Love on the brain

Romantic love puts the human body in an altered state. It's one of the reasons why another person can feel like an addiction. It's also why the highs and lows of love can feel so intense. It's easy to dismiss the intense euphoric feelings people often experience when falling in love as simply having your head in the clouds. However, the reality is that our brains and bodies are wired for romantic connection.

As a former therapist, gaining an understanding of what love feels like on the physical level enabled me to help clients make sense of things when emotions and judgments were clouded. Yes, love can make you do things you'd never thought you'd do. Let's talk about why that is!

What does being in love feel like?

There's no uniform experience of falling in love. Our individual personalities, relationship histories, and attachment styles can influence how we experience the sensations of being in love. However, being in love with a new person often feels exciting, exhilarating, and comforting. We count the hours until we'll see them again. We may also find that things in life suddenly feel more colorful even when the object of our love isn’t physically next to us. It can seem like we're suddenly experiencing the world in 3D. Here are the most common signs that will let you know "love" is happening on the biochemical level:

• Your attraction seems to intensify each time you see them. Getting enough time with them feels like an itch you can never quite scratch. You're counting down the minutes until your next visit from the instant you separate.
• You feel like you can put your guard down. Deep trust in someone is a telltale sign that the body's love chemicals are kicking in.
• You can't get them off your mind. As part of love's naturally addictive qualities, you may feel too distracted by your desire to focus on work or school.
• You want to be with them all the time. Have you ever found yourself refreshing your phone, waiting for a text back? Or do you feel like time slows down when you’re apart? That’s not just romance—it’s your brain’s reward system craving connection. 
• You feel very tender and vulnerable. While you're ready to go all in with this person, feelings of jealousy, possessiveness, and fear of being rejected are making you feel irrational.
• You feel incredibly connected to them. Falling in love often comes with a deep level of empathy for the other person that surpasses what you experience with a casual love interest or friend. This level of empathy may have you feeling like their pains and joys are your pains and joys.

What love does to the brain

When attraction hits, a complicated dance of hormones takes place within the brain's reward system. According to Dr. Cynthia Kubu at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, romantic attraction interacts with the brain's reward system in a way that's similar to cocaine. During the early stages of love, bonding hormones called oxytocin and vasopressin interact with dopamine to create something that feels an awful lot like addiction.

Interestingly, at the same time, our serotonin levels decrease and reach levels that are similar to what's seen in those struggling with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). There's your scientific explanation for why so many of us tend to obsess about new lovers!

What is interesting to me as a mental health expert, is the way our past experiences can interact with what's happening to us in the present on a biochemical level while falling in love. For example, someone with an anxious attachment style caused by abandonment or rejection early in life might experience more anxiety and insecurity in their relationship when a romance-induced serotonin drop happens. 

This "perfect storm" of new love and past hurts etched into the brain and body can cause paranoia and distrust because the fear of being betrayed becomes a powerful, physical experience. And of course, often, trying to tend to this experience, leads to “self-sabotage.” We may scare off partners with paranoid behaviors like snooping on someone’s texts, interrogating them about where they've been, or getting angry when they don't respond to texts for a few hours. Therapy can help people with anxious attachment recognize fears and develop tools to regulate emotions instead of acting on impulse. 

I share this to let you know that you're not just "acting unhinged" because of a character flaw or personality defect. Many clients that I’ve worked with have struggled with self-judgement when experiencing intense emotions in relationships. Understanding the brain’s role in love can help clients reframe these feelings as natural rather than personal failings. 

The forces that drive our experiences and behaviors as we're falling in love run deep!

Love lights the brain up

When researchers at New York's Einstein College of Medicine used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study 10 women and seven men who were determined to be madly in love based on a 14-question love-scale test, they found that viewing the photo of a romantic partner ignited an area of the brain called the ventral tegmental area (VTA) that is connected to hunger and thirst. In other words, our brains see love as a basic need that needs to be fulfilled.

