The Intricacies of Love: Exploring the Effects of Dopamine and Oxytocin in Relationships

[Love Media Jack Dai column]A while ago, my friend became single again, and began to enter the state of courtship like a male peacock, and became beautiful. With strong financial resources, he has good conditions; but with a pure personality, he is actually a straight man.

It may be that people have the opportunity to choose again in middle age. From his choice of meeting new friends, it can be seen from his eyes that he secretly harbors the motive of “fulfilling the dream of youth”: he tries to attract young, beautiful and plump women.

When I was spanking and listening to his recent results, I remembered reading a piece of research by neuroscientist Stephanie Cacioppo on “attraction in love”. The first point is well known, and the second and third points are somewhat novel.

What kind of people are we attracted to

1. People are easily attracted to potential partners who “appear similar to themselves”.

2. People tend to be attracted to potential partners who “smell different from themselves”.

3. Hunger will affect people’s mating preferences, and “female women who are full” have a higher acceptance of heterosexual courtship.

These three points may all come from the genetic memory of human reproduction needs: “similar appearance” comes from the fact that it can reduce the risk of competition due to the trust of the same race; “different smell” comes from the needs of the immune system, allowing genetics to resist more diseases; “eating “Satisfaction” is inherited from the genetic memory that ancient women chose to have the ability to reproduce males and protect themselves.

I want to tell him, look, how much we can’t help ourselves.

drug called love

Society is changing too fast, but the evolution of the human brain is not so fast. In ancient times, love was an incentive to push and reproduce, but now it is more like a “natural drug”.

When we fall in love, our excitement triggers a heart-shaped area in the midbrain called the paralateral dorsal tegmental area, which injects the famous “dopa” into the circuit in our brain, making our heart beat Acceleration, increased body temperature, flushed cheeks, dilated pupils, and a light-headed feeling all over the body, like when you eat food, drink and drugs.

Nowadays, people have less need to reproduce, but their brains have the same reaction, so “love” has become the most reasonable and legal drug in the world. Let us continue to praise it through film and television, music and literature, even if there is no real love, just from Appreciation angles make people throbbing and yearning. Dopa is secreted by Buzz and Buzz, and we are becoming more and more addicted to “desire for love”.

Maybe I should ask him once in a while: Are you addicted?

Induced labor does not produce

When people have skin-to-skin or physical contact with their romantic partner, they will secrete “oxytocin”, which is known as the love hormone.

Oxytocin can make us feel relaxed, secure, reduce pain, and increase trust. This is the feeling that after an intimate relationship, we will have a feeling of “a close connection with the other party” and “the relationship is no longer the same”.

Excluding other social conditions, because of oxytocin, we will want to establish a stable relationship with the opposite sex (or the same sex); also because of the “dopa addiction” mentioned above, we are prone to the throbbing of love to establish a stable relationship vacillating between.

Finally, a stable relationship has been established, and the sense of love in the short to medium term still allows dopamine to be secreted vigorously. However, the “diminishing marginal benefit” used in economics explains why we get love from a stable relationship. Pleasure is getting harder: Oxytocin wins.

I think about my friend’s appearance, think about his brain, and imagine that the dopamine and oxytocin in his brain are sometimes conspiring and sometimes tug-of-war.

youth

Going back to my friend, actively exercising, changing clothes, and constantly courting to make him look young and vigorous, the only thing I can be sure of is: no matter what he chooses, the marginal benefits will always diminish.

It’s good to think about it, just like watching a peacock spread its tail. Compared with the past, I like him now.

Come on, my dear dopamine fighter.

The author, whose real name is Dai Yuqian, is the general manager of Rules Creative, an independent creative agency. He is a businessman and a scholar.

Photo credit: Courtesy of the author.

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