The Tartan

By Balambal Suryanarayanan

As a term, love is broad, with many interpretations of the word identified by the people associated with it. Consequently, this article will narrow the various species that the genus Amor houses to shed light on Amor scientia, or the Science of Love, and will try to address some whys of love, like why our hearts stay adamant in falling for the bunch that screams trouble, why as much as you concur with “Frozen”’s Elsa in that “you don’t fall in love with someone you just met” Cupid’s arrow shoots, Aphrodite whispers ballads as you take in love’s scents, Eros’ flute plays, and Psyche’s harp is actually a thing when you set eyes on “the one.” 

The Setting Eyes on “The One” Stage

When one first falls in love, noradrenaline (norepinephrine) is released which is the fundamental neurotransmitter in the flight or fight response. Why does the brain set this off, even though this isn’t really a stressful situation? Well, unlike how “love-at-first-sight” unfolds in movies and TV shows, one isn’t always in the right state of mind when they find their “mind-manifested” other half. This raises the second question: “Why are we never in control when in love?” 

Consider this circumstance analogous to meeting the person you have idolized for a long time. You grow anxious, all butterfingery, fumble, and feel like the starstruck response made you forget how to speak. This is essentially the causal effect of a drop in serotonin, the hormone that’s responsible for exerting control over one’s actions. When serotonin drops and adrenaline increases, your cheeks flush, and the mind shuts down for an instant, allowing you to listen to your racing heart as you stare into their eyes. Your palms get clammy and the occipital and temporal lobes conjure up every love-related auditory and visual imagery, flashing them like a neuron spike train in front of your eyes. 

The Yearning To Cross Paths With “The Crush” Stage

After falling in love, you walk back, your serotonin and adrenaline levels are back to baseline, and you realize the path you ventured down. You feel embarrassed, but there’s something warm enveloping your stomach, a feeling of butterflies flitting through your gut, a lightness in your heart. Your lips curl into a smile despite the embarrassment and you yearn to dance under the skies. The crazy aftermath that follows “the falling in love” stage is a consequence of the dopamine and phenylethylamine cocktail. Falling in love triggers the reward circuitry of the brain, particularly the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of which dopamine is a crucial neurotransmitter. 

As dopamine is often fondly referred to as “the pleasure drug/chemical,” its release into the reward and pleasure regions of the brain — the caudate nucleus and the nucleus accumbens — gives the lover in question an unquestionably intense high, like on narcotics. Now every time you interact with this person, you crave that hit, and take every chance you get to see them. It’s highly addictive, and combining it with the drop of serotonin that happens every time you’re in their presence, you grow obsessed, transitioning from the “our love” stage to the “my love” one. You may begin to feel the jealousy creep in when you see them sharing their space with someone else. Further, the nerve growth factor (NGF) responsible for nurturing the nerves is at its highest, meaning your feelings are at their peak, and you are delusional, pirouetting in your love’s little world.

The “Lust Stage”

After allowing Cupid’s chemicals to take you for a spin, you settle into the lust stage. Driven primarily by the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen, it makes you delusional enough to associate the body with the person’s mind, every nook and cranny of how they look plaguing your thoughts. 

The “Love-Struck” Stage

This is entirely different from the falling in love stage because this scenario, despite celebrating Cupid’s chemicals, also holds a recipe for disaster. Recalling Shakespeare’s lines “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind / And therefore, is winged Cupid painted blind” from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” this is the stage where you end up placing your loved one on a pedestal. Everything you come to know about them seems up to the minute, things they introduce you to (even if you know them before) get you purring, “Wow, this is exotic!”, and when they tease you for not liking something, instead of calling them out, you go, “you know what? Let’s give this thing a shot, and love, why wouldn’t I do this for you?”

At length, you become easy prey to their manipulations and gaslighting, for in the love-struck stage, our brain’s control, command, and reasoning center, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is knocked out like under anesthesia. Along the same lines, the amygdala — a crucial part of the emotional circuitry that takes a significant share in the brain’s threat response system — evaporates into nothingness. A parallel combination of these events pushes you toward taking more risks, particularly the ones you might not have taken when you were rational. As one’s rationality and objective judgment are impaired, it becomes hard for someone to recognize a green flag or notice a red flag that’s holding them back. The PFC and amygdala suspension is also why one ends up falling for trouble instead of staying away from it. 

Even people with perfect partners aren’t spared from this temporary PFC-amygdala paralysis. Take the “Pride and Prejudice” scene where Darcy, who’s always too proud of himself, steps out of his shadow and confesses his love to Elizabeth Bennet through the lines, “I must confess that my feelings for you are of the most tender nature.” Or in “Red, White, and Royal Blue,” Henry, who had always been conscious of coming out to the world, takes a huge risk by flying halfway across the world to a public meeting just to have Alex’s back through the election campaigns. 

The Attachment Stage 

After attraction and the love-struck phase passes, the attachment stage transforms to take a huge part in one’s love life. It is at this stage that one grows to love each other for who they are, embracing their flaws, accepting their skeletons, and promising a lasting commitment. Oxytocin, the cuddle hormone that is responsible for cementing the strong bond between a mother and her child, is a key hormone in this stage. This is because, in the attachment stage, one starts seeking comfort, a place where they feel safe, like home. And even if the whole world comes crashing down, at the end of the day, all they want to do is snuggle into the arms of their favorite person, relish the comfort their loved ones’ warmth sends their way, and fall into their happy place. 

In this stage, one is better at making objective judgments than in the love-struck stage, developing a sense of mutual admiration and understanding of each other’s actions, and promising a lifelong commitment to each other’s hearts. 

Falling in love is the easy part, but finding “the one” who’ll truly accept you for who you are is hard, and letting this last the hardest one. With love, there’s a high influx of positive emotions, letting the brain’s neural circuitry shut down the negative responses. Love could be blind, is never perfect, and takes a lot of work to set straight. But it’s a beautiful feeling nevertheless, to fall in love, experience this rollercoaster, and sing a ballad in sync with the brain signals.