30 April 2018

Vox: This is what love does to your brain

The sex drive is largely orchestrated by testosterone in both men and women, but romantic love is orchestrated by the dopamine system. I see romantic love as a basic drive that evolved millions of years ago to focus your mating energy on just one individual and start the mating process.

The sex drive motivates you to look for a whole range of partners, but romantic love is about focusing your mating energy on one person at a time. [...]

This part of the brain is activated in all forms of behavioral addiction — whether it’s drugs or gambling or food or kleptomania. So this part of the brain fires up in people who have recently fallen in love, and it really does function like an addiction. [...]

Men have more intimate conversations with their girlfriends and wives than women do with their husbands and boyfriends because women have their intimate conversations with their girlfriends, not necessarily with their man. [...]

Men hide their emotions, probably because for millions of years it was not adaptive for men to express their frailty or their fear. Their job was to protect the group. Their job was to protect the wife and family. Their job was to go out and kill very dangerous wild animals and bring home dinner.  

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