Essay on love

Biological meaning

Perhaps love shouldn't always be expressed with language, because words might be confusing and too hard to use for some people. Since love stands for feeling a certain interpersonal feeling, we are able to show love with our bodies and behavior.

Humans experience numerous interpersonal relationships in their lifetimes. We have family, friends, and lovers, maybe not in the same amounts and at the same time but that's more a personal dependence. If we look at humankind as a species, we can define love and relationships from a biological and chemical basis. Love is a basic need for humans like we need food and water, without any kind of love we fail to thrive. It's like a flower that will shrink and wither if it doesn't get enough water and sunlight.

In The Biochemistry of Love: an oxytocin hypothesis, C Sue Carter (2012) states that love is clearly not 'just' an emotion; it is a biological process that is both dynamic and bidirectional in several dimensions. Social interactions trigger cognitive and physiological processes that influence emotional and mental states, and future social interactions are influenced by the changes of these states. Similarly, interpersonal relationships require constant feedback through sensory and cognitive systems.

If love is defined from this biological point of view, some might see it as lust. Lust is the first phase of love and is the sexual desire that promotes mating. So we can determine biological love as a mammalian drive. Lust is driven by the hormones estrogen for females and testosterone for males and pheromones play a role as well in this drive. A pheromone is a chemical that's excreted or secreted and can work as a hormone outside of the body of individuals of the same species. Sex pheromones indicate the availability of the female for breeding and the male ones contain information about the species and genotype. 

The next phase of love is attraction, this is driven by a cocktail of chemicals in the brain: dopamine (pleasure), adrenaline (fight or flight), and norepinephrine (alertness). Falling in love can feel like an addictive rush and euphoria. Adrenaline in particular is the reason your cheeks flush, your palms feel sweaty and your heart rate goes through the roof. 

The final phase of love is attachment. Important physiological chemicals for this phase are oxytocin, the bonding hormone, and vasopressin. These factors play a part in the epigenetic phenomena of love. The study says social behaviors, emotional attachment to others, and long-lasting reciprocal relationships are plastic and adaptive and so is the biology on which they are based, and these biological factors can be passed to the next generation. Epigenetic changes because of environmental factors mean that the biology of genes and receptors is affected. An example related to love, or the lack of it, is because of trauma in early life stages or having highly stressed parents (through maternal milk), infants can be chronically exposed to vasopressin. This overexposure can lead to defensive behavior in later life, increased sensitivity to acute stressors, and continuing anxiety throughout life. Long-lasting epigenetic changes can result in atypical social and emotional behavior.

Our bodies constantly seek love and respond to having these loving interactions and the lack of. Therefore if we reduce ourselves to just the biological part, our body, it isn't wrong to say we tend to search for love unconsciously. 

Reference article:

Carter, C. S., & Porges, S. W. (2012). The biochemistry of love: an oxytocin hypothesis. EMBO reports, 14(1), 12–16. https://doi.org/10.1038/embor.2012.191