What is love according to scientists. The chemistry of love. What is love scientifically? Fromm about objects of love

Every person knows. However, if you ask this question to different people, the answers will be completely different. Why is that? And is there the only true and correct definition of love - this is what I want to talk about.

The science

So what is love? Many minds of mankind have tried to define love throughout the history of earthly civilization. That is why it is worth considering this concept from different points of view. And I want to start my analysis from the scientific sphere. Many will find it interesting that there is a special chemistry of love. Scientists have proven that when a person falls in love, his body produces such an amount of hormones that is akin to drug or alcohol intoxication. In this case, the brain receives signals that indicate that a person is in a state of love. However, this is only one side of such a state, and to consider love only as chemistry is simply a crime.

1. Love is a drug. Proof of this is tomography of the head of a man in love. He activates the same parts of the brain as in a person who has used cocaine and is in a state of euphoria.
2. Love is a way to survive. Scientists have proven that human love is a somewhat modified form of attraction in animals. That is, it is easier for a person to find one partner for life, and not constantly seek new ones to satisfy their own sexual needs.
3. Love is blind. This statement also has scientific evidence. The German researcher found that the brain areas responsible for rational decisions and negative emotions in a person in love are simply turned off.
4. Love is addiction. Scientists say that the treatment for love should be the same as for drug addiction: remove all irritating factors from the patient's field of vision: photographs, gifts, any reminders of the object of desire.
5. A cure for love. Since during falling in love, a person's level of a hormone such as serotonin drops quite seriously, doctors propose to compensate it with medication in order to be able to avoid crimes based on this feeling (as statistics show, their number has significantly increased over the last time). However, if you overdo it with this hormone, a person will not fall in love, but the attraction will remain, which is fraught with promiscuous sexual intercourse.
6. Men love with their eyes. This statement is known to many people, but not everyone knows that it also has scientific evidence. When guys are in love, a zone is activated that is responsible for the visual factor. It will be interesting that in women, the zone responsible for memory becomes active: the lady remembers the behavior of her partner, so that she can then analyze it and draw conclusions: is it worth it to be with such a person further.

Dictionaries

So, as a small conclusion, I would like to give a few explanations of what love is. Scientific explanation, wording:

1. This is a strong feeling of the heart, an emotional attraction.
2. Sexual attraction, attraction.
3. Strong positive emotions.
4. Spiritual closeness, tender attitude.

In general, we can say that love from a scientific point of view is the purest chemistry.

Art

The fact that you can watch love will also be interesting. Photos, paintings - they perfectly illustrate this feeling. However, this is not enough for art. Many writers have also thought about what love is. She is sung in poetry, songs, and necessarily appears on the pages of prose stories and novels. Various have already become so famous that people sometimes do not even know who said it and from which work they were taken.

1. Boris Pasternak: "Love is a lofty disease."
2. Stendhal, "On Love": "Love is like a fever, it can appear and fade away without the slightest feeling of human will."
3. Haruki Murakami, "Kafka on the Beach": "Every person who falls in love is looking for something that he lacks."
4. "The Physiology of Marriage" by Honore de Balzac: "Real affection is blind. You should not judge the people you love."
5. Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream": "That is why Cupids are depicted as blind, because a lover looks not with his eyes, but with his heart."
6. Fyodor Dostoevsky, "The Brothers Karamazov": "What is hell? Regret that one cannot love even more."

And there are a huge number of such statements. As for the nuances, they will all be different, but they will still have a single line.

Philosophers: Erich Fromm

Philosophers also have their own works on this topic. They talked a lot about love, giving information from a variety of points of view. Now I would like to pay attention to Erich Fromm and his work "The Art of Love". What interesting conclusions this philosopher made in his work. So, in his opinion, love is not just a sentimental feeling that can arise in a person. This is not enough, not enough. In order for love to develop, develop and grow morally, the person himself must. The first step that everyone must take is to realize that love is an art, akin to the art of living. And in order to understand love in its entirety, each person must perceive it as something more than a given. The philosopher also says that in addition to love, there is also some other form of relationship, a symbiotic unity. It is of two types:

1. Passive is to some extent masochism, when a person subordinates himself to the will of another, becomes his integral part. In this case, he loses his individuality.
2. Active is sadism, when one person subjugates the will of another person, making him his integral part.

However, mature love is the opposite of these forms of relationship. This is the union of two people while maintaining their personality, individuality, integrity. According to Erich Fromm, love is a kind of force that tears down walls, helping a person to reunite with another person. True mature love is a paradox: two people become one, while remaining two persons. Important nuances of love, according to the author:

1. If a person loves, he will give (himself, his life).
2. The person is fully interested in the life of their partner.
3. Partners must always respect each other.

