The science of sex, love, attraction, and obsession | Big Think
Summary
TLDRThis script explores the science behind romantic love, focusing on the role of neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin in fostering feelings of attachment, obsession, and intimacy. It discusses how romantic love differs from lust and companionship love, highlighting the addictive and intense nature of early-stage relationships. The speakers emphasize the importance of novelty, physical touch, and emotional communication in sustaining long-term relationships. They also suggest that modern trends, like cohabitation before marriage, might lead to stronger, happier marriages by allowing couples to better understand each other before committing.
Takeaways
- 💖 Romantic love often feels like an addiction due to the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter linked to reward and reinforcement.
- 🌍 People can fall madly in love despite significant differences, such as distance, religion, or circumstances, because of the intensity of romantic love.
- 🧠 Romantic love triggers different brain regions compared to maternal love, showing distinct neurotransmitter activity for each.
- 🤔 Over time, romantic love can settle into a less intense form, making space for more stable companionship or attachment-based love.
- 💊 The neurotransmitters involved in romantic love, like dopamine and serotonin, can cause obsessive thinking and intense longing for a partner.
- 🤗 Oxytocin, the 'cuddle hormone,' is released during physical closeness, fostering feelings of attachment, especially after intimacy.
- 💬 Long-term relationship success often hinges on shared values and good communication to manage differences and reduce the need for compromise.
- 💪 Engaging in novel experiences together can help sustain feelings of romantic love by activating the brain's reward system.
- 👩❤️👨 Regular physical affection, including cuddling, holding hands, and sleeping close, strengthens attachment by boosting oxytocin levels.
- 💬 Positive communication, like offering frequent compliments and focusing on each other's good qualities, can enhance emotional well-being and relationship satisfaction.
Q & A
What is the difference between romantic love and lust according to TED Fischer?
-Romantic love is characterized by an intense desire for another person with the expectation that it will persist into the future, whereas lust is generally fleeting and does not have the same intensity of desire or expectation for a long-term relationship.
How do dopamine levels affect feelings of romantic love?
-Dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with reward, increases during romantic love, causing feelings of pleasure and addiction toward the partner. It creates a sense of novelty and reinforcement, making the person want to be with their partner repeatedly.
What role does serotonin play in romantic relationships?
-Serotonin is associated with obsessive-compulsive behaviors and rumination. In romantic love, serotonin levels cause individuals to obsessively think about their partner, similar to how people with OCD might fixate on certain thoughts or behaviors.
How does oxytocin influence the bond between partners?
-Oxytocin, known as the 'cuddle hormone,' is released during physical intimacy, particularly after orgasm. It strengthens feelings of closeness, intimacy, and attachment between partners, fostering a deep emotional bond.
Why might people in early-stage romantic love make irrational decisions?
-In early-stage romantic love, regions of the brain responsible for decision-making and planning in the prefrontal cortex may shut down. This leads people to act on emotions and desires, sometimes making irrational decisions such as falling in love with someone who is unavailable or unsuitable.
Why are more couples taking time before getting married in modern relationships?
-Many couples delay marriage because they are cautious about potential divorce and want to ensure compatibility. By taking time to get to know their partner through one-night stands, living together, or long-term dating, they reduce the risk of entering into a marriage that may fail.
What does research suggest about couples with similar values?
-Studies indicate that couples with similar values and life goals tend to have longer-lasting relationships because they face fewer conflicts over fundamental issues. Fewer differences reduce the need for compromise, making it easier to maintain harmony over time.
What are some brain regions activated in long-term happy partners?
-In long-term happy partners, brain regions associated with empathy, emotional regulation, and positive illusions are active. These regions help partners empathize with each other, control their emotions, and focus on their partner’s positive qualities rather than fixating on negatives.
How does novelty contribute to sustaining romantic love?
-Novel experiences together, such as trying new activities or going to different places, stimulate the dopamine system, which is linked to romantic love. Engaging in new experiences helps sustain feelings of excitement and passion in the relationship.
What daily habits can help sustain a long-term relationship?
-To sustain a long-term relationship, partners should regularly express positive emotions, engage in physical touch, maintain sexual intimacy, and share new experiences. Complimenting each other, staying in touch through physical contact, and practicing empathy also contribute to long-term happiness.
