How Does Love Develop? The Brain’s Best Advice For Understanding Love
Are you in love? Are you in love with your own self, with your life, or with someone else? What would you describe your feelings towards love? How are they different from other feelings?
Love is a complex set of behaviors and emotions characterized by emotional intimacy, passion, commitment, and romance. It usually involves close caring, emotional closeness, compassion, protection, attraction, trust, and affection. Love can range from being mildly romantic to highly romantic, from being all about the shared feelings to being obsessed with it. It’s associated with a variety of positive emotional states, including excitement, happiness, life fulfillment, and euphoria, however it can also be associated with several negative states, such as anxiety, depression, guilt, resentment, and low self-esteem. We typically fall in love when we are in need for someone or when we have an insecure need for a mate.
Most experts believe that love happens when two people with opposite characteristics decide to make a relationship work. This is because love does not just happen by itself, it is usually learned by developing close attachments with someone who meets your needs. Love gets its boost from two major sources – your brain’s desire to connect with your heart’s desire for security and safety, as well as your body’s need for bonding with another human being. Developing an attachment with someone can increase your brain’s production of two neurotransmitters, oxytocin and dopamine. These neurotransmitters increase both your heart rate and your blood pressure, which in turn give you the feelings of love.
However, one of the greatest sources of love is our brain’s desire for attachment. Experts estimate that a person who has never experienced love before developing only a ten percent of the brain’s capacity for attachment. Once a person has fallen in love, his brain has consistently mapped out the attachment process, from the time he first eyed the object of his affection until he snuggles up in bed at night. The more loving the person is, the stronger and longer the brain will be able to map out this complex relationship. Experts suggest that people need a certain amount of security and safety in order to form strong attachments and to fully let themselves fall in love.
Oxytocin also plays a vital role in love. Oxytocin is said to work like an anti-depressant in the body, as it makes you feel comfortable and calm in stressful situations. In fact, many psychologists believe that a major cause of death throughout the world is caused by stress and the related emotional distress. While most of us have a hard time relating to others in the same emotional way as our parents and siblings do, we also find it hard to relate to our friends. This is because we do not know how to relate to our peers the way we do our parents and siblings.
A person may also fall in love while he or she is in a relationship. However, this does not mean that the other partner’s influence goes unnoticed. This happens when a couple goes through an immense amount of conflict or when one partner is abusive and the other is not. When a person falls in love with another person, he or she is already very much connected with that other person on an emotional level, so it is only natural for the relationship to grow.