struggled to understand love, and I think this really helps. I've always thought love is never a choice-there are too many couples that don't make sense for that to be true. Thank you for confirming these ideas I had! Also, I love Little Women
ReplyDeleteThinking about feelings as hormones is super freaky but really comforting to me, like you said. We think our feelings are complex because we're just like deep human beings, but it's really complex biologically too. Great quote.
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