Outlines
💖 Addiction and Obsession in Romantic Love
During romantic or passionate love, people can become addicted to their partners, similar to how addiction functions with drugs or other stimuli. The brain releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter linked to reward, which explains why love can feel so intoxicating. Romantic love also activates serotonin, often associated with obsessive thoughts, leading to rumination on one's partner. Other neurotransmitters, such as oxytocin and vasopressin, play roles in bonding and stress regulation, intensifying feelings of attachment and even stress in relationships. Early-stage love triggers brain areas linked to drive and obsession, while regions responsible for decision-making and rational thought can become less active, contributing to risky relationship decisions.
💍 Caution in Modern Relationships
As intense romantic love subsides, it's essential to spend significant time with a partner before making long-term commitments. Modern relationships, with phenomena like one-night stands and cohabitation before marriage, reflect a growing caution toward marriage, with many fearing the emotional and financial fallout of divorce. People increasingly approach marriage as the final stage of a relationship, not the beginning. Research supports that this slower approach to love may lead to happier marriages, as individuals take the time to learn about each other's values, habits, and compatibility before making serious commitments.
🧠 The Brain’s Role in Sustaining Love
Sustaining long-term relationships requires maintaining the brain systems responsible for sex drive, romantic love, and attachment. Regular sex boosts testosterone and oxytocin, fostering intimacy and bonding. Novel experiences help maintain romantic feelings by stimulating the dopamine system. Physical touch and regular communication are crucial for reinforcing attachment. Studies of couples in long-term relationships show that empathy, emotional regulation, and positive illusions—focusing on a partner’s good qualities while downplaying the negatives—are essential for a happy partnership. Additionally, small acts of kindness and positive words strengthen both emotional bonds and physical well-being.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Romantic Love
💡Dopamine
💡Serotonin
💡Oxytocin
💡Attachment
💡Neurotransmitters
💡Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
💡Novelty
💡Empathy
💡Slow Love
Highlights
Romantic love can feel like an addiction to your partner due to the increase in dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with reward.
People can fall in love with someone who is married, lives far away, or has different beliefs, due to the overpowering energy of intense romantic love.
Over time, as neurotransmitter levels settle, what's left is the potential for a longer-term relationship, characterized by companionship and emotional stability.
Romantic love is defined as an intense desire for another person, with the expectation of a long-term future together, distinguishing it from lust.
Studies using functional MRI show that different brain areas are activated when thinking about romantic love versus maternal love.
Dopamine increases during romantic love, leading to feelings of addiction and obsessive thinking about the partner.
Oxytocin, the 'cuddle hormone,' is released during physical intimacy, strengthening feelings of attachment and bonding.
The early stages of love activate brain regions linked to drive, craving, and obsession, while deactivating areas associated with decision-making.
Before deciding to marry, it is important to let the early intense feelings of love subside to gain a clearer perspective on the relationship.
The modern trend of 'slow love'—spending more time getting to know a partner before marrying—may lead to more stable and happier marriages.
Studies show that 81% of married individuals would remarry the same partner, indicating the potential for stronger, more successful unions due to slow love.
Shared values and similarities between partners can contribute to a longer-term relationship by reducing the need for compromise.
Sustaining a long-term relationship involves maintaining sex drive, romantic love, and attachment through regular physical and emotional connection.
Novel activities together can stimulate dopamine, helping to sustain feelings of romantic love over time.
Long-term happy couples show brain activity linked to empathy, emotional regulation, and positive illusions—focusing on what they love about each other.
Transcripts
During romantic or passionate love, you're gonna feel the sense of being addicted to your partner.
People who are madly in love can
fall madly in love with somebody who's married, who lives on the other side of the planet,
who comes from a different religion. And somehow, they'll say to themselves,
we'll work it out, we can work this out. Because of all that energy of intense romantic love.
Over time, as this whole neurotransmitter thing settles out, what's left?
TED FISCHER: We define romantic love as an intense desire for another,
with the expectation that it's gonna persist into the future. And that distinguishes it from lust,
which is generally fleeting, and also for more companionship love, which doesn't have that
intensity of desire, that you want to possess the other in some way.
GAIL SALTZ: Studies have looked at activity in the brain when recalling passionate or romantic love,
versus say maternal love, and finds that different centers definitely are more
active. And they would, say, put people into the functional MRI, and they said, think about your
partner, or think about your lover. And certain areas lit up, or they said, think about your mom,
and different areas lit up. Which is important, because different areas are responsible for the
release of different neurotransmitters. Which then come to affect your future feeling states and
future behaviors. During romantic or passionate love, what happens from a neurotransmitter
standpoint, those chemicals that are released when you have that particular experience?