Additional imaging studies conducted by the same team have found that 12 areas of the brain work together to release dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline, and other feel-good and bonding chemicals when we're in love. Additionally, they observed that just talking about a romantic partner while a relationship is spicy and hot lights up the amygdala, hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, and other areas of the brain's reward circuit due to increased blood.

Why love makes us feel like we're losing our minds

With so many powerful and intoxicating hormones circulating throughout the body when love hits, we can be vulnerable to making some impulsive, primal choices. It may not surprise anyone who has ever been head-over-heels in love to hear that the early stages of romance trigger reduced activity in regions of the brain tied to critical judgment. At the same time, fear centers of the brain begin to power down. This may be why we tend to be blind to a new love interest's flaws or fail to accurately assess future challenges that the relationship might bring.

The difference between love and limerence

What we think is true love is sometimes actually just limerence. Limerence is a form of involuntary infatuation that's characterized by intense, obsessive feelings about another person. When caught up in limerence, you're actually becoming obsessed with an idealized perception of a person instead of building a firm emotional foundation. In many cases, limerence comes with a strong emotional dependency that may have you constantly seeking validation and attention from the object of your affection. Limerence can even be a purely one-sided experience. For example, you may fantasize about a friend, colleague, or movie star you've never met to the point that simply thinking about them triggers all of the biological and chemical responses of actually being in a true romantic relationship with someone.

When falling in love feels extreme: Could you have emophilia?

Do you tend to fall in love too quickly? While you've probably been dismissed as being a hopeless romantic most of your life, there could be more to it. Emophilia is the tendency to fall in love "fast and often." Psychologists also refer to this as emotional promiscuity. People with emophilia always feel like they've found "the one" after knowing someone for a very short period of time. Like clockwork, they develop an all-consuming, doubt-free passion for a new love interest.

Research shows that emophilia is closely associated with reward-based areas of the brain. Unlike people who are driven to find partners out of a desire for connection, people with emophilia are motivated by novelty and excitement. They crave the drug-like qualities of falling in love. One hallmark of emophilia is going through partners very fast. People often cycle through romantic partners at a rate that leaves others mystified. Each new love interest is like a vial of feel-good hormones that must be fully drained and discarded before they seek their next fix. Unfortunately, this is why emophilia is closely linked with infidelity.

While emophilia isn’t a clinical disorder, it can lead to difficulties in forming stable relationships. Recognizing when love is impairing judgment is important. Therapy can be helpful for those who have difficulty recognizing red flags. It can provide perspective and tools for self-regulation. Therapy can also help individuals explore what drives their attraction patterns and develop a healthier, more secure approach to love.

What lasting love feels like

I've focused pretty heavily on what it feels like to be in the early stages of love. However, science makes it clear that love continues to impact how we feel in the long term. Being in a healthy long-term relationship can make us feel calmer. In fact, studies going back decades link being in a happy marriage with having lower blood pressure.

According to information shared by the American Heart Association, researchers believe that the cardiovascular benefits and overall calm experienced by people in long-term relationships may come down to the fact that being happily paired up calms our fight-or-flight response when we're scared or angry. In addition, a happy relationship may insulate us from the negative effects of stress hormones because we have a person there to comfort us and help us decompress when hard, stressful events happen in our lives.

Final thoughts: Love feels like a rush at the start

Our highest highs and lowest lows when being in love start to make sense once we understand that this is a chemical-driven experience. Love truly hijacks the brain to seek out the reward of connection by making us feel euphoric. The trick is choosing healthy life-long relationships that leave us feeling happy and calm most of the time. 😀

As a therapist, being able to explain the impact that different "love chemicals" have on the brain's reward system can help empower clients who may be dealing with shame and self-blame surrounding their romantic choices. 

For mental health professionals helping clients navigate love’s emotional rollercoaster, tools like Upheal can offer valuable insights by identifying key themes in sessions, tracking emotional patterns, and simplifying progress notes, allowing more time to focus on meaningful client connections.