The Biology of Love
Falling in love is one of the great human experiences. We tend to feel so connected, safe and protected during this time. We may feel understood for the first time in our life. Why can’t love stay this way?
The answer is that everything that grows has times of growth and contraction. Relationships are no different. One of our primal instincts is to belong with other people. This is why we’re polite to others. This is why we take a shower and brush our teeth. When we’re at risk of being ostracized, we get scared. Not to bring up any painful childhood memories, but remember when team captains used to choose the team players? It doesn’t matter when you were chosen. If you were chosen first, you felt great, admired and belonging. If you were chosen last, you felt shame, hurt and a lack of belonging. This demonstrates our desire to belong.
Did you ever give in to peer pressure? Did you ever cry when you were rejected by a partner? We like to belong; we don’t like to be separated.
To go further, we as humans are pack animals. We depend on the “herd” to stay safe. So rejection from the herd is potentially life threatening. That primal part of our brain (whose job it is to keep us alive) remembers this. Any rejection triggers anxiety from that primal part of our brain. Of course, most situations are not at all life threatening, but the primal part of our brain cannot discern the level of threat. It just knows on or off.
There is a plethora of research out there on the science of love. Falling in love does actually release a cascade of hormones that create a pleasure response similar to taking drugs. This lasts approximately 6 to 8 months, but it can vary greatly in my experience.
These hormones create an obsessive, trancelike state. Remember thinking about your partner all the time? Remember daydreaming about when you’d see each other again? Remember thinking about them last thing before you fell asleep at night and first thing when you woke up in the morning?
When you’re in that hormone/drug induced state, you’re also experiencing a magical time in other ways. Subconsciously, you’re vying to win the affection and bond with your partner. You are learning about each other and it’s all new and exciting. You delight in the “firsts” that you experience together. You may open up more to this person than you ever have to anyone. All this combines to create a peak experience. But we know peak experiences can’t last!
Because this part seems so great, we often make a commitment at this point. Whether it’s marriage or another commitment, our subconscious checks that box off. Okay, we have our herd, we belong; don’t need to expend a lot of energy in that area anymore. You both begin to focus on other areas of your life.
One of the great things in Western culture is the privilege of finding and choosing your own partner. That’s not the case in many parts of our planet. In fact, in 3/5 of the world, marriages are still arranged. Those arrangements are based on convenience, wealth, or status, but most likely love has no place in those arrangements. Having a choice in who you marry is a relatively new concept.
Of course, this choice is a double edged sword because when things go wrong, we tend to feel it’s because we made a wrong choice. Our primal brain says, “Oh crap, we don’t belong in this herd.” What happens when we get anxious? We have 3 responses: fight, flight or freeze. So we being to fight to re-establish that feeling of belonging by possibly trying to change our partner. Or we decide our best option is flight. We leave this herd to be on our own or find another herd. Or we freeze and do nothing. We sit in misery too scared to make a move one way or another.
Having capacity for higher thinking is a gift of humans however. We can recognize that we’re feeling anxious. We can acknowledge that we want to fight, run or freeze and we can BEHAVE in a different way. Relationships run into problems when one of the partners begins to feel insecure in some way. This is why I encourage you to make your #1 job creating safety and security for your partner.
There’s a classic relationship book called The Mirages of Marriage. In this book, one woman told this story. “Marriage is not what I assumed it would be. One assumption after another has crashed down on my head….Marriage is like taking an airplane to Florida for a relaxing vacation in January and when you get off the plane you find you’re in the Swiss Alps in the cold and snow instead of swimming and sunshine. After you buy new clothes and learn a little of the language, you can have a great vacation there too. But getting off that airplane is quite a surprise and adjustment.”