Dopamine goes up. Dopamine is essentially the neurotransmitter of reward.
So it is a neurotransmitter that's released when you have new or novel experience, but particularly
experiences that are reinforcing. Like gambling. Or something that is really addictive. In fact,
literally addictive. It's the neurotransmitter if you snorted cocaine that is most responsible for,
wow, that was great, and I totally wanna do it again. So that is a neurotransmitter that
definitely goes up when you are in the throes of romantic or passionate love. And what does that
mean for you? It means that you're gonna feel the sense of being addicted to your partner.
And in fact, it's also the neurotransmitter that goes up for people who have obsessive compulsive
disorder. Does that mean you're gonna develop OCD? No. But what it does mean is you're probably going
to obsess over your partner. In comes another neurotransmitter, that's called serotonin. It is
definitely a neurotransmitter that is active for obsessive compulsive disorder.
And for depression. Do you become depressed? No, you really don't. But what you do
do is a feature of depression called rumination. So you think about your partner over and over and
over again in this really obsessive manner. And, if your partner is separated from you,
you're going to have this longing, where you're wanting to be with them, kind of like you'd
want to be with a drug if it was taken away from you and you were already addicted to it.
There are changes in other neurotransmitters as well. So if you're physically with your partner,
the neurotransmitter oxytocin, which is kind of known as the cuddle neurotransmitter,
and that makes you feel warm, and snuggly, and intensely bonded to this person.
It is particularly released following orgasm. So, you know, if you're having sex with your partner,
and things go well, you're gonna feel very attached to them,
exceedingly intimate with them. Partially because of that neurotransmitter.
There are other neurotransmitters that actually also change. Vasopressin, which has to do with
stress level. There's this whole release of neurotransmitters that make you feel
very obsessed, very addicted, thinking constantly about them, very intimately, cuddly, attached, and
stressed. Actually, it is a stressful condition, to some degree, to be really into your partner.
HELEN FISHER: One of the problems with early stage intense feelings of romantic love is that it's
part of the oldest parts of the brain that become activated. Brain regions linked with drive, with
craving, with obsession, with motivation. And in fact, some cognitive regions up in the prefrontal
cortex that have evolved much more recently begin to shut down. Brain regions linked with
decision-making, planning ahead. As people who are madly in love can fall madly in love with somebody
who's married, who lives on the other side of the planet, who comes from a different religion.
And somehow they'll say to themselves, we'll work it out, we can work this out. Because of
all that energy of intense romantic love. And also the shutting down of various brain systems
linked with decision-making. So one of the things that I say to people is before you decide to marry
somebody, spend a good deal of time with them. So some of that early stage intense feelings
of romantic love can begin to subside. And you can begin to really see what you've got.
As a matter of fact, I'm very optimistic about the future of relationships,
because we're spending so much time now getting to know somebody before we wed. You know, a great
many people are having these one night stands, and friends with benefits, and living together
before they marry. And there was a recent study, which they asked a lot of single people who were
living together with somebody why have they not yet married? And 67% were terrified of divorce,
terrified of not only the legal and the financial and the economic, but the personal and social
fallout of divorce. And so I began to realize, maybe all of this hooking up, and friends with
benefits, and living together is not recklessness. Maybe it's caution. Maybe singles are trying to
learn every single thing they can about a potential partner before they tie the knot.
And in short, marriage used to be the beginning of a relationship, now it's the finale. And I
think that that is very positive. As a matter of fact, I work with match.com, I'm their chief
scientific advisor. And we did a study of married people. Not on the site match.com, of course.
Of 1100 married people. And I had reasoned, well, if there's this long pre-commitment
stage of getting to know somebody, maybe by the time you walked down the aisle,
you know what you've got, you're happy with what you've got, and you're gonna build a long,
stable really happy marriage. Maybe we're going towards a time of happier marriages,
because relationships can end before you tie the knot. So within this study, I asked these 1100
married people a lot of questions, but one of the questions was, would you remarry the person
you're currently married to? And 81% said yes. And I think that with what I call fast sex, slow love,
with this slow love process of getting to know somebody very carefully, over a long period of
time, it's gonna help the brain readjust some of these brain regions for decision-making.
