Can I ask you a personal question?

🧠 This is your brain on love

There is perhaps no feeling we crave more as humans than the feeling of being in love (preferably, with those who love us back). But sometimes the concept of being in love seems to be easily conflated with the process of falling in love. And the latter? Well, it seems like a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, there are those who say that there’s nothing more beautiful than the honeymoon phase of a relationship, that you should try to prolong it as much as possible, that the relationship will never quite have the same shine and excitement after it’s over. But for every song of praise there also seems to be an equal yet ominous warning: “Do you really know who this other person is yet? Can you really see their flaws? Are you missing all the red flags? If you haven’t found them yet, it’s probably just a matter of time. Don’t get your hopes up too high. You need to protect yourself.”

Luckily or unluckily for us, nothing as complex as falling in love is going to be as black-and-white as these two extremes tend to suggest, each anxiety-inducing in their own right. And like most things that fall under the same umbrella, there’s probably some truth on both sides. So rather than simply siding with the hopeless romantics or the outspoken pessimists, we wanted to figure out what’s actually going on in the brain when it comes to falling in love. While we may not be able to voluntarily control the release of chemicals or firing of neurons (can confirm, have tried), we think that understanding the what, why, and how of what’s happening in our heads – and using that information to our benefit – is still a surprisingly useful plan B.

Disappointingly, a quick search for “honeymoon phase” on Google Scholar doesn’t yield a ton of results, riveting or not. (What else could research funding possibly be going to these days??) But psychology has not entirely abandoned us on the subject. In the 1970s, American psychologist Dorothy Tennov first coined the term “limerence,” which many point to as the scientific equivalent for what we might feel in the so-called “honeymoon phase.” According to Tennov, limerence is “an involuntary interpersonal state that involves an acute longing for emotional reciprocation, obsessive-compulsive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and emotional dependence on another person.” Limerence typically has three phases: infatuation, crystallization, and deterioration. As psychosexual therapist Cate Mackenzie puts it, infatuation “includes addictive type behavior, thinking about the other 24 hours a day, stress, heart palpitations, stomach anxiety, and even intrusive thoughts. It’s best described as an uncontrollable overwhelming desire for someone.” Next, in crystallization “you decide that the person is flawless and you idealize them by putting them on a pedestal.” And finally, there’s deterioration: “the final stage of limerence is the disappointment in the love object and letting go of them.”

If you’ve ever crushed hard on someone, this concept probably doesn’t sound too foreign to you. Mackenzie also highlights the tendency to idealize and ignore incompatibilities or warning signs in relationships characterized by limerence. And while the attraction experienced in limerence is very much real, it is decidedly not the love that we’re likely longing for…so why does it feel like it is?

💊 Your love is my drug

Here’s where the brain chemicals come into play. According to research out of Rutgers, attraction “involves the brain pathways that control ‘reward’ behavior, which partly explains why the first few weeks or months of a relationship can be so exhilarating and even all-consuming.” Attraction is particularly characterized by the release of dopamine in the reward centers of the brain. And what else has a strong relationship to dopamine? Addiction. As one Harvard graduate student puts it, “the same regions that light up when we’re feeling attraction light up when drug addicts take cocaine and when we binge eat sweets…In a way, attraction is much like an addiction to another human being…And addicts going into withdrawal are not unlike love-struck people craving the company of someone they cannot see.”

As we’re falling in love, not only are our brains flooded with dopamine, but levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin also become depleted, according to Harvard Medical School professors Richard Schwartz and Jacqueline Olds. This drop in serotonin leads to what Schwartz describes as “intrusive, maddeningly preoccupying thoughts, hopes, [and] terrors of early love.” Interestingly, low levels of serotonin are also common in those with obsessive-compulsive disorders. And it doesn’t stop there. Along with increased dopamine and decreased serotonin comes heightened stress hormones cortisol and norepinephrine, which play a “large role in the fight or flight response, which kicks into high gear when we’re stressed and keeps us alert.” On top of all of this, brain activity in regions that we typically rely on for judgment and fear responses drops in the early stages of falling in love. According to professors from University College London, both the amygdala and the frontal cortex relax their intervention during this time, exposing us to be more blind to the red flags of a romantic partner than we otherwise might be.

❤️ Attraction to attachment

As we transition past initial attraction towards attachment, oxytocin takes center stage. Sometimes called the “cuddle hormone” or the “love drug”, oxytocin is a hormone produced in the hypothalamus and released in significant quantities in response to skin-to-skin contact and sex, as well as childbirth and breastfeeding. Accordingly, oxytocin “provokes feelings of contentment, calmness, and security” which are associated with both mate bonding and parent-infant connection. Some studies have also found that “attachment anxiety and oxytocin are positively linked in romantic attachment to a statistically significant degree” while others point out that our brains’ release of oxytocin suggests that “parental and romantic attachment share underlying bio-behavioral mechanisms” (both of which remind us of NTP’s previous deep dive into attachment styles). In women in particular, oxytocin increases our communal and familial tendencies, making us feel more attached to our family, friends, and partners.

Over time, as cortisol and serotonin return to normal pre-falling-in-love levels, the stress, anxiety, obsession, and infatuation that may have characterized the early stages of our relationship subside while the feelings of attachment stay. Or in other, less scientific words, the honeymoon phase comes to an end. This specific combination of factors, though, does make you wonder a bit…do we turn a blind eye to potential red flags early on, only to later find ourselves attached to someone we wouldn’t like to be quite so attached to? For some, this may very well be the case: the end of the honeymoon phase may also be the end of a relationship that didn’t have a strong enough foundation beneath the limerence. For others, however, the end of the honeymoon phase may instead mark the transition from an exciting new relationship to a more lasting love.

Let us know what you think by voting in our poll and leaving an anonymous comment.

💭 Our two cents

As much as we – two self-diagnosed type A psychopaths (term used lovingly) – would like to have full control over our emotions and thus brains and thus complex neural functioning, we regrettably do not. But especially as women, we also understand just how much simply knowing how our bodies operate can help us live happier, healthier lives. You probably aren’t going to be able to stop your heart from dropping into your stomach or your face from turning red or your voice from stuttering just a little too much when you first start dating someone new. And you’re probably not going to be able to fully, objectively evaluate and act on your perceived compatibility with them in real time. But honestly, you probably shouldn’t. If we were 100% analytical / 0% emotional 100% of the time, I don’t think we would have particularly exciting and fulfilling romantic lives.

Connecting with someone new is beautiful and fun simply because it is unique and different and something we haven’t experienced before. Of course, that doesn’t mean that it’s always going to work out or even that the end goal of each of our relationships should be the same. What matters most is that we’re honest with ourselves about how honest with ourselves we’re being. Being hopeful and optimistic is every bit as important as having our own standards and looking out for ourselves. This is all to say that we think it’s probably possible to live in the moment during the early stages of a relationship while also being realistic and internally acknowledging the things you might not be fully sure about yet. Of course, you don’t want the ground to totally fall out from under you several months down the road or spend a big chunk of your indispensable time on something you know isn’t right for you, but there are also some things that you’ll just never know until you try. :)

💃 The girls have spoken

Last week’s poll results from So...am I supposed to love my job?:

💌 Up Next

That’s all for today! If you liked this edition of Not That Personal, we think one of your friends probably will too – refer one (or two or three) below.

Have something to say? We’d love to hear it – reply to this email or leave an anonymous comment here.

See you next week ;)

💖 S & J