Relationships run in cycles of change and growth just like anything in nature. My model is below:
The answer is that everything that grows has times of growth and contraction. Relationships are no different. One of our primal instincts is to belong with other people. This is why we’re polite to others. This is why we take a shower and brush our teeth. When we’re at risk of being ostracized, we get scared. Not to bring up any painful childhood memories, but remember when team captains used to choose the team players? It doesn’t matter when you were chosen. If you were chosen first, you felt great, admired and belonging. If you were chosen last, you felt shame, hurt and a lack of belonging. This demonstrates our desire to belong.
Did you ever give in to peer pressure? Did you ever cry when you were rejected by a partner? We like to belong; we don’t like to be separated.
To go further, we as humans are pack animals. We depend on the “herd” to stay safe. So rejection from the herd is potentially life threatening. That primal part of our brain (whose job it is to keep us alive) remembers this. Any rejection triggers anxiety from that primal part of our brain. Of course, most situations are not at all life threatening, but the primal part of our brain cannot discern the level of threat. It just knows on or off.
There is a plethora of research out there on the science of love. Falling in love does actually release a cascade of hormones that create a pleasure response similar to taking drugs. This lasts approximately 6 to 8 months, but it can vary greatly in my experience.
These hormones create an obsessive, trancelike state. Remember thinking about your partner all the time? Remember daydreaming about when you’d see each other again? Remember thinking about them last thing before you fell asleep at night and first thing when you woke up in the morning?
When you’re in that hormone/drug induced state, you’re also experiencing a magical time in other ways. Subconsciously, you’re vying to win the affection and bond with your partner. You are learning about each other and it’s all new and exciting. You delight in the “firsts” that you experience together. You may open up more to this person than you ever have to anyone. All this combines to create a peak experience. But we know peak experiences can’t last!
Because this part seems so great, we often make a commitment at this point. Whether it’s marriage or another commitment, our subconscious checks that box off. Okay, we have our herd, we belong; don’t need to expend a lot of energy in that area anymore. You both begin to focus on other areas of your life.
One of the great things in Western culture is the privilege of finding and choosing your own partner. That’s not the case in many parts of our planet. In fact, in 3/5 of the world, marriages are still arranged. Those arrangements are based on convenience, wealth, or status, but most likely love has no place in those arrangements. Having a choice in who you marry is a relatively new concept.
Of course, this choice is a double edged sword because when things go wrong, we tend to feel it’s because we made a wrong choice. Our primal brain says, “Oh crap, we don’t belong in this herd.” What happens when we get anxious? We have 3 responses: fight, flight or freeze. So we being to fight to re-establish that feeling of belonging by possibly trying to change our partner. Or we decide our best option is flight. We leave this herd to be on our own or find another herd. Or we freeze and do nothing. We sit in misery too scared to make a move one way or another.
Having capacity for higher thinking is a gift of humans however. We can recognize that we’re feeling anxious. We can acknowledge that we want to fight, run or freeze and we can BEHAVE in a different way. Relationships run into problems when one of the partners begins to feel insecure in some way. This is why I encourage you to make your #1 job creating safety and security for your partner.
There’s a classic relationship book called The Mirages of Marriage. In this book, one woman told this story. “Marriage is not what I assumed it would be. One assumption after another has crashed down on my head….Marriage is like taking an airplane to Florida for a relaxing vacation in January and when you get off the plane you find you’re in the Swiss Alps in the cold and snow instead of swimming and sunshine. After you buy new clothes and learn a little of the language, you can have a great vacation there too. But getting off that airplane is quite a surprise and adjustment.”
Relationships run in cycles of change and growth just like anything in nature. My model is below:
You see the cycle starts with attraction which leads to love. If all goes well, we move to commitment. Being committed means we’re released from that subconscious drive to impress each other. Our primal brain says, “Ah, we belong, we can relax now.”
Of course because we’re different people, we are going to come into conflict with each other. Accepting this as part of a relationship is important. When we see conflict as risk of losing our herd, we may react poorly. Instead conflict is a sign we need to negotiate.
