June 15, 2009 • 17 mins
The initial phase of a romantic relationship sizzles with attraction, but inevitably, those overwhelming feelings start to fizzle. Why? Explore the neurochemistry of love in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff? Mom never told you?
From House Towards dot com. Hey there, and welcome to
the podcast. This is Kristen. What's up? This is smilling Molly.
(00:21):
Today we are tackling an important question. Why does the
sizzle sizzle? It sounds like Sex and the City and Cosmo. Yeah,
but we were actually gonna we're gonna get deep. We're
gonna get inside some brains and talk about love and
passion and places. Carrie Bradshaw never took you. Yeah, when
it and more importantly, when it fizzles out, which reminds me,
(00:44):
Molly of a little bit of a story story. It's
homeschooling involved. No homeschooling involved. This was it? Um, Well
the day and time we'll just leave in the ether,
um remain anonymous. Yeah that when you see just at
this title, why is the sizzle fizz? And it reminded
me of a certain name in my cell phone directory. Um, Fizzle.
(01:08):
There's someone who could have a friend named Fizzle. Yeah,
there was there was a guy, um who thing you know,
I met him. Things started to sizzle and Uh, it
just seemed really great. And you know, I had all
of those characteristics of romantic passion. I just I couldn't
think about anything else. I you know, I was so
(01:30):
nervous I couldn't even eat. Sometimes. It was just whenever
I would see him, my palms would sweat. It was awful, really,
And then after a while, you know, it just fizzled. Fizzle. Yeah,
And so I decided one night um to change his
name in the phone to Fizzle. And I actually forgot
about that and I ran into him um the other day,
(01:53):
in fact, and I got a text message and I
was like, who is Fizzle? Oh, yeah, that's Fizzle. That's
what I renamed him as. I can only hope Fizzle
listen to this podcast, fizz All, if you're out there,
this one's for you. Um. So I thought this would
be a pretty pretty good story to maybe chart the
(02:13):
path of romance and passion in our brains. Because Molly,
I felt I felt crazy. I really did. I consider
myself a very practical, rational person, and when I met Fizzle,
there was no practical or rational reason why I was
so drawn to him. It was something I just I
(02:34):
was out of my mind. I didn't understand it. But
I took a lot of comfort in this research that
we've been doing because I can blame my brain. You
can blame your brain along with the whole host of
my favorite word, hormones. Chemicals. Yes, but we have to
remember with hormones. With a special episode on Passion and Love,
we talked a lot about how hormones affect women's behavior specifically. True,
(02:57):
but you know what, Molly, when it comes to the
neurobiology of love, men and women are on an equal
playing field, right. These hormones are affecting everyone. By the way,
I think Neurobiology of Love is going to be east
Lean Dion's next albumin so maybe then I'll Listensten to it. Alright,
So we're gonna first of all, make a little disclaimer.
(03:18):
Even though a lot of what Kristen described in her
attraction to Fizzle sounded a little lustful, we're gonna skip
right over lust. Yeah, I don't think that it wasn't
purely it wasn't purely less I will I will say
that straight out. There was definitely a attraction phase to
an attachment phase, and there was a build up. This
was connection is being made. Yeah, it was more than
(03:39):
just how do you do? Yeah, we forged a friendship. Okay,
So what was going on in your brain past less?
Which is a lot of chemicals like testosterone, sex drive chemicals.
When we get into this sort of what's termed the
attraction phase of love, first you have we have the
visual input. I saw Fizzle from a disc and I
(04:01):
was attracted. And this visual input becomes very important later
on that basically, when you see someone that you care for,
there's this huge visual indentation they make on your brain.
