Love is one of the most extraordinary sensations that human beings can enjoy. But, Have you ever had your heart broken? Have you had your heart broken into pieces?
The chemistry of love is capable of making you feel high, make you suffer a low, or make you feel bad for someone. That love is like a drug is totally true, and it has certain really curious side effects.
As a study by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine points out, when love is broken, just as when a person is addicted to drugs, the consequences of the addiction are so strong that they can lead to serious depressive and obsessive behaviors. As we have seen in a recent article, love can cause emotional dependence. In the following lines you will know why.
The chemical compounds and hormones that love generates
Love releases dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin, which is why when we fall in love we feel excited, full of energy and our perception of life is magnificent. But the neurochemicals of falling in love come in spurts and over time, just as happens when someone uses drugs for a long period of time, tolerance comes or what is commonly known as habituation .
When the chemical cascade descends, there are many people who interpret it as a loss of love (MacDonald & MacDonald, 2010). What really happens is that the neuronal receptors have already become accustomed to that excess chemical flow and the lover needs to increase the dose to continue feeling the same. That can turn a natural fluctuation into a crisis, and the beautiful phrase can arrive: “I don’t feel the same anymore.” But leaving a relationship isn’t always that simple.
The brain needs a recovery process to return to normal levels of chemical flow and it takes time to regain stability.
Oxytocin: a hug is worth a thousand words
The chemical cascade can make us lose our minds, but why does this happen?
Expert neurologists such as Gareth Leng believe that Oxytocin helps forge permanent bonds between lovers after the first wave of emotion The hormone works by “rewiring” the billions of neural circuits. This hormone is known as the trust or hug neurotransmitter and is released in large amounts during orgasm and in smaller amounts when holding your hand or when animals lick their babies.
Oxytocin is an endogenous substance (secreted by the body) and acts like a drug (exogenous substance introduced into the body from the outside), releasing transmitters such as dopamine, noradrenaline (norepyrephrine) or serotonin. These neurotransmitters allow the brain to be flooded with phenylethylamine. This chemical compound is from the amphetamine family, and lasts in the brain for about 4 years according to the theory of Donald F. Klein and Michael Lebowitz that emerged in the 1980s. Chocolate is rich in this compound, therefore It is common for excessive amounts to be consumed during “lovesickness.”
Reptiles release oxytocin during sex, but mammals produce it all the time That’s why reptiles stay away from other reptiles except when mating, while mammals form attachments to family members, litters, or flocks. The more oxytocin is released, the more attached you feel to the other person. But we must keep in mind that the levels of neurotransmitter or hormone segregation also depend on our beliefs and our perception of things. The ideas, prejudices, values, experiences, expectations, or fantasies we have can cause us to release more or less chemicals. This process follows a fixed pattern: more contact, more oxytocin, more trust (more strengthening of neuronal connections). Expectations or imagination also act as a form of contact and follow that pattern.
But we do not realize that obviously, lovers do not always meet the expectations they have of each other, whether they are realistic or not. That can lead to a state of frustration. Besides, Contact with an ex-partner can revive that pattern or connection between neurons and that is why most psychologists who are experts in love recommend a therapy of all or nothing to get over a breakup. When you stop maintaining contact with the person you love, connections weaken, and with the passage of time, relapses become less and less frequent.
Oxytocin also plays an important factor in jealousy. For the mammalian brain, any loss of trust is a life-threatening emergency. When a sheep is separated from its flock, oxytocin levels drop and cortisol levels rise. Cortisol is the sensation we experience as fear, panic or anxiety. It works for the sheep by motivating them to reconnect with their flock before they are eaten alive. In humans, cortisol turns frustrated expectations or lack of trust into emergency situations.
Serotonin: the neurotransmitter of happiness
Getting respect feels good since it stimulates the release of serotonin (Cozolino, 2006). In the animal world, social dominance brings with it more mating opportunities and more offspring. Animals do not dominate because of long-term conscious goals, they dominate because serotonin makes them feel good.