I want to say a little more about this. Conflict can really create a lot of anxiety on many levels that we’re not even aware of. If you’ve come from conflict ridden families of origin, this may strike complete fear in your heart type of discomfort. We know the potential risk, the potential fallout. Coming from a broken home or a severely dysfunctional family causes wounds that you may not recognize. This is another reason that emotional work on you is so important.
Negotiation is the next step in the cycle. Negotiation means you actually express what you want or need in a situation. Then you decide if you can live with the outcome of that negotiation. For example, my partner gets angry and smashes plates. I express how uncomfortable this makes me and ask him if he would seek out a better way to deal with his anger. He says no. I have a choice to make about whether it’s worth it to purchase new plates every time this happens or if I want to stay with someone who is destructive in this way. So I either accept this as my partner’s behavior (acceptance) or I leave the relationship (separation). This is an extreme example, but I bet you have some situations of your own.
Real life example: Your partner is unfaithful and you have not agreed as a couple that this is ok. There is no negotiation in your mind. The first time, you are able to forgive and accept. The second time it happens, you choose to separate.
Real life example: Your partner drinks excessively. You negotiate with them to get treatment and limit or stop drinking. They are able to get sober and you both accept the new status quo.
Real life example: Your partner leaves their dirty socks on the floor every day. You negotiate with them to place the dirty socks in the hamper. They agree. In other words, your partner accepts your request. But, they continue to leave their dirty socks on the floor. You’re faced with the choice to continue with conflict around this, accept it or allow it to separate you. This probably isn’t going to be enough to make you leave a relationship, but what about when enough of these smaller things pile up on top of each other?
This time of conflict and negotiation can be tense and chaotic. Negotiation means change is happening and that can create more stress and insecurity. When your partner makes requests of you, the primal brain gets activated a little bit. If we’re feeling unsafe, we may respond with defensiveness that’s way out of proportion to the situation. This makes negotiation painful if not impossible.
Conflict is part of every healthy relationship. Learning how to handle conflict productively and not destructively is important.
The great thing about going through all this pain is the cycle comes back around to love again. Successfully navigating your way around this cycle takes you to deeper and deeper levels of love and security.
So if you navigate this recurring relationship life cycle, everything should be hunky dory, right? Not necessarily. Relationships can still lose their sparkle. During the career focused years or child raising years, we share our attention with many areas of life. Often just the portion we can allocate to our partner is smaller. It still needs to intentionally be allocated. I like to use an analogy of a pizza here. Everyone who makes demands on your time gets a piece of it. Think of your time like a pizza, who gets the first hot juicy pieces? Who gets the slices with the most toppings? Which one does your partner get? Do you leave them the hard cold crusts? Many times we take our partner for granted and the leftovers are what we give them.
Make some changes in your time and attention allocations to allow your partner some prime time. This means you might have to forgo a few extracurricular activities. Believe me; your kid isn’t going to shrivel from neglect if you go to dinner with your partner instead of watching soccer practice twice a week. If you’re not willing to do this, how does your relationship stack up in priorities in your life? I’m betting there’s some belief system work that needs to happen here.
While our brains like familiarity, they also like a little novelty. When we stop exploring our partners, when we think we know our partner, they become a little dull to us. This means we’re not as interested in being with them. It means we think we know what to expect from them. We have to find ways to continue to surprise each other. That may mean bringing flowers home once in a while or trying something new in the bedroom. Novelty can come in many different ways. Surprising and delighting your partner is one of the best ways to keep the spark alive.
If you successfully navigate the trials of relationship, you find yourself past the season of competing demands and you can find a new equilibrium with each other. In my own relationship, this post child rearing period has allowed my husband and I to reconnect and reestablish our priorities to be each other. It feels great.
So it’s true, the work never ends. The work does get easier though. You can make your relationship much more pleasant and rewarding than it is now.
Of course because we’re different people, we are going to come into conflict with each other. Accepting this as part of a relationship is important. When we see conflict as risk of losing our herd, we may react poorly. Instead conflict is a sign we need to negotiate.