You're gonna get to know how this person handles your parents at Christmas, or whatever holiday.
You know, how they handle your friends, how they handle their money, how they handle an argument,
how they handle getting exercise, and their own health and your health, et cetera. You learn a
lot about the person. I'm very optimistic about the future, because of this concept of slow love.
SALTZ: In terms of the science to support what is a good partner choice, for the long haul,
it does seem that having very similar values, and to some degree, having a lot of similarities in
general, often leads to a longer term ability to maintain the relationship. And why is that? And
I'm not talking now about sexual compatibility. I'm not talking about that wonderful,
passionate feeling. But I'm really talking about just maintaining any relationship.
It is easier when you have fewer bridges to cross. So over time, as this whole neurotransmitter thing
settles out, what's left to be able to maintain your relationship going forward? If you're
arguing over everything, because basically, you fundamentally don't agree on most things,
that is a challenge. Not saying it's a challenge that can't be managed.
And I certainly wouldn't say, for example, that opposites can't attract, because they often do.
But the question is, what do you do with that down the road? If you're a different religion,
if you believe differently in how money should be managed, if you have different goals in terms of
family rearing, career aspirations, long-term how you want to live your life.
These are bridges that have to be crossed with a lot of communication, and a lot of compromise.
To some degree, studies support the less compromise you have to make, the easier. And
that's not surprising, right? That's easy to understand. So choosing someone with
some similarities will make for less compromise down the road.
And then the question becomes, how good are you and your partner individually at communication,
at compromise, at being able to
make choices that really aren't your first choice, for the service of some greater good?
FISHER: We all wanna sustain a long-term happy partnership. And psychologists will
give you a long list of smart ways to sustain it. But I'd like to say what the brain can add.
I studied the brain. And the first thing that you wanna do is sustain the three basic brain
systems for mating and reproduction. Sex drive. Have sex with the partner. Have sex regularly
with the partner. If you don't have time, schedule the time to have sex with the partner.
Because when you have sex with the partner, you're driving up the testosterone system,
so you're gonna want to have more sex, but you also have all the cuddling, which is gonna drive
up the oxytocin system, and give you feelings of attachment. And having sex with the person,
any kind of stimulation of the genitals drives up the dopamine system and can sustain feelings
of romantic love. And of course, there can be good jokes about it, and relaxation about it,
that is good for the body and the mind. So have sex with the person and sustain that brain system
of the sex drive. To sustain feelings of intense romantic love, do novel things together. Novelty
drives up the dopamine system and can sustain feelings of romantic love. And this isn't just in
the bedroom. Just go to a different restaurant on Friday night. Take your bicycle instead of a car.
Read to each other in bed. Sit together on the couch, and have a discussion about something new.
Read new books together. Novelty, novelty, novelty sustains feelings of intense romantic love.
You also wanna sustain feelings of deep attachment. And to do that,
you have to just stay in touch. Learn to sleep in the person's arm. At least start that way.
Cuddle after dinner. Walk arm-in-arm arm down the street. Hold hands together. Put your foot on top
of his foot or her foot while you're having dinner. Gently, of course. But stay in touch.
That drives up the oxytocin system, and can give you feelings of deep attachment to the partner.
So, you wanna sustain all three of those brain systems, sex drive, feelings of romantic love,
and feelings of deep attachment. But we've also found out what's going on in the brain
in long-term happy partners. We did a study, a brain scanning study, of people who were married
an average of 21 years. And those people who were married an average of 21 years,
who were still madly in love with their partner showed activity in three brain regions. A brain
region linked with empathy, a brain region linked with controlling your own emotions,
and a brain region linked with what we call positive illusions, the simple ability,
but sometimes hard, to overlook what you don't like about somebody, and then focus on what you
do. So last but not least, we've now known that if you say several nice things to your partner
every day, I would suggest five, but if you can only pull off two or three, whatever.
Say nice things to your partner. That actually reduces their cholesterol, reduces their cortisol,
which is the stress hormone, and boosts their immune system. But it also boosts yours.
So what the brain says about a happy long-term partnership is overlook what you don't like and
focus on what you do, express empathy for the partner, control your own emotions, have sex
with the partner, do novel things together, stay in touch, and say several nice things every day.
And your brain will help you sustain a long-term deep attachment. We're built to love.
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