Chemistry & Psychology of Love

Chemistry & Psychology of Love

When do you realize you fancy someone! What does love started changing in your brain chemicals, and is falling in love just nature's way to keep the human species alive!

We can call it love. Its feelings are like love. But the most exhilarating of all human emotions is probably nature’s beautiful way of keeping the human species alive and procreating.

With an irresistible coagulation of chemicals, our brain excites us to fall in love. We trust we are choosing a partner. But we may merely be the happy victims of nature’s lovely plan. This is one sort of expected and fascinated hell.

Sometimes Verbal utterance is misleading

Psychologists around the world find it takes between 100 seconds and 5 minutes to decide if you like someone as a partner.

Research has shown this has little to do with what is said verbally, rather

55% is through the body language

38% is the tone and speed of their voice

Only 7% is through what they say

Three steps of love

Researcher Helen Fisher of Rutgers University in the United States of America has asserted three steps of love – lust, attraction and attachment. Each stage might be driven by different hormones and body chemicals.

Step 1: Lust

This is the first step of love and is driven by the sex hormones testosterone and oestrogen – in men and women respectively.

Step 2: Attraction

It is the wonderful time when you are truly caught by love and can think of little else. Scientists think that three main neurotransmitters are involved in this step; adrenaline, dopamine and serotonin.

Adrenaline

This initial stage of falling in love for someone activates your stress response, increasing your blood levels of adrenalin and cortisol. It has the charming result that when you unexpectedly jump into your new love, you start to sweat, your heart runs and your mouth goes dry.

Dopamine

Helen Fisher asked newly ‘love struck’ couples to have their brains examined and discovered they have high levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine. This chemical stimulates ‘desire and reward’ by triggering an intense rush of pleasure. It has the same effect on the brain as taking cocaine!

Fisher suggests “couples often show the signs of surging dopamine: increased energy, less need for sleep or food, focused attention and exquisite delight in smallest details of this novel relationship” .

Serotonin

And finally, serotonin. One of love's most important chemicals that may explain why when you’re falling in love, your new lover keeps popping into your thoughts.

Step 3: Attachment

Attachment is the bond that keeps couples together long enough for them to have and raise children. Scientists think there might be two major hormones involved in this feeling of attachment; oxytocin and vasopressin.

Oxytocin - The cuddle hormone

Oxytocin is a powerful hormone released by men and women during orgasm.

It probably deepens the feelings of attachment and makes couples feel much closer to one another after they have had sex. The theory goes that the more sex a couple has, the deeper their bond becomes.

Oxytocin also seems to help cement the strong bond between mum and baby and is released during childbirth. It is also responsible for a mum’s breast automatically releasing milk at the mere sight or sound of her young baby.

Diane Witt, assistant professor of psychology from New York has showed that if you block the natural release of oxytocin in sheep and rats, they reject their own young.

Conversely, injecting oxytocin into female rats who’ve never had sex, caused them to fawn over another female’s young, nuzzling the pups and protecting them as if they were their own.

Vasopressin

Vasopressin is another important hormone in the long-term commitment stage and is released after sex.

Vasopressin (also called anti-diuretic hormone) works with your kidneys to control thirst. Its potential role in long-term relationships was discovered when scientists looked at the prairie vole.

Prairie voles indulge in far more sex than is strictly necessary for the purposes of reproduction. They also – like humans - form fairly stable pair-bonds.

When male prairie voles were given a drug that suppresses the effect of vasopressin, the bond with their partner deteriorated immediately as they lost their devotion and failed to protect their partner from new suitors.

How to fall in love

Find a complete stranger.

Reveal to each other intimate details about your lives for half an hour.

Then, stare deeply into each other’s eyes without talking for four minutes.

York psychologist, Professor Arthur Arun, has been studying why people fall in love. He asked his subjects to carry out the above 3 steps and found that many of his couples felt deeply attracted after the 34 minute experiment. Two of his subjects later got married.

Canadian Stand on Love & Sex

Love and sex are two different activities in human behavior and action, one is abstract and non-physical and the other is pure physical. There is no code of law to prevent extramarital love and friendship but extramarital sex is prohibited by law in the Canadian society. But because love and friendship is interpreted as psychological and non-physical way of relationship for the development of rational and all sort of recognized social bonding, no law virtually stands against it. For example prostitution is one kind of extramarital relationship but it has been legalized by law in Canadian society. How rational people view this profession and consumers or clients related to this profession, that is the question. Canadian social scientists and philosophers categorized the love-sex relationship in three different ways:

Love with sex

Love without sex

Sex without Love

Love with sex is ethical relation between male and female, deserved by the majority of the population. Love without sex is considered as divine relationship, for instance relationship between God and religious persons can be mention as sacred. The most vulnerable and disputed relationship can be developed through sex without love, considerably helled by conscious people, because sex without love is immoral, perverted and must be discarded. Prostitution is the commercial service given through sexual pleasure in lieu of money, so there is no chance to add love in the act of prostitution but it is legalized and existed in Canadian society or in the world as a whole probably for the following reasons:

It is one of the most ancient professions.

People will do it whether it is legal or not.

One way to save the rest of the society from the immoral part.

Public effort to rehabilitate the hookers is a continuous process.

Large amount of revenue and tax comes from sex industry.

Study shows, most of the married couples do not feel love or psychological arousal before they unite physically or sexually. The reason we call this sort of union a perversion is nothing but it is making a scenario of sex without love. The question then arise, are we cherishing a perverted relationship! Research high lightened the basic causes why majority of married couple have numbness in love feelings from inner realm before their physical contact.

[Ref: Philosophy of Love and Sex, Robert Trevas; Arthur Zucker; Donald Brochert, Prentice Hall; Upper Saddle River, New Jersey; USA, 1997]

Built-in overwhelming ness

Scarcity of respect and adoration between each other

Absence of creativity in the relationship

Absence of subtle quality, such as sense of hummer

Presence of selfishness in great extent

Controlled by imbalanced logic and emotion

If we were sincere to overcome the above-mentioned misleading qualities from our coupled life, undoubtedly a perfect balanced relationship could be formed, which leads our society in the way of advancement and real progress in terms of spirituality and materialistic point of view.

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