And um. So once I established this visual input, and
I started seeing Fizzle more and more, and I got
progressively more nervous every time I would see him, at
(04:23):
least for a while. There were certain parts of my
brain that were probably more active than others. Right, So,
when I first started seeing Fizzle and I, like I said,
I would get very nervous, maybe my heart would raise
a little bit more. I could never think of anything
interesting at all to say. Uh, it was because certain
(04:44):
parts of my brain were really active. In other parts
weren't so active, right, Molly, that's correct. Have you ever
heard of your hypothalamus, Kristen, Well, I have, Well, it
was screwing you over. It was. The hypothalamus is this
little part of the brain that releases a little hormone
we like to call dopamine. Yeah, and dopamine, uh is
(05:05):
a pretty big part of the reward system. Basically, even
though it made you nervous, you thrived on seeing fizzle. Yeah,
of course. And in addition to dopamine, there was another
chemical called nora benephrin that was surging through my veins
whenever I would see a fizzle and Nora benefern is
similar to adrenaline, which is why it feels like this
(05:26):
fight or flight where when I would see him, there
would be a split second in my brain where I
was like, will I approach or will I flee? Because
sometimes I would flee just because you didn't take it,
because your brain is just on overdrive essentially, but not
all of it. Certain parts of the brain do shut down,
um the prefrontal is it the prefrontal cortex. Prefrontal cortex
(05:47):
essentially shuts down, and this is sort of why love
is blind and why fools fall in love because when
this part shuts down, you're able to overlook all these flaws.
Everything is just perfect. Fizzle is the most important wonderful man.
I'm sure no flaws at all. Yeah, exactly, well, I mean, well, yes,
that's another story for another time, but exactly the prefrontal
(06:10):
cortex is associated with our social judgment, So yeah, for us,
for women, it would it would make us more trusting,
you know, even though maybe maybe Fizzle didn't have a
college degree and maybe Fizzle you know, maybe didn't have
the steadiest job, but that didn't matter to my prefrontal
cortex because it wasn't even registering. Yeah, you had no
(06:32):
fear essentially, and scientists have kind of described this as
kind of a push pull, like basically you're getting it
from all sides to getting pushed into that reward system
you want more dopamine and getting pulled forward by the
fact that you have no judgment about this person, essentially
that you can love them despite all their flaws and
despite the fact that they make you incredibly jumpy. Yeah.
And in addition to the jumping nous, there's also you
(06:55):
know where when you get the weird mood swings where
you just I was so happy about Fizzle and then
I'd be like, well, Fizzles not calling, why is this
not happening? And then you know, sometimes it was just
like my appetite would be weird, and that is to
blame on saratonin. When the dopamine goes up, levels of
serotonin in my brain would go down. And seratonin is
(07:18):
that makes you feel calm, relaxed, And once that drops,
that's when I got a little more anxious and uh
and maybe you know it just wasn't wasn't eating as much.
So that is yet another factor that makes us quote
unquote crazy and love. But this is clearly no way
to live. Like the human species would never survive if
(07:39):
we were just walking around hungry, space out, jumpy all
the time, we'd be walk in front of buses, we
would be just doing bizarre things. Yeah, So thank goodness
for evolutionary biology that said, Okay, you know this is nice,
this is pushing you towards someone, but you need to
actually bond and attached, and in order to do that,
(08:03):
you can't be flighty and not being able to form
sentences as all at all. So there's another set of
hormones that starts to kick in during the attachment phase
that follows attraction. Yeah, and this is the part where
the sizzle begins to fizzle. This is not to say
everyone's just going to break up the way Kristen and
Fizzle did, because there are sort of the next wave
(08:23):
of chemicals that come through your brain to help you
form a connection, right, And the chemicals we're talking about
specifically are oxytocin and vasopressin, and these are associated with
um orgasms and for women it is also associated with
childbirth and breastfeeding. These are the very intimate bonding hormones
(08:46):
that give you. Oxytosin sometimes called the warm and cuddly
hormone because it's associated with those most intimate experiences. Right
when you have sex with someone, eventually begin to form
this bond, and that's thanks to oxytose so much make
you want to stay around and be with this person
and just spend all day with them. And we should
(09:06):
say that estrogen an testosterone, not surprisingly do interact with
oxytocin a little bit differently. For with estrogen, it the
combination of estrogen and oxytocin gives us more feelings of
trust and bonding, or as with testosterone and oxytocin, it
actually mitigates the calming effects of the oxytocin and spurs
(09:30):
that fight or flight a little bit more in males,
which once again another conversation for another time. But what's
interesting about sort of the difference between the two stages
according to um love researcher, which I would like to
have that title someday, not officially just in my private life.
