The Science of Love: What Your Brain Knows and Your Heart Gets Wrong

Hi, everybody. Welcome to today's podcast, where we get to talk today about the science of love. And so here's something I say a lot, which is you have to love well in order to live well. I'm going to repeat that. You have to love well in order to live well. And I'm sure you agree, of course, everyone agrees that living well is about loving well, but it sure does put lot of pressure on the word love, because love is. It's obviously there's nothing we want more, but yet at the same time, I think we have a hard time recognizing it when we truly find it. And what we think love is may not be right. I mean, like, obviously love is the stuff of sweet poems, sappy love letters, amazing mixtapes. Like, that's what love is. Well, is it? But maybe it's the love that makes us blind, deaf, and, yes, a little dumb. Maybe that's what love is. I we're going to talk about that today. We're going to talk about what love is and isn't. But one thing that is for sure is that love is universal. Recent research came out and actually looked at all love across all different cultures and countries all over the world, and there was some concern that maybe love is just like this Americanized concept. But no, love is all around, right? It's. It's passion, intimacy, commitment. It's those experiences and cross culturally around the world, we all experience love. And so something we talk a lot about at Love Strategies is love is way too important just to leave to chance, right? You want to attract it, choose it, build it, and then sustain it. And that's really the goal. It's not just finding somebody. It's about keeping that relationship going strong. And so I'm Dr. Gary Lewandowski, Chief love scientist here at Love Strategies. I'm flying solo on today's podcast doing the Science of Love because I've done a couple other solo episodes on the science of flirtation and the science of attraction, which have been super popular. So I'm just kind of continuing the series, right? We went attraction, flirtation. Today I'm talking about the science of love. So I'm going to share today what love looks like on the brain and the science behind that, the psychology of love, the different types of love that we want to look out for. Knowing what love is when you see it. And that's a little bit about, like, what love is and what love isn't, because we're not always super clear on that, how the person you love may not be good. For you and the romanticized notion of, does love conquer all? And so, you know, one of the things we all want to hear is someone saying, I'm in love with you. Maybe we want to say it to somebody else, and we probably do. But do you find that easy to say, difficult to hear? It's not always the easiest thing to know exactly what we mean when we say it or what someone else might mean when they say it to us. But that's really the. The task of dating and relationships is being able to know what you have knowing once you found it, like, being sure that, yeah, this is the thing I'm looking for. And it's harder than it seems. Like, there are people, we have clients that, you know, they find this amazing guy and everything's going great, but because of some of the wounds of the past and some of their past patterns, they start doubting this really great thing that is love that they just aren't recognizing as love. And it can lead to sabotage and having great relationships get started, but never really get fully off the ground. And it's a frustrating pattern to be in. And so, you know, not surprisingly, our clients, we. And in our masterminds and courses, we talk a lot about love. And so a lot of the common things our clients ask or are things like, is this what love feels like? And then describe a bunch of feelings, and they'll basically ask, like, am I in love? The other big question is, does he love me? How can I tell if a guy loves me? And then there's the other, you know, things aren't going great. And it's pretty clear that this relationship probably doesn't have a future, but love comes up then, too. And it's. It's this kind of defensive, but I'm in love. Yes, this is terrible in X, Y and Z ways, but. But I'm in love. And is. Is that all we really need? And so, you know, in today's podcast, I am going to hit on the science of each of those. We're going to tackle each of those issues, answer all those questions, and we're going to start where love starts in many ways, which is in the brain. And so when I was in graduate school studying to become a relationship scientist, for an entire year, I was focused exclusively on a project involving FMRI studies to help us figure out where love was in the brain. My graduate advisor, I. I can say this about him. He would never say this about himself because he's the most humble, nice, per. Nicest guy I've ever met. But he is the world's leading relationship scientist. And so Art Aaron, one of the, the groundbreaking studies in our field about locating where love is in the brain. And so those studies, we would bring people into the lab and who were in love and show them pictures of the person they're in love with, show them pictures of other people they knew and just to kind of see like, which areas of the brain lit up differently. Fmri, you know, basically tracks blood flow to the brain. And so when you're using certain areas of the brain, more blood rushes to the, to those areas. And so we can map that with, with this technology. Interesting side note, my, my wife Colleen was one of, one of the participants in one of those early studies. Thankfully, she was in love, it happened to be with me, so she qualified for the study. But so what we've done, what we did at the time with those studies was identify several brain regions that were associated with feeling love. And so we would bring, bring those feelings on again by showing pictures. And it's the passionate, like woo kind of feeling of love, the caudate nucleus. Ooh, that sounds fancy. Um, but that, that area of the brain, the, the thing that's important about is not necessarily the name, but that it's an area that's important in learning and memory. Also the ventral tegmental area, which is an area central to emotional processing. And both of those