The Drug Called Love

Today’s question is something that I was asked by my bestie. It is somewhat emotional (or maybe spiritual, i don’t really know) question but I will take a strictly biological stance on. So here goes,

What Is Love?

If you ask a biologist (specifically a neurobiologist), they would surely say that love is just a bunch of chemicals gone haywire in your brain. As Munnabhai once said, “Apun ke bheje me chemical locha hai.”

The conventional view is that there are three major drives in love - libido (sexual desire), attachment, and partner preference. There are many neurochemicals that govern these behaviours including testosterone, estrogen, vasopressin, dopamine, and oxytocin. Testosterone and estrogen regulate the sexual part of love while oxytocin and vasopressin are more geared towards developing a sense of attachment between people.

High levels of oxytocin and vasopressin are also related to the so called feeling of “true unconditional love” that a mother feels for her child. It is often shown in studies that the amount of oxytocin is directly correlated to the amount of energy and time a mother invests in her child. Such high levels of oxytocin activity are rare (also takes a lot of time to develop) when forming bonds with other people and thus, we end up desiring for (and running after) ‘the one’ in vain.

Dopaminergic pathways are activated during the experience of romantic love which creates a pleasurable feeling. The pathways are also associated with addictive behaviour, consistent with the obsessive behaviour and emotional dependency often observed in the initial stages of romantic love. That’s why many neurobiologists will refer to love as an addictive drug.

Most of the neurobiology studies compare the levels and activities of these compounds before and after people “fall in love.” Thus, they don’t really tell us more about the causes of love, but rather about how it affects the human body. More info is required! Let’s have a look at a different discipline called evolutionary psychology.

Evolutionary psychology has proposed several explanations for love. Monkey infants and children are for a very long time dependent on parental help. Love has therefore been seen as a mechanism to promote mutual parental support of children for an extended time period. Another is that sexually transmitted diseases may cause, among other effects, permanently reduced fertility, injury to the fetus, and increase risks during childbirth. This would favor exclusive long-term relationships reducing the risk of contracting an STD.
It has been suggested that the human capacity to experience love has been evolved as a signal to potential mates that the partner will be a good parent and be likely to help pass genes to future generations.

Science has recently touched upon the subject of love and has since been able to tell how it chemically affects our body. However, the purpose of love has been subject to wide speculation. Explaining love isn’t really that simple though. Apart from the chemicals and the logical reason for the development of such feelings, feelings have a sort of psychological abstraction that is not easy to capture.
At the end of the day, that’s why were special, we are a biological bag of chemicals wrapped up in psychosocial abstractions.