Casually seems like a good thing to have it on
(09:51):
business card. I digress um. According to love researcher Hell'm Fisher,
the thinking is is that once the basso press and
which is like uh oxytocin has sort of a clever
name as the commitment chemical, once that starts surging through
your brain, it kind of blocks the pathways of the
dopamine so that you might not be getting as much
of it. Um. And like we said, in the attraction stage,
(10:13):
that was the part that was making you just be
like musty him, musty him, must have reward like mouse
pushing a pellet, getting the food pellet. Yeah. One word,
my addiction, because the dopamine reward system that is triggered
in the insane, romantic, passionate phase of love is the
exact same thing as uh, let's just say, snorting a
(10:34):
line of cocaine. Yeah, And so that's I mean, eventually
they would like to do research. I guess some people
who have affairs and see if they're oxytocin receptors act
like other people's do, or if they constantly need that
that hit, that love junkie hit. Right. They think that
people who have been in committed long term relationships for
years and years and still claim to be madly in
(10:57):
love with each other might have higher level of oxytocin
in their brains, or might have more oxytocin receptors, which
makes them more innately monogamous. Right, And you know, there
are not many monogamous species out there, right, it's kind
of debatable whether humans are. In fact. The only one
they're entirely sure about is a little creature called the
prairie bowl. And they've done experiments where they hinder the
(11:20):
amount of oxytocin in a prairie bowl's brain and it
goes from being this very stable, um monogamous creature to
being like crazy love crazed prairie bowl whatever that looks like.
They just start they start having a sexs with everything, right,
Whereas like you said, they will mate for life and
be perfectly content. And I think in one of the
(11:41):
studies that I saw, they actually have more sex than
they need to in order to reproduce, so they're they're
happy little prairie bowls. Yeah, it's all that best suppressing. Well.
And now it's time now that we're deep in the
attachment phase, which you know, Fizzle and I I don't
think we really got to this point, um, But if
we had gotten at this point and we were still
(12:01):
hanging out together, one chemical that would go up in
my brain would have been saratonin. And that's one that
I referenced before. It's sort of the antithesis to Nora Pefrin.
Nor Pefrin is in the early stages where you know,
palms are sweaty, hearts beating and all of that, but
Sarahtonin calms you down, makes you feel safe, uh, and
(12:25):
comfortable with that person, sort of like you know, the
sweet old couples that you see walking hand in hand
down the sidewalk, they just got a little just saratonin
just coursing through their little little veins making them just
feel comfortable together. Right. I mean, when you know we
were talking about this before, I sort of made it
sound like you kind of just get drugged up and
(12:46):
you just kind of stay with the person m h
out of but leontia. Right, But we also have thanks
to evolution, we have these these stabilizing factors in our brain.
And when we talk about why does the sizzle fizzle,
it seems like there is you come to a crossroads.
Everybody hits that initial attraction phase, and um, you know
(13:11):
if the if the sizzle fizzles, it's you know, it
all has to do with these sets of chemicals in
our brain. And also one thing that we didn't mention
that comes back online and this attachment phases, that prefrontal
cortex lights back up, and that's where you start to
see the flaws and people. But what's interesting is when
we were researching this, I was like, oh man, you
(13:33):
know a woman can thought of love with her husband
because of these chemicals in her brain. But as we mentioned,
that's the precedent. Oxytocin are also really key chemicals in
mother child bond. Right. When you look at MRI scans
of people who are in love with someone else, like
sexually physically in love with someone else, and look at
(13:56):
the brains of mother to child, there are a lot
of interacting overlapping areas that are that are lighting up.
But there's one place in the brain that really makes
a difference. Yeah, And remember when we were talking about
the impact of seeing a face and how that was
so important. Where that kind of dies off in terms
(14:17):
of a physical romantic club that never really shuts off
with a mother, probably because she's always examining her child's
face because it's changing, because she's looking for signs of illness. Uh.
