This article addresses the question of whether love can be explained scientifically. It concludes that while feelings of love seem to be hormonally driven and change, their scope and duration varies from person to person, and that it is difficult to explain love completely with science.
It’s spring with cherry blossoms. For men and women without friends of the opposite sex, it may be the season when they need someone more than ever to hold their hand and walk alongside them with a happy smile on their face. Some people say that when you’re in love, the world looks different, and it’s like you’re in another world. But why is it that even people who feel this way eventually come back to the real world after a while? To answer these questions, can love be explained scientifically? Can we understand love through the brain, the part of the body that controls the mind?
Many scientists have already tried to explain love scientifically to answer these questions. Scientists have published some interesting findings about how our brains change when we fall in love. We’ve all heard that the brain of a person in love is similar to the brain of a person addicted to drugs, or that the serotonin released during love makes us “blind” to our partner’s flaws.
Love goes through three stages: longing, attraction, and attachment. At each stage, the brain releases hormones that correspond to each stage. In a nutshell, during the longing phase, the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen are released to stimulate sexual desire. In the next stage, attraction, you feel more than just sexual desire, you feel passionate about your partner, you lose your appetite, and you think about them all day long. Dopamine, norepinephrine (also known as adrenaline), and serotonin play a leading role in this phase. We temporarily become the “biggest romantics on the planet. In the final attachment stage, the brain releases oxytocin and vasopressin. These hormones are known to be linked to procreation and, although the love may not be as intense as before, they make us feel more connected to each other and emphasize mental connection.
The very idea that love is a hormonal process can be off-putting to those who believe in fated love. So, if love is really a hormonal thing, does it have an expiration date after all? Does it have a shelf life of only two years, or three or four years at most, as some say?
The dictionary definition of love is as follows ‘the feeling or state of mind of being sexually attracted to and passionately fond of another person’, ‘the feeling of a superior being cherishing a lesser being, as a parent cherishes a child, a teacher cherishes a disciple, or a god cherishes a human being’, and ‘the desire to help and understand others’. We can all nod our heads in agreement with these definitions. But for each person, love exists at the intersection of the universal definition and their own definition of love. For some, love may be over when the “attraction” stage is over, when you feel like your heart will burst at the mere touch of their hand. But for someone who values the intimacy and emotional security they feel from their partner beyond the heart palpitations, their love is still a work in progress. In the end, the scope and definition of love varies from person to person, so there is no generalized answer to the question of whether love has a shelf life.
It’s hard to say yes or no to the question of whether love can be explained by science. I am still reluctant to say that love can be fully explained by science, but I have a contradictory attitude that even if I can explain the failures of my past relationships with scientific mechanisms, I still expect that one day I will meet my own destined love that defies scientific logic. While the beginning of love can be explained to some extent by science, its end is ultimately a matter of personal judgment and choice.
However, understanding the scientific mechanisms of love can certainly help you make it last longer. If you know that emotional changes during love are caused by hormones, you have more chances to work on each other before you experience the sadness of separation.
When you think about the fact that in an infinite amount of time and space, you’ve found someone to stimulate your serotonin release, and that you’ve caused serotonin to flow in their brain, love is a miracle. Trying to explain love scientifically doesn’t have to be seen as irreverent. On the contrary, it gives us a weapon in our arsenal to better protect our love.