I want to say a little more about this. Conflict can really create a lot of anxiety on many levels that we’re not even aware of. If you’ve come from conflict ridden families of origin, this may strike complete fear in your heart type of discomfort. We know the potential risk, the potential fallout. Coming from a broken home or a severely dysfunctional family causes wounds that you may not recognize. This is another reason that emotional work on you is so important.
Negotiation is the next step in the cycle. Negotiation means you actually express what you want or need in a situation. Then you decide if you can live with the outcome of that negotiation. For example, my partner gets angry and smashes plates. I express how uncomfortable this makes me and ask him if he would seek out a better way to deal with his anger. He says no. I have a choice to make about whether it’s worth it to purchase new plates every time this happens or if I want to stay with someone who is destructive in this way. So I either accept this as my partner’s behavior (acceptance) or I leave the relationship (separation). This is an extreme example, but I bet you have some situations of your own.
Real life example: Your partner is unfaithful and you have not agreed as a couple that this is ok. There is no negotiation in your mind. The first time, you are able to forgive and accept. The second time it happens, you choose to separate.
Real life example: Your partner drinks excessively. You negotiate with them to get treatment and limit or stop drinking. They are able to get sober and you both accept the new status quo.
Real life example: Your partner leaves their dirty socks on the floor every day. You negotiate with them to place the dirty socks in the hamper. They agree. In other words, your partner accepts your request. But, they continue to leave their dirty socks on the floor. You’re faced with the choice to continue with conflict around this, accept it or allow it to separate you. This probably isn’t going to be enough to make you leave a relationship, but what about when enough of these smaller things pile up on top of each other?
This time of conflict and negotiation can be tense and chaotic. Negotiation means change is happening and that can create more stress and insecurity. When your partner makes requests of you, the primal brain gets activated a little bit. If we’re feeling unsafe, we may respond with defensiveness that’s way out of proportion to the situation. This makes negotiation painful if not impossible.
Conflict is part of every healthy relationship. Learning how to handle conflict productively and not destructively is important.
The great thing about going through all this pain is the cycle comes back around to love again. Successfully navigating your way around this cycle takes you to deeper and deeper levels of love and security.
So if you navigate this recurring relationship life cycle, everything should be hunky dory, right? Not necessarily. Relationships can still lose their sparkle. During the career focused years or child raising years, we share our attention with many areas of life. Often just the portion we can allocate to our partner is smaller. It still needs to intentionally be allocated. I like to use an analogy of a pizza here. Everyone who makes demands on your time gets a piece of it. Think of your time like a pizza, who gets the first hot juicy pieces? Who gets the slices with the most toppings? Which one does your partner get? Do you leave them the hard cold crusts? Many times we take our partner for granted and the leftovers are what we give them.
Make some changes in your time and attention allocations to allow your partner some prime time. This means you might have to forgo a few extracurricular activities. Believe me; your kid isn’t going to shrivel from neglect if you go to dinner with your partner instead of watching soccer practice twice a week. If you’re not willing to do this, how does your relationship stack up in priorities in your life? I’m betting there’s some belief system work that needs to happen here.
While our brains like familiarity, they also like a little novelty. When we stop exploring our partners, when we think we know our partner, they become a little dull to us. This means we’re not as interested in being with them. It means we think we know what to expect from them. We have to find ways to continue to surprise each other. That may mean bringing flowers home once in a while or trying something new in the bedroom. Novelty can come in many different ways. Surprising and delighting your partner is one of the best ways to keep the spark alive.
If you successfully navigate the trials of relationship, you find yourself past the season of competing demands and you can find a new equilibrium with each other. In my own relationship, this post child rearing period has allowed my husband and I to reconnect and reestablish our priorities to be each other. It feels great.
So it’s true, the work never ends. The work does get easier though. You can make your relationship much more pleasant and rewarding than it is now.