Fromm about objects of love

1. Brotherly love is fundamental, the basis of other types. This is respect, care, responsibility.
2. Mother's love is the first love in the life of every person. Its essence, according to the author, should imply the woman's desire for the child to separate from her in the future.
3. Erotic love is complete fleshly unity with one person.
4. Self-love. The author writes that this should not be confused with egoism, these are different concepts. Only by loving himself, a person can become loved and someone else.
5. a religious form of love.

Philosopher Carl Jung

What other philosophers talked about love? So, why not turn to the writings of Carl Gustave Jung, who at the same time was a great psychiatrist and at the same time a student of Sigmund Freud? His main and favorite phrase: "Nothing is possible without love", from which many conclusions can already be drawn. According to the author, love is the most powerful all-conquering factor in a person's life. So, it is impossible to consider this topic without two archetypes that are inherent in every person: Anima and the so-called personification of the unconscious beginning of the representative of the opposite sex in the psyche of each individual person. These halves are attracted to people. What about Jung's love? The author's definition of love is that the traits hidden in a person are in another person, and they also attract him, arousing a feeling of love.

Anthropology about love

The definition of the word "love" was also tried to give such a science as anthropology. The work of the American scientist Helen Fisher "Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love" deserves special attention. Here she identified three fundamental whales of this feeling: attachment (a sense of security and calmness), romance (the most powerful stimulant of the emergence of love) and lust (satisfaction of natural needs).

Religion

It is worth mentioning that there is also a religious definition of love. The Bible says a lot about this feeling.

1. Prov. 10:12: "... a person's love covers all his sins ..."
2. Song of Solomon 8: 6-7: “... love is strong as death; she is fierce like hell; her arrows are fiery; its flame is very strong. Rivers and big waters will not flood it. "
3. 1 Pet., 4: 8 "... Have love for one another, because it is love that covers all sins."
4. 1 John 4: 7-8, 18: "... love is from God, everyone who loves is born of God and knows God."
5. 2 John. 6 "... love consists in all doing according to the commandments of God."

These are far from all the quotes about love that can be found in the main book of mankind, but they fully reflect the mood and definition of this feeling according to religious canons.

Psychology

1. Passion. Attraction, excitement. This is the physical side of love.
2. Proximity. Friendship, togetherness. The emotional side.
3. Obligations. Willingness to solve couple problems, care. This is the moral aspect of this feeling.

Greek love

The theme of love has been touched upon by all peoples and cultures. At this stage, I would like to talk about what types of love were distinguished by the ancient Greeks.

1. Agape. This is not just love, but more compassion. The highest type, when a person can give all of himself, without expecting anything in return.
2. Eros is passion. However, this is not always a bodily passion, it can also be spiritual. Eros by nature is delight, love.
3. Filia, or sons, is brotherly love. A calmer feeling, the main thing here is spirituality.
4. Storge is more like attachment. Most often it is conjugal love.

These four types of love are still basic today, but other subtypes of them appear in the modern world. Interesting may be a type like mania - this is madness, love-obsession.

Household level

As it was said above, for each person, love is something of his own, special. Everyone understands it in their own way, there is nothing wrong with that. How can you characterize love in a simple way, without referring to the opinions of scientists, writers or philosophers?

1. Love is a desire to do something good for a loved one, to constantly please him.
2. "What kind of love is there if I can't breathe without him" (film "Love and Doves"). Love is a desire to always be with a loved one, if not physically, then at least mentally.
3. Love is constantly thinking about whether a loved one is good: whether he is warm, whether he has eaten, whether everything is in order.
4. Love is more to give than to receive without thinking about it at all.

To love is to forgive, to try to be better, to ignore the shortcomings. Love is constant work not only on relationships, but also on yourself. This is work that can only be rewarded after years.

A person in many of his manifestations is an irrational being, especially this concerns emotions and feelings: sometimes it is not so easy to justify them from a logical point of view. If we talk about such a complex phenomenon as love - here the law of cause and effect completely ceases to work, because the state of love is too complex and multifaceted to be disassembled, which is called “brick by brick”.

Nevertheless, experts do not abandon attempts to explain the passion of love by chemical reactions, animal instincts, or, say, social laws. The following are eight sayings of scientistsin which they set out their vision of love.

