De-limerence! Holy dueling banjos, Bubba! Better lock the pigs in the barn!
He's crazy about you! She's madly in love! But is it truly love, or is it temporary insanity?
Delightful as the sensation of falling in love may be, turns out it has a lot in common with drug addiction and mental illness: chemistry.
Of course, talking about the "chemistry" between two people is nothing new. Movie stars are famous for it (think Astaire and Rogers, Tracy and Hepburn, Bogart and Bacall, Cary Grant or Ingrid Bergman and just about anybody . . . ). And if the chemistry isn't there, the sparks don't fly. No combustion.
Now science has caught up with fancy—as it usually does, eventually. Brain scans of couples who claim to be head-over-heels in love show that the parts of the brain that are ignited by, say, a snort of coke are the same chemical pathways that light up like a Christmas tree at the sight of the beloved.
In fact, people can become, in effect, addicted. Craving that love high, they go through relationship after (brief) relationship. As the rush subsides and as, over time, they build up a tolerance for those feel-good brain chemicals, love junkies seek their next affair.
These poor addicts are stuck in stage one: simple lust. It's driven by testosterone and estrogen, hormones that stimulate a flood of endogenous opioids in the brain, causing a reaction akin to the effects of heroin.
If only they didn't burn out so fast! The second stage, attraction, is the one we generally associate with "falling" in love. This is the sweaty-palm, racing-heart, breathless stage, when you feel like you've swallowed a flock of butterflies. This manic condition is caused by a surge of brain chemicals called monoamines, such as dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. Norepinephrine and serotonin excite us; dopamine makes us happy.
These chemicals are all controlled by phenylethylamine (PEA), the "love drug" (also found, appropriately, in chocolate). Similar in structure to amphetamines, another class of addictive drugs, PEA is what gets us from lust to love. This stage blurs into a similar condition called limerence, a state of mind roughly equivalent to "being IN love" (as distinct from "loving").
Such a pretty word, limerence. As in, "Before you were a glimmer in your daddy's eye, he was blinded by limerence." The primary characteristics, however, are more like obsessive compulsive disorder: intrusive, perhaps obsessive thinking about the "limerent object" and acute longing for reciprocation. Chemically, this condition is marked by decrease of serotonin neurotransmitter, which increases emotional sensitivity and instability. People can become very irrational; insane, almost.
If, for instance, the love object just doesn't feel the same way, people in this state can get badly depressed. In fact, unrequited love is one of the major causes of suicide for young adults.
Assuming both parties survive the earlier stages of affection, attachment finally takes over. The two hormones involved during this stage, oxytocin and vasopressin, help to induce a calm, emotionally stable state that keeps the couple together.
Vasopressin has been called the monogamy chemical. It's thought to interfere with dopamine and norepinephrine, which might explain why passionate love fades as
attachment grows. Only about 3 percent of all mammals are monogamous, mating and bonding with one partner for life. No doubt you already know that humans, by nature, are not one of them.
Maybe we don't pump out enough vasopressin alone to enable monogamy, but in combination, we produce a powerful cocktail. Oxytocin, the "cuddling chemical," is released by both sexes during orgasm. Responsible for uterine contractions and lactation in women, it encourages trust and social bonding in everybody. So it turns out that, the more sex a couple enjoys—with each other—the greater their bond will become.
But then, you always knew sex was the way to better mental health, didn't you?