You will see this in many people, and in yourself, you must admit that romantic attention from a person of higher status triggers strong feelings and makes you feel good. The problem arises because your brain always wants more respect to get more serotonin. Your partner can give you that feeling at first and can give you the respect you need or help you feel respected by others But his brain takes for granted the respect she already has, and as time goes by, she wants more and more to get a bigger dose of good feelings. That’s why some people always make more demands on their loved ones, and others constantly look for higher status partners or lovers. Self-esteem plays an important role in this aspect and to avoid making mistakes, it helps to better understand the origins of our neurochemical impulses.
Serotonin acts on emotions and mood. It is responsible for well-being, generates optimism, good humor and sociability and is known to play an important role in inhibiting anger and aggression. Low serotonin levels are associated with depression and obsession (symptoms of heartbreak). Antidepressant drugs are responsible for increasing serotonin levels to correct the neurochemical deficit, and that is why Prozac (the most famous antidepressant on the planet) is called the drug of happiness.
Constant positive experiences and positive thoughts also increase serotonin levels. On the other hand, unpleasant thoughts, bad news, talking about sad and worrying things or getting angry completely inhibit the activation of serotonin.
Dopamine: addicted to love
Dopamine is related to pleasure, and is the neurotransmitter that plays an important role in gambling, drug use, and also in love When we fall in love, dopamine is released, making couples feel euphoric and energetic. “If someone is unique in his life and he focuses on that person, it is because the dopamine system has been activated,” says Helen Fisher (2004), biological anthropologist.
Dopamine is important as it is involved in the reward system. Pleasure makes us feel good, have sex, eat food, and do things that allow us to survive. But in both drugs and love, when the external (drug) or internal (oxytocin) stimulus disappears, it can create serious problems for a person. Then the monkey and the obsession appear.
Norepinephrine: the dose of adrenaline
Norepinephrine or norepyrephrine is the neurotransmitter that induces euphoria in the brain, exciting the body and giving it a dose of natural adrenaline This causes the heart to beat faster, blood pressure to rise and causes us to breathe more heavily so that more oxygen reaches the blood. It causes the symptoms of sweaty palms and blushing in the early stages of falling in love.
Animals are surprisingly picky about who they hang out with. Free love is not something natural. In each species, sex has something preliminary. Animals only have sexual relations when the female is actively fertile, except for bonobos (who do it for food and to resolve conflicts). Female chimpanzees only have sex every five years. The rest of the time they are pregnant or lactating, and without ovulation, males are not interested. When opportunity knocks, it is an important event. Natural selection produced a brain in humans that evolved to maximize reproduction, and happiness neurochemicals evolved to promote reproductive behaviors. That doesn’t make much sense in a world with birth control and sustainability pressures. But in the wild, you had to focus on reproducing many babies. Therefore, natural selection has created a brain with happy chemicals to reward reproductive behavior.
Love promotes reproduction, which causes a large amount of chemicals that produce happiness. Sex is only one aspect of reproductive behavior. Love motivates you to travel the world in order to be alone with that special person. Of course, reason is above these biological banalities, but the neurochemicals of happiness make it feel so good to be in love that the brain looks for a way to achieve more. Neurochemicals do their work without words, and we look for words to explain the madness of our motivations. Sometimes it is simpler to deceive or manipulate yourself than to try to understand it.
In summary, we want to be happy and have the maximum neurochemicals of happiness We expect that from love and other aspects of life. But no matter how many neurochemicals we get, in the long run, the brain becomes accustomed to falling in love as when there is tolerance to the drug. Knowing why this happens can help you manage your behavior despite confusing neurochemical signals.
There are good news. He does not blame himself if he is not the same as the first day with his partner. You have to know how to distinguish love from infatuation Love has to do with beliefs and values, and falling in love is a series of chemical reactions produced in different brain regions that make us have an idyllic perception of a person. Even so, it is not a bad thing, it has simply had to live with the operating system that has kept human beings alive for millions of years.