1. "Love is like lust," - Lucy Brown, neurologist at the Medical College. A. Einstein, New York, NY

The experience of a lover is like a feeling of thirst, which can only be satisfied by the presence of the object of passion. All thoughts, actions, aspirations - everything suddenly obeys the desire to be near the beloved (or beloved). Of course, everyone has their own temperament, and everyone expresses romantic feelings in different ways, but any person, falling in love, experiences a state similar to euphoria, and it occurs only in the presence of the “second half”.

Having studied the brain activity of several couples of lovers using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), we came to the conclusion that when lovers are together, or think about each other, they activate areas of the brain that are also responsible for feeling joy from any reward. or recognition, and the strength of this feeling is quite comparable to thirst or hunger. We can say that falling in love is part of the reproductive mechanism inherent in us by nature itself: it contributes to the establishment of strong emotional ties between sexual partners and thus increases the chances of having children.

2. “Love is like having someone in your head.” - Helen Fisher, anthropologist at Rutgers University, New Jersey

Love is different, but I think there are three main types of it: sexual attraction, falling in love and deep affection. My colleagues and I have been studying the functioning of the brain of lovers for a long time, in one of our experiments, 60 men and women, aged 18 to 57, participated, whom we examined using MRI, analyzing the main manifestations of romantic feelings.

The first thing that a person begins to experience when he falls in love is a certain feeling of "specialty" and "uniqueness" of everything that is associated with the object of love - his (or her) clothes, car, street, whatever. The lover begins to focus on his passion in everything: mope when he (she) does not call and "glows" with happiness when the relationship is improving.

The state of falling in love is also characterized by a rapid heartbeat, increased sweating and a physiological state, which is also called "butterflies in the stomach." This is due to an increase in the production of the hormone dopamine, which causes delight in a person, a surge of energy and prompts to action - these sensations can be compared to the fact that someone who has settled right in his head constantly urges him to run somewhere, take measures and all for the sake of three the main words: "I love you."

I believe that love serves for more reliable reproduction of offspring: it forces us to focus all our attention on one partner and not be sprayed on casual sex.

3. "Love as a building material" - Daniel Kruger, psychologist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.

Love is a positive experience that contributes to the establishment of sustainable social bonds and the formation of stable relationships and, as a result, facilitates the creation of a family as the fundamental unit of society. Without it, we would more often act solely from our own short-term selfish motives and considerations of personal gain, which would inevitably affect the situation in society.

The feelings we have for our loved ones strengthen long-term relationships, which in turn has a positive effect on the birth of socially protected children. Love allows people to take care of their offspring until they become independent, and this, in my opinion, is its main socially significant function.

4. “Love expresses itself in the urge to take care.” - David Givens, Director of the Center for Non-Verbal Research, Spokane, Washington

First of all, love is an emotion, a feeling of affection and devotion that a person experiences in relation to someone or something. An ardent passion can be stronger, for example, love for family members or even for your own children, or it can only be expressed in sexual desire.

Love originates in the same part of the brain as maternal affection, the desire to take care of offspring, so I believe that it developed precisely from the maternal instinct. The fact that lovers feel the need to look after each other, help and support in everything confirms this.

5. "Love is sex" - Luis Garcia, professor of psychology at Rutgers University

Science knows a lot of evidence that sexuality plays a very important role in relationships. A number of studies show that satisfaction with intimate life directly affects, for example, the overall experience of marriage, in addition, according to our experiments, a person living a fulfilling sex life is more likely to find a long-term and fruitful relationship.

Together with a colleague, Dr. Charlotte Markey, we interviewed several couples who have lived together for a long time - in a civil marriage or registered, it does not matter. It turned out that one of the main stimuli in living together was their sexual attraction to each other. Also, a rich sexual experience has a positive effect on intimate life, and therefore on feelings, and if partners have about the same, their union has every chance of being happy for many years.

6. "Love is unthinkable without respect" - Keith Wax, psychologist, author of "Relationships for Dummies"

There is no love without mutual respect and trust. Lovers try to prove themselves from their best side, so successful relationships always consist of honesty, loyalty, emotional support and self-sacrifice. Love gives everyone a sense of their uniqueness and forces them to accept the uniqueness of the other: everyone believes that if his partner is good with him, it is necessary to take measures not to destroy the delicate balance. Therefore, any loving person seeks to defend the interests of his "second half" and satisfy her needs.

I believe that the opposite feeling to love is not hatred, but indifference: if you stop worrying about a person and do not feel the need to take care of him, this indicates a loss of respect, which means that there can be no question of love.