areas tend to be very rich in dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter that's associated with reward and motivation. So you think about how love makes you feel. It does feel rewarding. It does motivate you to want to spend time with the other person. Your memory for a lot of your early relationship events is very, very strong. And we have parts of the brain to thank for. This research also shows that women who are madly in love and when they thought about that partner instead of a friend, they exhibited higher levels of stress buffering hormones. So just thinking about your beloved helps you buffer stress. Also, recent lovebirds had higher levels of nerve growth factor. And that's exactly what it sounds like. It's, it's a protein that aids in the development and functioning of neurons. So being in a relationship with someone that you're in love with, compared to those who were single or in longer term relationships, they had more of this nerve, nerve growth factor help their brains grow. And so we also know that elevated nerve growth factor increases people's feelings of euphoria and connection. Interestingly, when they measured cortisol and which is that stress hormone thing and nerve growth factor, like a year to two years later, they found that the differences from those that were passionately in love, like they had those elevated levels, you remember. But about a year, two years later, those effects, those, those benefits had disappeared. And so what does that mean? It means that we habituate and people get used to things. And so those elevated feelings that you feel early on, they dissipate over time. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in just a moment, but excuse me. And so what is love? And if you just in your mind reflexively answered, baby, don't hurt me, we can probably be friends, that's exactly the right way to answer that question. What is love? Baby, don't hurt me. But let me tell you about a sign my wife and I have in our house. So we have like one of those cheese. Some people think it's cheesy, probably they've never said that to us. But I'm sure some people think it's cheesy, but it's like one of those signs. You can get it like home goods, marshalls, whatever you have kind of around your house. You know, it's in the same genre as live, laugh, love, or even like a dance, like no one's watching. So it's a, it's a little cheesy. But so the, the sign we have and it, it hangs up in our kitchen, it Sundays, all because two people fell in love. Aw, right? It's kind of sweet. I don't know how my wife's gonna feel like this, but I'm here to tell you that all because two people fell in love. It's a lie because, and it's the, the general sentiment is not a lie. That's all true. But it's, it's not the falling, it's not the falling in love that did it. Lots of people fall in love and don't make it last. So everything in your long term happy marriage, in life, it's not because you fell in love. And I think, you know, some of you, you're probably surprised by me saying this. Like what, you know, what do you mean? And I think that's just goes to show, like we sometimes focus on the wrong things when it comes to love because it's not the falling. Anybody falls in love. We fall in love a lot in, in minor ways, largely lust based ways. And so that's not the important part about love. It's the growing of love. And so everyone wants to fall in love. And for good reason. It's amazing. But love isn't something you fall into the true love. Lasting love is something you grow together. And so I think it just speaks to this idea that all love isn't the same. And so, you know, one of the things I do at Love Strategies is I'm the head of the curriculum and courses and content, along with the coaching staff. And so I have an entire course on relationships and how to learn more about relationships that just frankly make you better at relationships. And so one of those units is about love. And so in there, you know, I talk about some of the things, a little bit of what. I can't share it all because it's a very long thing, but just, just a few highlights. There's two main types of love we think about as relationship scientists. We can complicate it for sure and make it more complicated than this. But there's two main types that are important. The first is passionate love. This is the love that most people think about. This is where the butterflies are born. It's intense, it's fun. This is a partner who we want physically, emotionally, mentally. There's a sexual component to this. There's a lot of ecstasy feelings, sexual arousal, fluttery, exciting feelings. Like you think about them all the time. And so a key facet of passionate love is this preoccupation and obsession. Our partner is in our thoughts all the time. Our feelings are very strong, our motivations to spend more time with our partner. And so, you know, there, there's certain things that clients say often that sound good and they often mean it as a good sign that aren't always a great sign. And so very recently, a client said to me, you know, Dr. Gary, I, I, I know this guy's the one. I said, okay, good. You know what, what makes you so sure that he's the one? And she said, because I'm obsessed with him. And yeah, it gets awkward because that sounds good. That sounds romantic. Even like, yes, this sou like the books my wife reads on the beach in the summer. Like, it's super romantic and it sounds like a great love story. But I'll be honest, it also, like, that's this idea. Like, I know I love them because I'm obsessed with them. It sounds a lot like teenage love. And if you think back to teenage love, how did that work out? Usually in crash, it crash and burn ended up in flames. Like, it doesn't end well. And so I'm here to say that, you know, as much as this might be a little bit of a romance killer, awkward moment, obsession isn't a healthy form of love. Now, when you first meet somebody, low dose moments of feeling a little. Yeah, I think it's unavoidable in some ways. But this is not a signature experience of love. It only shows that you're using this person in that relationship to fill in something you're lacking. It's usually a sign of seeking external validation. It's putting too much emphasis