That facial recognition part of the brain plays a very
important part in sustaining that mother child love and where
you know, the dopamine eventually levels off, and romantic love
(14:39):
it never really does. In mother child loves you almost
like don't need the reward of your child loving you back,
which I guess is a pretty handy, uh evolutionary tick
when it comes to a child being a teenager. And
they've also highlighted the hypothalamus as the main difference point
between in the brain between romantic love and other love,
(15:00):
if you will, because when I was attracted to Fizzle
and whoever else, my hypothalamus is kind of going crazy.
But if I ever, you know, have a child and
I'm looking at the child, my hypothalamus is not going
to be active at all, hopefully not right they think
it's more of the seat of the erotic love. Yeah,
(15:23):
so pretty heavy stuff. Luckily, I was reassured to know
that while the sizzle may fizzle between me and any fellow,
hopefully will never fizzle for my children. Well and more pathetically, well,
I have to throw out one more study that was
conducted by Helen Fisher and her Love researcher Love Researchers. Yes,
they looked at m r I scans of these couples
(15:46):
who I think the average time they've been together was
twenty one years. Been together for a long time, and
according to all of this research that we've been talking
about now, it would have fizzled out somewhere in the brain.
They might have had like a nice bonding, a lot
of serotonine going on, but you can't still be in
love in the brain. The neurobiology has to be different, right,
(16:09):
I would think so. Well, they were actually wrong. They
were really happy to find out that the same areas
that were lit up during this romantic phase twenty one
years down the road, we're still lighting up when they
would see pictures of the person they were mated with.
That's good because a lot of the Southern research is
pretty depressing. It just seems like we're on a downward spiral.
(16:31):
But you know, those old couples shown us that can
be done. Yeah, it can be done. So and it's
also once again I take comfort of knowing next time
the sizzle fizzles, I'll just blame it on, you know, dopamine.
Just say it's not me, it's my brain. It's not me,
it's my dopamine. But if you want to learn more
about dopamine, it's all on how stuff works dot com.
You've got an article called how love works. Should go
(16:54):
on and check it out. And while you're online, you
should also send me and Molly question comment email to
mom stuff at how stuff works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
(17:16):
our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page.
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff? Mom never told you?
From House Towards dot com. Hey there, and welcome to
the podcast. This is Kristen. What's up? This is smilling Molly.
(00:21):
Today we are tackling an important question. Why does the
sizzle sizzle? It sounds like Sex and the City and Cosmo. Yeah,
but we were actually gonna we're gonna get deep. We're
gonna get inside some brains and talk about love and
passion and places. Carrie Bradshaw never took you. Yeah, when
it and more importantly, when it fizzles out, which reminds me,
(00:44):
Molly of a little bit of a story story. It's
homeschooling involved. No homeschooling involved. This was it? Um, Well
the day and time we'll just leave in the ether,
um remain anonymous. Yeah that when you see just at
this title, why is the sizzle fizz? And it reminded
me of a certain name in my cell phone directory. Um, Fizzle.
(01:08):
There's someone who could have a friend named Fizzle. Yeah,
there was there was a guy, um who thing you know,
I met him. Things started to sizzle and Uh, it
just seemed really great. And you know, I had all
of those characteristics of romantic passion. I just I couldn't
think about anything else. I you know, I was so
(01:30):
nervous I couldn't even eat. Sometimes. It was just whenever
I would see him, my palms would sweat. It was awful, really,
And then after a while, you know, it just fizzled. Fizzle. Yeah,
And so I decided one night um to change his
name in the phone to Fizzle. And I actually forgot
about that and I ran into him um the other day,
(01:53):
in fact, and I got a text message and I
was like, who is Fizzle? Oh, yeah, that's Fizzle. That's
what I renamed him as. I can only hope Fizzle
listen to this podcast, fizz All, if you're out there,
this one's for you. Um. So I thought this would
be a pretty pretty good story to maybe chart the
(02:13):
path of romance and passion in our brains. Because Molly,
I felt I felt crazy. I really did. I consider
myself a very practical, rational person, and when I met Fizzle,
there was no practical or rational reason why I was
so drawn to him. It was something I just I
(02:34):
was out of my mind. I didn't understand it. But
I took a lot of comfort in this research that
we've been doing because I can blame my brain. You
can blame your brain along with the whole host of
my favorite word, hormones. Chemicals. Yes, but we have to
remember with hormones. With a special episode on Passion and Love,
we talked a lot about how hormones affect women's behavior specifically. True,
(02:57):
but you know what, Molly, when it comes to the
neurobiology of love, men and women are on an equal
playing field, right. These hormones are affecting everyone. By the way,
I think Neurobiology of Love is going to be east
Lean Dion's next albumin so maybe then I'll Listensten to it. Alright,
So we're gonna first of all, make a little disclaimer.
