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Simply put, she says, that person becomes the center of the world.
You have an intense craving to be with that person, not just sexually, but
emotionally. You can list the things you don't like about them, but all that
gets pushed aside and you focus only on what you do like about them.
What's
going on biologically, though, is far less romantic, and it explains why we
sometimes cheat on those we love.
Romantic love is essentially just
elevated activity of the reward hormone dopamine in the brain.
In the TED talk Fisher explains an experiment where
she and a team of scientists scanned the brains of people who were in love. The
team showed the smitten person a neutral photo and then a photo of their
beloved. They recorded which regions of the brain were active while the person
gazed at the photo of their partner.
The researchers found that one of
the most important brain regions that became active when each person looked at
a photo of their partner is the reward system — the same brain area that lights
up when a person takes cocaine or has an orgasm.
That means that "romantic love
is not an emotion, it's a drive," Fisher said. "And in fact, I think
it's more powerful than the sex drive."
Many other studies have found the same thing: love operates as a
motivation and reward system in the brain. So, if love is rewarding, what
drives us to cheat on people we fall in love with?
The problem is that romantic love isn't the only brain system that
is activated when we fall for someone. There are actually three brain systems
related to love, Fisher explained.
There's the sex drive, which is like an "intolerable neural
itch," to get us out searching for a range of partners to help pass on our
genes. There's romantic love, which helps us focus our mating energy on one
person. And then there's attachment, the calm and security we feel with a
long-term partner so we can raise children with them as a team.
However, those three brain systems,
sex drive, romantic love, and attachment, aren't always connected to each
other.
So
it's possible to feel deep attachment to a long-term partner at the same time you feel intense romantic love toward someone else and even also feel sexual attraction toward another person, Fisher
said.
"In short, we're capable of loving more than one person at a
time," Fisher said.
And that's why, Fisher says, some people may cheat on their
partner.
It's why someone can lay in bed at
night thinking about deep feelings of attachment to one person and swing to
thoughts of romantic love for another person.
"It's as if there's a
committee meeting going on inside your head as you try to decide what to
do," Fisher said. "I don't think honestly that we're an animal that
was built to be happy — we're an animal that was built to reproduce. I think
the happiness we find, we make."
This all sounds like a cynical take
on love, but Fisher says that, despite all these straightforward and
unavoidable biological processes, there's still mystery and "magic to
it."
TANGAZO
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