How the brain influences love

As some of us know, there are many different steps in order to fall in love. It may start as a small crush and then progress into something much more. Or maybe it’s a love at first sight situation. Regardless, when this happens the neurons in your brain are working overtime to produce the feelings we feel when this occurs. The first part of falling in love would be feeling attraction. Attraction itself is frequently attached to the brain neuron dopamine. According to Katherine Wu of Harvard university, dopamine is a chemical that is released from the brain when we do things that make us feel good and can often result in giddiness or excitement. A prime example of this would be “Butterflies' ' or flushed faces as both are general side effects and are often the tell-tale signs of a small crush forming

Attraction isn't the only factor for falling in love: the feeling of attachment also occurs. As stated by CNN health, the hormone “oxytocin,” literally nicknamed the cuddle hormone, is what allows us to bond and form friendships and relationships while also being the cause of feeling attachment to our family. 

 “I just always knew I loved them,” Nikki Chihoki, 10, answered after being asked how attached she felt to her family.

However, the hormones do have some drawbacks. As claimed by Maria Cohut from Medical News Today,  dopamine for instance, is the one responsible for feeling jealous irrational behavior. The same thing can be said for oxytocin, while yes, it does allow us to form attachments–if taken to extreme measures it can cause the person involved to disassociate from their environment and act recklessly. There is also a region of the brain that can essentially be turned off through feelings of love. These regions that are turned off are the ones that regulate rational behavior, self-awareness, and critical thinking. Due to this, some people may experience blinded love. This provides an explanation to why many people ignore red flags even if they’re glaringly obvious to everyone else.

At the end of the day, even if it’s all up to hormones, it means that you can fall in love with anyone, how far it progresses is still ultimately up to each one of us.