7. "Love is a long-term relationship." - Stephanie Ortig, a neuroscientist at Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

Everyone knows what love is, but no one can give a clear agreed definition. In my interpretation, I use the results of my psychological research and neuroimaging of the brain of lovers. In my opinion, love is a complex, positive and motivating mental state, characterized by the desire for unity with a certain person. This condition includes a number of chemical, emotional, and cognitive processes.

If, when communicating with a partner, the activity of certain sections of neurons is observed, this indicates the presence of love, and we do not know of any evidence that love cannot last as long as necessary, but the problem is that it is influenced by too many factors, the change of which is sometimes impossible to predict ... However, if we consider love as a well-established affectionate attitude towards someone, this definition includes such types of love as maternal and paternal, children's love for parents and love between sexual partners.

8. "Love as a Historical Constant" - Stephanie Koontz, historian at Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington

People throughout their history fall in love with each other, but passionate romantic feelings, until relatively recently, were not considered a worthy reason for a relationship, or even more so for marriage. Most of them got married and got married, obeying the will of their parents, who, as a rule, took into account only mercantile considerations when choosing a life partner for a son or daughter.

The situation began to change in the 19th century - love began to play a much more significant role in family relationships. People had to rediscover that they were attracted to the opposite sex and to recognize that love must be at the heart of any successful marriage. I believe that in our time, spouses and lovers should feel for each other not only a passion for love, but also friendly feelings. The combination of love and friendship will provide partners with a long, happy and fruitful relationship.

On a CT scan of the brain of a man in love, it is clear that he has excited zones responsible for the reward system. This is explained by the action of the hormone dopamine, which causes a feeling of pleasure. This is how the brain reacts to a potent narcotic substance - cocaine. At the same time, at the beginning of the appearance of a feeling, the level of dopamine rises very strongly, and then falls below normal, because of this, depression may occur. Since love feelings are similar in effect to cocaine, unhappy love can be cured. This is done as in the case of drug addiction: all reminders and stimuli are removed from a person's life, and the empty space is filled with something new, for example, another hobby or an interesting hobby. In animals that bind themselves in long-term relationships, biologists distinguish stages of desire, passion and affection in their union. Desire is explained by basic needs, passion for fixation on a specific object, and thanks to attachment, animals develop a strong bond when they are ready to reproduce and raise offspring for a long time with one individual. Scientifically, love in humans is similar to infatuation in animals. She appeared with the aim of procreation and helps to save efforts, not to waste her energy, but to seek only one partner. It is believed that the feeling of love lasts from 1.5 to 3 years, and then it is replaced by mutual respect, habit. Such a period guarantees the participation of the father in the most difficult time of raising a child. In some cases, for example, during separation, strong love feelings can last longer. It is not for nothing that it is believed that love is also blind. German scientists have found that a person in love turns off the brain areas responsible for rational thinking and negative emotions. In lovers, the level of serotonin is greatly reduced, the control system is turned off. Because of such chemical changes in the body, some people commit crimes, suicide, so some scientists are inclined to think that it is necessary to treat unhappy feelings with pills. Treatment should be aimed at increasing the amount of serotonin in the body, modern antideressers can successfully cope with this. A fading love can be saved by strong changes in the environment. In response, the brain receives an increased dose of all dopamine, so dating in a romantic setting, relaxing together can save a falling apart relationship. From a scientific point of view, love is very different for different sexes. A man really loves with his eyes, since a lover increases the activity of those parts of the cerebral cortex that are responsible for vision. But in women, love is associated with memory, so she remembers the behavior of her partner, analyzes the information received and draws conclusions about the possibility of further building relationships.

We think that the ability to love sets us apart from most animals. But from the point of view of science, all romantic experiences are just the cunning of selfish and cynical genes, whose only aspiration is endless reproduction.

Cunning

From the point of view of evolution, any living creature is just a set of genes that copy themselves. Genes can grow into cells, grow organisms, interact with each other, but in the end only those who manage to preserve their copies will leave a trace in history. To achieve the goal, genes go to all sorts of tricks. Some rely on simplicity and efficiency and produce as many copies as possible in the shortest possible time. For example, bacteria divide in two, and hydras sprout new organisms from themselves. This is called asexual reproduction. Other genes are trickier. They don't just copy themselves, but mix with other genes and create offspring from the resulting mixture.

This is the essence of sexual reproduction, which gave living beings a choice: with whom to “mix” so as to ensure the greatest success for the offspring? Asexual reproduction is only aimed at quantity. For sex, quality is important. The pick and mix strategy has proven to be extremely effective. She helped genes to master the entire planet - from mountain peaks to the seabed.