(03:18):
Even though a lot of what Kristen described in her
attraction to Fizzle sounded a little lustful, we're gonna skip
right over lust. Yeah, I don't think that it wasn't
purely it wasn't purely less I will I will say
that straight out. There was definitely a attraction phase to
an attachment phase, and there was a build up. This
was connection is being made. Yeah, it was more than
(03:39):
just how do you do? Yeah, we forged a friendship. Okay,
So what was going on in your brain past less?
Which is a lot of chemicals like testosterone, sex drive chemicals.
When we get into this sort of what's termed the
attraction phase of love, first you have we have the
visual input. I saw Fizzle from a disc and I
(04:01):
was attracted. And this visual input becomes very important later
on that basically, when you see someone that you care for,
there's this huge visual indentation they make on your brain.
And um. So once I established this visual input, and
I started seeing Fizzle more and more, and I got
progressively more nervous every time I would see him, at
(04:23):
least for a while. There were certain parts of my
brain that were probably more active than others. Right, So,
when I first started seeing Fizzle and I, like I said,
I would get very nervous, maybe my heart would raise
a little bit more. I could never think of anything
interesting at all to say. Uh, it was because certain
(04:44):
parts of my brain were really active. In other parts
weren't so active, right, Molly, that's correct. Have you ever
heard of your hypothalamus, Kristen, Well, I have, Well, it
was screwing you over. It was. The hypothalamus is this
little part of the brain that releases a little hormone
we like to call dopamine. Yeah, and dopamine, uh is
(05:05):
a pretty big part of the reward system. Basically, even
though it made you nervous, you thrived on seeing fizzle. Yeah,
of course. And in addition to dopamine, there was another
chemical called nora benephrin that was surging through my veins
whenever I would see a fizzle and Nora benefern is
similar to adrenaline, which is why it feels like this
(05:26):
fight or flight where when I would see him, there
would be a split second in my brain where I
was like, will I approach or will I flee? Because
sometimes I would flee just because you didn't take it,
because your brain is just on overdrive essentially, but not
all of it. Certain parts of the brain do shut down,
um the prefrontal is it the prefrontal cortex. Prefrontal cortex
(05:47):
essentially shuts down, and this is sort of why love
is blind and why fools fall in love because when
this part shuts down, you're able to overlook all these flaws.
Everything is just perfect. Fizzle is the most important wonderful man.
I'm sure no flaws at all. Yeah, exactly, well, I mean, well, yes,
that's another story for another time, but exactly the prefrontal
(06:10):
cortex is associated with our social judgment, So yeah, for us,
for women, it would it would make us more trusting,
you know, even though maybe maybe Fizzle didn't have a
college degree and maybe Fizzle you know, maybe didn't have
the steadiest job, but that didn't matter to my prefrontal
cortex because it wasn't even registering. Yeah, you had no
(06:32):
fear essentially, and scientists have kind of described this as
kind of a push pull, like basically you're getting it
from all sides to getting pushed into that reward system
you want more dopamine and getting pulled forward by the
fact that you have no judgment about this person, essentially
that you can love them despite all their flaws and
despite the fact that they make you incredibly jumpy. Yeah.
