Everyone always tells me, especially my parents, “You WILL find the one, one day and be happy together for the rest of your lives.” Yet, since I haven’t fallen in love yet, I always find it hard to believe and question different things. When will I find the one? Why hasn’t my cousin who is thirty years old find the one yet; why hasn’t he fell in love? And then I also question, how is possible that after twenty six years my parents still love each other so much? There has to be a scientific reasoning on how and why we are capable of falling in love with someone and become so emotionally attached to them I constantly ask myself. If you read here, you will see that it talks about the basic things that causes us to feel the way we do when we fall in love- dopamine and adrenaline. These things cause us to feel the affection and attachment that we do towards another individual. Dopamine has to do with the emotions we feel itself towards your significant other and as you can all guess, adrenaline has to do with the rush of our energy that we get for whoever it may be. Something that really caught my eye and that I found really cool to learn about while reading this, was that MRI scans show that love affects the center part of our brains allowing us to feel the way we do. Who would have ever imagined that an MRI scan has the potential to read something like this? Definitely not me! Along with this, if you read more here, you will understand the concept of the three phases of love: lust, attraction, and attachment.
Here is a brief description of what each one of these phases are in charge of:
- LUST: in charge of the desire that we feel for the individual.
- ATTRACTION: when we feel a certain desire for someone, blood flows to our brain during this phase
- ATTACHMENT: what we feel towards our significant other that convinces us we want to be with them
After reading about this and learning that science does in fact actually have a reasoning behind as to why we feel the way we do when we fall in love makes things that I questioned in the past suddenly make sense.
Sources:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140206155244.htm
When scrolling through deciding which blog posts I would decide to read, this one interested me very much! Love is something that we see every day, whether it is through our parents, friends, strangers, TV shows or songs – It is everywhere. I think you chose a good topic and I specifically enjoy how you touched on the three phases.
This is a very interesting article. The idea of “love” as a whole is interesting, because so many people have so many different definitions of it. What may seem like love to one may not be to another. So how do we centralize one definition of it? What makes love a central idea? It’s very interesting to think about.
This is something I wonder a lot too – especially how my parents have been together so long (26 years, too!). I also wonder a lot about falling out of love and why divorced parents seem to be the norm now-a-days – nothing wrong with that but what changed throughout time to make divorce rates increase? Falling in love is a scary thing to think about, especially when you mention your 30 year old cousin who is still waiting to find love. Here’s a video on how love effects the brain (around 40 seconds):
Hi! I found it so interesting reading your blog because I totally agree with you. I always wondered if there is some scientific reasons that connect someone with another person. And I always asking myself what is actually love and where is actually my true love? I found some love songs and hope you enjoy them!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emkgbgujOOk
Its interesting you chose to blog about love. Its something everyone searches for but is indescribable. The chemicals are a significant role in our affection for others but do you think something else may play a factor? Here is a link that talks about why we love kissing so much.
http://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/features/kissing-benefits?page=3
While it is the norm that people will “fall in love” at least once in their lives, we must also take into account LGBTQ people. Aromantics ( https://www.asexuality.org/wiki/index.php?title=Aromantic ) fall under the umbrella of LGBTQ people. Aromantic people, while being entirely capable of loving people, will not ever be “in love” with someone. They may love you deeply and strongly as a friend or family member, but that’s not the same as what people think of as being in love with someone.