Using sexual reproduction, genes have built fancy machines like the human body for themselves - all in order to keep copying themselves. But what if we - intelligent adults - are not interested in the intentions of our genes? What if we don't want to reproduce? Of course, the genes foresaw this too. To deceive a person, they invented love. American anthropologist Helen Fisher divided love into three biological components: lust, attraction, and attachment. Just as in airplanes, individual motors operate independently of each other, so in the brain, the three components of love independently govern our emotions and desires. You can feel attachment to one partner, attraction to another and at the same time get excited at the sight of spicy photos of someone else.

Lust

Lust, or libido, is the desire to participate in sexual reproduction at all costs. With whom, for what purpose and with what outcome is not so important. The process matters, not the result.

An analogue of human lust can be considered the reaction of animals to pheromones. For example, they are isolated by sexually mature male mice. Pheromone molecules entering the nose of a female mouse bind to special receptors on the nerve endings. They transmit the signal "Time to breed!" right into the brain, which immediately begins to command: "Prepare for ovulation, pump sex hormones into the bloodstream, do not lose sight of the male!" Lust is the main driver of reproduction, and in Homo sapiens it works on sex hormones: estrogens and androgens. As an ancient mechanism, lust is blind, and moral norms are powerless against its oppression.

Attraction

If, for lust, everyone around you looks the same, then at the level of attraction there is a choice for which everything was conceived. The female deer will give preference to the male that wins the battle. The young lady will go on a date with the most charming boyfriend. From the point of view of neurophysiology, there is no difference between these events.

The main substance responsible for attraction, which is also called falling in love, is dopamine. As soon as the level of dopamine in the brain grows, euphoria comes, a person becomes overactive, loses appetite and sleep, worries over trifles and at the same time begins to think better.

The same effect is caused, for example, by cocaine and amphetamines, which make the body "squeeze" all the dopamine out of itself. Why would genes make a person nervous, but joyful and smart? The answer is simple: the gene transfer machine must overcome any difficulties, but bring the matter to sexual reproduction with the chosen partner. And to do this as quickly as possible, until another person appears who wants to participate in the mixing of genes. That is why the lover is so nervous and sees only one way out of the painfully sweet state: to achieve a lady of the heart. And, of course, deliver the genes where they should be.

Attachment

By evolutionary standards, attachment has appeared in living things quite recently. The superstructure over lust arose about 120-150 million years ago in mammals and the first birds. This is not surprising: if lust and attraction are based on obvious, momentary observations and immediate sensations, then attachment requires a look into the future, and this is much more difficult.

Why did genes invent such a complex mechanism? If we imagine that offspring appear immediately after fertilization and immediately begin an independent life, then attachment is even harmful: what is the point of limiting reproduction to just one set of genes? But the more complex living beings became in the course of evolution, the more time and energy their offspring required. It takes twenty minutes and a pinch of sugar to make a new bacterium. To get a full-fledged new person, you need nine months of pregnancy, comfortable conditions, a special diet, painful childbirth and a couple of decades of care and education.

With the increasing complexity of animals, reproduction has become a long-term construction, which must be planned in advance. Changing sexual partners like gloves became unprofitable: if the relationship ends after fertilization, then who will look for food? Neither attraction nor lust takes such complexity into account. Their mission ends when the genes are passed on to the next generation. They needed a way to get the breeding machines to choose a long-term rather than just an attractive partner.

The main "molecule of attachment" is the hormone oxytocin. It is released in huge quantities during childbirth, helping to cope with pain and forget about it in the future. This hormone promotes milk production, directly affects the manifestation of affection for children and stimulates parenting behavior. Oxytocin increases the desire to spend time with a partner, to maintain social and physical contact with him. We can say that oxytocin is the hormone of plans for the future.

Love

Systems that provide lust, attraction and attachment in humans are also found in other mammals. In studies of the role of oxytocin, for example, steppe voles are often used - these rodents are monogamous and attached to a partner. But this does not mean at all that love means the same to a vole as it does to a person. We need to look for a starting point for what we call love. It is believed that the emergence of love in humans is associated with the early evolution of great apes. Eight million years ago, the changing climate of West Africa forced our ancestors to leave the thinning forest and go to the savannah. In open spaces, it was necessary to move long distances, and already about four million years ago, the Australopithecines got to their feet, instead of climbing trees.