And in addition to the jumping nous, there's also you
(06:55):
know where when you get the weird mood swings where
you just I was so happy about Fizzle and then
I'd be like, well, Fizzles not calling, why is this
not happening? And then you know, sometimes it was just
like my appetite would be weird, and that is to
blame on saratonin. When the dopamine goes up, levels of
serotonin in my brain would go down. And seratonin is
(07:18):
that makes you feel calm, relaxed, And once that drops,
that's when I got a little more anxious and uh
and maybe you know it just wasn't wasn't eating as much.
So that is yet another factor that makes us quote
unquote crazy and love. But this is clearly no way
to live. Like the human species would never survive if
(07:39):
we were just walking around hungry, space out, jumpy all
the time, we'd be walk in front of buses, we
would be just doing bizarre things. Yeah, So thank goodness
for evolutionary biology that said, Okay, you know this is nice,
this is pushing you towards someone, but you need to
actually bond and attached, and in order to do that,
(08:03):
you can't be flighty and not being able to form
sentences as all at all. So there's another set of
hormones that starts to kick in during the attachment phase
that follows attraction. Yeah, and this is the part where
the sizzle begins to fizzle. This is not to say
everyone's just going to break up the way Kristen and
Fizzle did, because there are sort of the next wave
(08:23):
of chemicals that come through your brain to help you
form a connection, right, And the chemicals we're talking about
specifically are oxytocin and vasopressin, and these are associated with
um orgasms and for women it is also associated with
childbirth and breastfeeding. These are the very intimate bonding hormones
(08:46):
that give you. Oxytosin sometimes called the warm and cuddly
hormone because it's associated with those most intimate experiences. Right
when you have sex with someone, eventually begin to form
this bond, and that's thanks to oxytose so much make
you want to stay around and be with this person
and just spend all day with them. And we should
(09:06):
say that estrogen an testosterone, not surprisingly do interact with
oxytocin a little bit differently. For with estrogen, it the
combination of estrogen and oxytocin gives us more feelings of
trust and bonding, or as with testosterone and oxytocin, it
actually mitigates the calming effects of the oxytocin and spurs
(09:30):
that fight or flight a little bit more in males,
which once again another conversation for another time. But what's
interesting about sort of the difference between the two stages
according to um love researcher, which I would like to
have that title someday, not officially just in my private life.
Casually seems like a good thing to have it on
(09:51):
business card. I digress um. According to love researcher Hell'm Fisher,
the thinking is is that once the basso press and
which is like uh oxytocin has sort of a clever
name as the commitment chemical, once that starts surging through
your brain, it kind of blocks the pathways of the
dopamine so that you might not be getting as much
of it. Um. And like we said, in the attraction stage,
(10:13):
that was the part that was making you just be
like musty him, musty him, must have reward like mouse
pushing a pellet, getting the food pellet. Yeah. One word,
my addiction, because the dopamine reward system that is triggered
in the insane, romantic, passionate phase of love is the
exact same thing as uh, let's just say, snorting a
(10:34):
line of cocaine. Yeah, And so that's I mean, eventually
they would like to do research. I guess some people
who have affairs and see if they're oxytocin receptors act
like other people's do, or if they constantly need that
that hit, that love junkie hit. Right. They think that
people who have been in committed long term relationships for
years and years and still claim to be madly in
(10:57):
love with each other might have higher level of oxytocin
in their brains, or might have more oxytocin receptors, which
makes them more innately monogamous. Right, And you know, there
are not many monogamous species out there, right, it's kind
of debatable whether humans are. In fact. The only one
they're entirely sure about is a little creature called the
prairie bowl. And they've done experiments where they hinder the
(11:20):
amount of oxytocin in a prairie bowl's brain and it
goes from being this very stable, um monogamous creature to
being like crazy love crazed prairie bowl whatever that looks like.
They just start they start having a sexs with everything, right,
Whereas like you said, they will mate for life and
be perfectly content. And I think in one of the
(11:41):
studies that I saw, they actually have more sex than
they need to in order to reproduce, so they're they're
happy little prairie bowls. Yeah, it's all that best suppressing. Well.
And now it's time now that we're deep in the
attachment phase, which you know, Fizzle and I I don't
think we really got to this point, um, But if
we had gotten at this point and we were still
(12:01):
hanging out together, one chemical that would go up in
my brain would have been saratonin. And that's one that
I referenced before. It's sort of the antithesis to Nora Pefrin.