on the other person. And real love is about what you build together. I think the other thing that happens with passionate love and, and the research shows this too is you idealize the other person. The other person seems more perfect and flawless than is humanly possible. Just not possible for anybody to be this amazing. Which again, natural when we first start. But anybody that's been in a relationship any amount of time realizes that that fades. Now when it does fade, it doesn't necessarily mean you're falling out of love. It's actually, you're just, your love is becoming a lot more realistic and much less idealized. Because, you know, look at how you look at that person after a breakup, right? Like we said, love is blind, deaf and a little dumb. Like when you're really in love, you miss a lot. You miss a lot. And that's how they can seem perfect. And so if someone seems perfect, it just, it really just means you're, you don't have all the information. Cause no one's perfect, right? And so I, the, the real problem with passionate love is there's a lot of sizzle that sounds good, but then that sizzle naturally leads to a fizzle and it shuts down options because you're filling in the blanks to make that per. That current partner, invincible. So if you're obsessed with one person, you're obsessed with somebody maybe for the right reasons, but possibly for the wrong reasons. And because you're so obsessed with that one person, it's leaving out and making you blind to seeing other potential partners who may be a whole lot better for you. And so what we also know is that when you're experiencing passionate love, your brain isn't able to do the full cost benefit analysis. It has a hard time seeing costs. It's another way of saying it's like your brain, when you're in passionate love, it's, it's all gas, no breaks. It's, it's go, go, go, go, go, let's connect, let's make this happen. And let's be honest. I mean, there's an evolutionary mechanism at play there. It's, that's, we want a Lot of passion. We want a lot of love. We want to go very fast because our brains are there to help us procreate and keep propagating the species, right? And so that's great from an evolutionary make more babies sense. But that's not, I mean we've moved, we've evolved past that as, as humans in many ways. And so the good news is passionate love is not the only kind of love out there. There's also companionate love. Companion love, you know, passion love is like the heat. Companion love is like the cozy campfire, keeps you warm for a very long time. This is long term love, fulfilling, meaningful, real love. And so, you know, I teach a course at the university on relationships. And you know, in my teaching I, I'm a big fan of not putting things up on the slides or the board for anybody to copy. I don't want anybody copying things word for word. But I do make one exception. There's one thing that I insist everybody in my courses copies down, which is a definition of companion. It also known as friendship based love. And so here's the definition I make every one of my students copy. So essentially it's companion love is comfortable, affectionate, trusting love for a likable partner based on a deep sense of friendship and involving companionship and the enjoyment of common activities, mutual interest and shared laughter. It's the only thing I make people copy. And I make people copy that because this is not what people think about first when they think about love. But I will contend to my dying breath that this is absolutely what everyone must think about when they're thinking about lasting love. If you're thinking about short term flings and hookups, you don't have to copy this down. You don't have to care about these things. You don't have to care about companionship and mutual affection, mutual interest and shared laughter and deep sense of friendship. You don't have to care about that if all you want to do is have short flings. But if you want that long term, real relationship, you must have deep sense of friendship. How many people do you know that say they're in love but don't even like their partner? Or with a partner who doesn't really like them. That's not love, that's obsession. Like that's, it's shallow, it's hollow, it's meaningless. It's not, frankly, it's just not what you want. And so what you do want is to become that happy long term couple. You know what, you know what those are like, right? Though it's like that couple who's, they hold hands, they dress alike in a weird way. They're cute, they're old. It's them sitting together, chatting on a porch, right? On a weekend morning, just enjoying each other's company. But then go inside and they bicker about who left breadcrumbs in the butter after getting toast, right? But they're in love. Like they're there for each other and that's what we want. And so one of my favorite studies is something from, from years ago. But what they did was they interviewed who they called expert couples. And these were couples who had been happily, very happily married for 15 years or more. And so they basically, the researchers just asked them, what's your secret? Everyone's dying to know, like, what is this secret of this long term, meaningful, fulfilling relationship? How do you do it? Their number one answer, my spouse is my best friend. Companionate love. Number two answer, I like my spouse as a person. Again, companionate love, that's the secret. That thing that I have students copy. Deep friendship, mutual respect, that's what it's about. You want long lasting love, that it's as easy as that. And now I know I can hear some of you saying, but I want passion. I just, I don't want a passionless marriage. I get it. I hear you. Here's the good news. Companionate love will get you there. We know from research that people who have more friendship based love, they report greater relationship satisfaction, more importance of their relationship, more respect for each other, and greater closeness. All things that we want. Here's the thing that no one sees coming though, is that those who emphasize friendship more, they're also more committed. They also experience, they say they experience more love. And the kicker, people with more companion at love express more sexual