Straightening up, the female could no longer carry the baby on her back, and this made it difficult to find food. But upright posture freed the hands of the males, and they began to carry the obtained food over long distances, instead of having lunch on the spot. Families with the distribution of roles have gained an evolutionary advantage: females take care of children, males bring food. Under the new conditions, the ancient oxytocin system proved to be extremely useful.

After playing with the brain settings, evolution "connected" the rapidly developing emotions and consciousness of Australopithecus to the action of the hormone - improved nutrition and new opportunities for raising young have greatly increased its intellectual abilities. Less than three million years later, hormonal and emotional processes, invented by genes to copy themselves as efficiently as possible, overgrown with a dense shell of culture. Religions celebrated oxytocin, and medieval minstrels celebrated dopamine. But this fact should not at all upset people who seem to be losing control over their lives: after all, who, if not genes, knows better how to please us? So it's worth relaxing and having fun.

Time scale. Reproduction Chronicle

3.5-1.2 BILLION YEARS AGO (exact date unknown)
The emergence of sexual reproduction. Ancient bacteria exchange genes.

1.2 BILLION YEARS AGO
The first fossils of "men" and "women": the red algae Bangiomorpha.

0.5 BILLION YEARS AGO
Ancient jellyfish reproduce sexually, but females and males do not stand out. Hermaphroditism is still popular among invertebrates.

0.3-0.1 BILLION YEARS AGO
Arthropods discover pheromones: an explosive spread of "sex drive" among crustaceans and insects.

145 MILLION YEARS AGO
Birds master the air. The need to train chicks in the complex flying skill leads to the emergence of married couples and joint care of the offspring.

50 MILLION YEARS AGO
The males of some fish (for example, butterflies) guard the eggs along with the females.

2 MILLION YEARS AGO
Steppe voles use oxytocin as a "love hormone", forming stable monogamous pairs.

195 THOUSAND YEARS AGO
Modern people live in classic families: a man-earner and a wife-mistress.

Have you ever wondered about the reasons why you fall in love? Have you ever noticed that love is some kind of mysterious but natural "emotion" and it does something with your chemistry? Or have you come to the conclusion that love helps our species survive? Let's see what love is scientifically.

Serotonin

Serotonin plays an important role among the brain chemicals used to maintain feelings of love. Serotonin distracts your mind by making it think about your partner. It is like a filter that prevents other thoughts from becoming the center of attention. Sandra Langeslag and her colleagues report that serotonin levels are different in men and women when they are in love. Men in love have lower serotonin levels than women. Participants in love reported that about 65% of the time, their minds were occupied with thoughts of their significant other.

The third stage of love: Affection

When a couple successfully goes through the above two stages of love, their bond with each other becomes very strong. Affection is a bond that helps a couple take their relationship to an advanced level. At this stage in the relationship, couples often have a strong desire to have children and take care of them.

Investigating the "attachment factor", scientists have discovered two hormones that help maintain feelings of love for your partner. These hormones are oxytocin and vasopressin.

Oxytocin

Oxytocin, also known as the "cuddling hormone," is one of the most potent hormones released by men and women in equal measure, especially during orgasm and fondling. Oxytocin articulates the depth of love and maintains the attachment of partners. One study concluded that the more often partners have sex, the more attachment they develop. Oxytocin plays a key role in belonging and attachment in humans.

Likewise, oxytocin helps create a strong bond between mother and baby during childbirth. In addition, it is such a sensitive hormone that it automatically signals the breast to release milk when the baby sounds or touches it. Oxytocin and prolactin mediate specific female behaviors such as lactation and childbirth. This hormone also helps predict the behavior of the other person and improves interactions between couples, enhancing social bond.

Vasopressin

Vasopressin, our natural antidiuretic, works with the kidneys and controls thirst. This hormone is released in large quantities immediately after sex. Although the brains of women and men are structurally different, they both release vasopressin from the pituitary gland.

Vasopressin is known as an important hormone that promotes long-term relationships. A biological psychology study assessed 37 couples by measuring the level of neuropeptides in their blood and observed a relationship between vasopressin levels and spousal support, desire to maintain relationships, lack of negative communication, and the number of social contacts.

What Science Says About Love

We can say that love is one of the most delightful feelings in our life. The expression "love is blind" is correct because you never know when your brain is using the mechanisms of falling in love. A significant number of chemical reactions are involved in fueling lust, attraction and affection between partners. The partner does not need to be sublime, sexy or beautiful - this feeling is deeper than physical tactility. Love is a natural muse, a difficult but necessary feeling for all of us.