My Chemical Romance
What is love? From the Greek concept of Eros, Philia, and Agape, to the love-struck bops of popular music, the question of what is love seems to be an overarching dilemma spanning years, enamoring the smartest of philosophers to the wittiest of songwriters. Even with ourselves, people love to pin different definitions of love, such as “love is a funny feeling that we feel around people we like” or “love is an illusion to distract us from the disappointments of reality” — to the cynical few. In short, to question love is as human as to experience it. In recent scientific developments, however, scientists have delved into the intricate workings of the brain and the body to unravel the mystery behind this universal experience that has captured the culture and the minds of the people.
Recall the time you accidentally ran into someone you found to be attractive. You may have noticed your palms and the bottom of your feet sweating, your speech stuttered and sometimes even followed by an awkward laugh; you may have said something in an attempt to sound smart and impressive, but in hindsight, you realize it sounded stupid while you try to escape the sudden magnetic attraction from this person. And very likely, did you feel your heartbeat pounding fast like a bullet train? It’s not a stretch why for a long time we thought that love came from the heart. As it turns out, the organ that many of us think to be rational — the ego or the mediator — the brain is the one to go haywire, which in turn makes the body behave the same. According to scientists at Rutgers, love can be broken down into three stages: lust, attraction, and attachment. Each of these is controlled by its own set of hormones from the brain.
During the Lust stage, the hypothalamus plays a huge role, stimulating the release of sex hormones testosterone and estrogen, from the male and female gonads, respectively. The release of these hormones increases libido but is much more pronounced in men than women. This stage is not so different from our mammalian neighbors on the planet.
The next stage is Attraction. Attraction involves the pathway in the brain that controls reward, which is why the feeling of falling in love feels like an addictive and exhilarating rush, and, at worst, can be all-consuming and self-destructive. It is similar in feeling to the effects of alcohol or eating a good meal.
Dopamine, or the “feel-good hormone”, is a major player in the reward pathway. This chemical makes us feel energetic, but it also makes restlessness, even leading to decreased appetite and insomnia, linked to a reduction in serotonin levels, a hormone involved with appetite and mood — which means those cheesy scenes in romantic movies where the character is so “madly in love” that they act erratic is true and can happen to you. Another hormone released during this stage is Norepinephrine, which plays an important role in the fight or flight response, which activates when feeling stressed which makes one vigilant. In fact, in a study conducted, where participants’ brains were scanned after being shown a photo of a person they are intensely attracted to, it shows that the primary reward centers of the brain go cuckoo when compared to when they were shown a photo of a person they are neutral towards.
Finally, Attachment is the common link found in long-term relationships. It sees the release of oxytocin replacing dopamine and norepinephrine. While the initial stages are pretty much exclusive to romantic relationships, attachment is involved in friendships, parent-infant bonding, and other intimacies.
Oxytocin is also called “cuddle hormone” because of this. Oxytocin, like dopamine, is also produced by the hypothalamus and released en masse during intimate moments, such as during sex and childbirth. These scenes may be very strange, some of which are even painful, but the common theme between them is that they are the antecedent to bonding. This makes it clear why we have separate areas for different stages of love: we are bonded and attached to our families, but other forms of emotion are not supposed to be there.
These mechanisms may paint the picture of love being an all-time happy entanglement with no strings attached: hormones are released, this makes us feel good, and it brings us closer to our partners. But this paints half a picture of what love is: love comes with jealousy, erratic behavior, irrationality, and other less desirable moods and emotions. What seems to be hormones that make us happy and attached, also bring the downsides of love.
Dopamine, the hormone responsible for the reward pathway, controls both our virtues and vices. The region that lights up when we see the person we are attracted to also lights up when drug addicts take cocaine. Attachment can also be seen in the same light. When taken to the extreme, the same region in the brain lights up when we become emotionally dependent on our partners.
Love is incomplete without embarrassing yourself. The feelings of sexual arousal turn off certain regions in our brain that govern critical thinking and self-awareness. In short, love makes us dumb and makes us do dumb things causing those late-night recollections of the cringy things you did before like accidentally giving your crush a weird gift or saying an odd punchline.
In short, there is an “answer” to the question: what is love? However, it shows an incomplete mosaic of what love is and there are parts in the canvas that are yet to be painted over. It can be the thing that makes us want to do things or it could be the thing that makes us want to rot in bed and never wake up again. Love is an intricate symphony that even when we are shown the music sheet on how to play it, the feelings it spurs within us, and the things it makes us do can sometimes be unexplainable or even mystical. Maybe it is for the better that love is an open-ended thought that rakes in money for musicians or for would-be philosophers to mull over. Allowing everybody to develop their interpretation of love, without heed to the limitations barred by society, purely fueled by the human experience of being in love. Or, maybe it should all be hormones, then maybe each of us can have chemistry with each other.
