What is love? Why does love change so quickly from passion to indifference? Isn’t love supposed to come from the bottom of our hearts and isn't it supposed to make us feel incandescently happy?
Surprisingly, love is all about the brain and as opposed to helping us make rational decisions, it can make the rest of our body go haywire, as we can all agree that falling in love is an emotional process. We embark on a full-on inner rollercoaster, a combination between feelings of well being, excitement, contentment and many more.
But how can one fall out of love after being so attracted to another person? The person who used to get your heart beating now leaves you cold. The way you perceive them has changed, and what if it’s mutual?!
Believe it or not, the explanation is chemical. There is one word which can easily describe this sudden change of heart. Dopamine. When we’re in love, this hormone is released in the brain, being the main reason behind attraction. Dopamine is generally released when we do things that bring us pleasure, which therefore makes us feel giddy, energetic, and euphoric, even leading to decreased appetite and insomnia. Guess what? You actually can be so “in love” that you can’t eat and can’t sleep.
Moving back to attraction, the things that we find so fascinating in another person and the powerful emotions that we feel have both something to do with the “unexpected” element. The release of dopamine is often a reaction to the unforeseen, to possibility and anticipation. As human beings, we can get a rush of dopamine from similar surprises, such as the arrival of a note from a loved one or a message from a friend whom we haven't seen in years. We are keen to find out more about these people and we seek new interactions with them. But when those cute little moments become regular events, the novelty wears off and so does the dopamine rush. This simple statement offers a chemical answer to an age-old question: “Why does the love spark go away?” Our brains are programmed to crave the unexpected and thus look to the future, where every fascinating possibility begins. As I stated earlier, dopamine is released both when we feel pleasure and as a reaction to unexpected events. If we combine the two, the result would be: the pleasure of anticipation. We constantly make predictions
about what is going to happen in the near future. Dopamine produces a different feeling than simple satisfaction after a pleasant event, it’s exactly the pleasure of anticipation, the possibility of something unfamiliar and better.
So how can we turn love into a long lasting feeling? Cause for sure real love must exist, right? Absolutely. Love has to transform from something we anticipate into something we must take care of. The switch is between “search” and “possession”.
The novelty that triggers dopamine does not last forever. Ultimately, when it comes to love, that fantasy and attraction from the very beginning is eventually lost and we find ourselves faced with a choice: we can move on to a love that is fueled by daily appreciation of the other person or we can end the relationship and go in search of another rollercoaster ride.
Bibliography:
● https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/love-actually-science-behind-lust-attraction-
companionship/
● https://marriedpeople.org/once-the-spark-is-gone/
● “The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and
Creativity―and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race”, Authors: Daniel Z. Lieberman& Michael E. Long
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