Nor Pefrin is in the early stages where you know,
palms are sweaty, hearts beating and all of that, but
Sarahtonin calms you down, makes you feel safe, uh, and
(12:25):
comfortable with that person, sort of like you know, the
sweet old couples that you see walking hand in hand
down the sidewalk, they just got a little just saratonin
just coursing through their little little veins making them just
feel comfortable together. Right. I mean, when you know we
were talking about this before, I sort of made it
sound like you kind of just get drugged up and
(12:46):
you just kind of stay with the person m h
out of but leontia. Right, But we also have thanks
to evolution, we have these these stabilizing factors in our brain.
And when we talk about why does the sizzle fizzle,
it seems like there is you come to a crossroads.
Everybody hits that initial attraction phase, and um, you know
(13:11):
if the if the sizzle fizzles, it's you know, it
all has to do with these sets of chemicals in
our brain. And also one thing that we didn't mention
that comes back online and this attachment phases, that prefrontal
cortex lights back up, and that's where you start to
see the flaws and people. But what's interesting is when
we were researching this, I was like, oh man, you
(13:33):
know a woman can thought of love with her husband
because of these chemicals in her brain. But as we mentioned,
that's the precedent. Oxytocin are also really key chemicals in
mother child bond. Right. When you look at MRI scans
of people who are in love with someone else, like
sexually physically in love with someone else, and look at
(13:56):
the brains of mother to child, there are a lot
of interacting overlapping areas that are that are lighting up.
But there's one place in the brain that really makes
a difference. Yeah, And remember when we were talking about
the impact of seeing a face and how that was
so important. Where that kind of dies off in terms
(14:17):
of a physical romantic club that never really shuts off
with a mother, probably because she's always examining her child's
face because it's changing, because she's looking for signs of illness. Uh.
That facial recognition part of the brain plays a very
important part in sustaining that mother child love and where
you know, the dopamine eventually levels off, and romantic love
(14:39):
it never really does. In mother child loves you almost
like don't need the reward of your child loving you back,
which I guess is a pretty handy, uh evolutionary tick
when it comes to a child being a teenager. And
they've also highlighted the hypothalamus as the main difference point
between in the brain between romantic love and other love,
(15:00):
if you will, because when I was attracted to Fizzle
and whoever else, my hypothalamus is kind of going crazy.
But if I ever, you know, have a child and
I'm looking at the child, my hypothalamus is not going
to be active at all, hopefully not right they think
it's more of the seat of the erotic love. Yeah,
(15:23):
so pretty heavy stuff. Luckily, I was reassured to know
that while the sizzle may fizzle between me and any fellow,
hopefully will never fizzle for my children. Well and more pathetically, well,
I have to throw out one more study that was
conducted by Helen Fisher and her Love researcher Love Researchers. Yes,
they looked at m r I scans of these couples
(15:46):
who I think the average time they've been together was
twenty one years. Been together for a long time, and
according to all of this research that we've been talking
about now, it would have fizzled out somewhere in the brain.
They might have had like a nice bonding, a lot
of serotonine going on, but you can't still be in
love in the brain. The neurobiology has to be different, right,
(16:09):
I would think so. Well, they were actually wrong. They
were really happy to find out that the same areas
that were lit up during this romantic phase twenty one
years down the road, we're still lighting up when they
would see pictures of the person they were mated with.
That's good because a lot of the Southern research is
pretty depressing. It just seems like we're on a downward spiral.
(16:31):
But you know, those old couples shown us that can
be done. Yeah, it can be done. So and it's
also once again I take comfort of knowing next time
the sizzle fizzles, I'll just blame it on, you know, dopamine.
Just say it's not me, it's my brain. It's not me,
it's my dopamine. But if you want to learn more
about dopamine, it's all on how stuff works dot com.
You've got an article called how love works. Should go
(16:54):
on and check it out. And while you're online, you
should also send me and Molly question comment email to
mom stuff at how stuff works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
(17:16):
our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page.
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