HELEN FISHER
Humans experience love, lust, as well as attachments. How would you differentiate between the three?
I have figured out that we have evolved three basic drives for mating and reproduction: sex drive, feelings of intense romantic love, and feelings of deep attachment. Different brain systems run these three basic drives.
The sex drive is run largely by testosterone in both men and women. Romantic love, and we have proven this in brain study, is run largely by the dopamine system (dopamine is a monoamine neurotransmitter, which is also the chemical messenger, “communicating messages between nerve cells in brain and brain and the rest of the body”). The feelings of deep attachment are run by the oxytocin system (oxytocin is the hormone responsible for “key aspects of the female and male reproductive systems, including labour and delivery and lactation, as well as aspects of human behaviour”).
They have evolved for different reasons. The sex drive evolved to get people to look for partners. Romantic love enables you to focus your mating energy on just one person at a time. Feelings of deep attachment enable you to stick with this person at least long enough to have a child together and raise that child.
This story is from the May 16, 2024 edition of Down To Earth.
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This story is from the May 16, 2024 edition of Down To Earth.
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