Prom is just around the corner and love is in the air! But before you pick your date let’s talk about love and what it does. It might seem like you’re following your heart, but really, it’s all in your head. Literally! Love is a chemical reaction in your brain.
The feeling of love happens when your brain releases chemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin that make you feel happy. These chemicals work together to create the powerful emotions we associate with love. When you’re with someone who triggers the release of these chemicals, your brain recognizes it, and you feel drawn to that person because it feels good to be with them. This can lead to an attachment and the feeling of infatuation which makes you view that person as a good romantic partner and makes you want to be with them.
Knowing this, we can find that being “lovesick” is actually a real thing. When your brain releases all those hormones it also raises your levels of cortisol, which is your stress hormone, and it has proven that it can suppress your immune system. Being away from your person can lead to a drop in dopamine, making you feel unhappy without them. This can lead to impulsive and obsessive behavior, making people act irrationally through the first stages of love. This level of infatuation is what causes the “honeymoon” phase of a relationship where everything is new and exciting, and you feel as if nothing can go wrong in your relationship.
But don’t worry! If you’re in a relationship for more than a year, that’s about the time it takes for all these hormones to level out, and you’ll go back to “normal.” This is when you see more of the oxytocin release, which causes a more calm and mature form of love. Oxytocin helps cement bonds, raise immune function, and begins to confer the health benefits found in married couples, who tend to live longer, have fewer strokes and heart attacks, be less depressed, and have higher survival rates from major surgery and cancer. So overall being in a long term and mature relationship can have some serious health benefits!
Love is so incredibly complex and hard to study, so there’s still so much we don’t know about it and how it affects a person. While love is still a mystery in many ways, science shows that a healthy relationship can be one of the best things for both your heart and mind!
