Explore Science Behind Love, On Occasion of Egyptian Valentine's Day

As the Egyptian Valentine ’s Day is looming we thought we might educate people on how a person actual falls in love through actual scientific evidence rather than spiritual reasoning. Although love has long been a topic for philosophers and poets, there is an actual science on how exactly you can fall in love.

Falling in love is affected by biological changes in the biochemistry of the brain. Science has identified three basic parts of how exactly “your body” falls in love, each driven by an array of brain chemicals.

According to a team of scientists led by Dr. Helen Fisher at Rutgers, romantic love can be broken down into three categories: lust, attraction, and attachment.

Lust:

The first, lust, is driven by the levels of testosterone (men) and estrogen (women) in our bodies. Lust is driven by the desire for sexual gratification. The evolutionary basis for this stems from our need to reproduce, a need shared among all living things. Through reproduction, organisms pass on their genes, and thus contribute to the perpetuation of their species.

Attraction:

The second, attraction, is similar in feeling to the effect of certain drugs or alcohol. The emotion of euphoria, and the release of a jumble of chemicals in the brain, including dopamine (pleasure), adrenaline (fight or flight) and norepinephrine (alertness), can make falling in love feel like an addictive rush. In the early stages of a relationship, even seeing a picture of your partner is enough to release dopamine, giving you intense pleasure.

Finally, attraction seems to lead to a reduction in serotonin, a hormone that’s known to be involved in appetite and mood. Interestingly, people who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder also have low levels of serotonin, leading scientists to speculate that this is what underlies the overpowering affection that characterizes the beginning stages of love.

Attachment:

The final phase, attachment, sees the release of dopamine and norepinephrine replaced with oxytocin (the ‘cuddle’ hormone), which is when you may begin to feel closely bonded and start making long-term plans with your partner. Oxytocin is often nicknamed “cuddle hormone” for this reason. Like dopamine, oxytocin is produced by the hypothalamus and released in large quantities during sex, breastfeeding, and childbirth. This may seem like a very strange assortment of activities  not all of which are necessarily enjoyable – the common factor here is that all of these events are predecessors to bonding.