gratification than those who are emphasizing passionate love. And then a little side bonus, they also experience less breakup. And so there's really something to be said for something we call in relationship science, the friends first pathway. When you're looking for love, emphasize the friendship component first. That's the thing that really matters. The other stuff will come. It's, it's secondary though. Don't start the physical in hopes of getting to the emotional intimacy. Emotional intimacy first, then heading into the physical, which I think just go. All goes to show that love is a process. It's something that transforms over time. And some people worry a lot about falling out of love. And it's something, you know, I just, Wednesday night heard a client say, it's like I Feel like we're falling out of love. And so you want to dig into that, because a lot of times that falling out of love is really not falling out. It's. It's really just the transformation. And so the important thing is what gets you together is different than what keeps you together. And so what gets a couple to walk down the aisle to get married isn't the same feelings and emotions that necessarily keeps them together 50 years later. And so falling in love is really just the first step, because true love slows and grows over time, and we focus too much on those early, frankly, sexual and physical feelings and not enough on building love. And like, this is so much of what I teach in. In my course, Relationship Synergy course. I love strategies. It's like, you know, not only to get people together, but we help keep them together by making sure they're thinking about things in the right way. And so, you know, one of the things is I. I think a lot of falling in love, it's. It's fun, but we habituate, right? And so we can get used to anything. And so you take something like skydiving. Skydiving is super, super exciting. First time you do it, thrilling, but 200th time, less thrilling. And love is the same thing. And so you need other parts of it to experience and enjoy. And so what you can learn to. You know what's more enjoyable than skydiving? Like, maybe like a leisurely glide, like gliding, flight through the air. You know, something that is calmer, warmer, more enjoyable. We want stability. We want a partner who's our rock. We want reliability, dependability, all that. We want constant. Life's gonna get crazy enough. We want steadiness in our relationship that helps us navigate the world. So the fall is fun, but true love lasts forever. And I think so much of it is. Realizing this helps you know what you're seeing. Because there's a lot of things that people mistake for love that aren't. And so you don't want to mistake a controlling partner for someone who loves you. You don't want to mistake jealousy for love or obsession or insecurity or lust. You don't want to mistake any of those things for love. You don't want to mistake empty words for love, grand gestures. That's not love either. Love isn't about longing for someone. It's love is about the sense of security and knowing they're always going to be there. That's real love. And so you want to ask yourself, what kind of love are you chasing? Is that the love that gets you excited, or hopefully it's the love that makes you feel safe and authentic. Here's. Here's a truth. You might feel love for somebody and that person may not be good for you just because you feel love for them. That's not enough. Like, obviously nobody willingly or knowingly picks a bad partner. But there is something known as emophilia for people that fall in love too easily. So, you know, if you're someone that falls in love too easily, you might say yes to the. These are questions from a scale of this. It's like, would you agree to a statement that says I fall in love easily? Would you agree to a statement that says I tend to jump into relationships? If so, that's a. Those are signs you fall in love a little too easily. You're also more likely to fall in love with people that are the worst partners of all the people. The partners that have the dark triad. So dark triad, this group of qualities that are just bad, right? It's like, but these, these partners, they're charismatic, they're charming, they're confident, they're sociable, they're often downright captivating. These are the men who approach you and are smooth. They know what to say. They're great on first dates. They create this amazing experience that just makes you fall head over heel heels for them. And so what we know is people who are higher in this emoilia are more likely to fall in love and find dark triad partners appealing. They're enticing because the dark tribe guys, man, they, they create some magic. And if you're easy to fall in love, that's what you're looking for. That's what seems great. I mean, this. I don't. Trying to decide whether, going into the details of the study and I, I think I'm going to. It's like they showed. And this was done with online profiles, right? They showed, they created fake online profiles, had women look at them and ask them to judge, like, do you find this guy appealing? And so women who were more likely to fall in love easily were more likely to fall for the bad boys, the bad guys. There was something more appealing about those guys. And so what this just says as a general take home is wanting love too badly can lead you to prioritize the act of falling in love. You are, if you're needy, what we call chasing, chasing love. You're going to want to fall in love so badly, you're going to fall in love with often the worst kind of guy. And we want to make sure we're falling in love with the right kind of person. And so the corollary. The corollary to this is sometimes people are in the wrong relationship, they're with the wrong person, they kind of realize it, but then they also say, but I'm in love. And so what the research shows, ironically, is that when you're in love with somebody, you have. It's not 100 love all the time. It's. It's a mix. There's a little bit of love, a little bit of hate in there too. Like, there's things we don't like, things we do like. Which makes it all very confusing because even the world's worst partner has a couple redeeming qualities. Our best partner, the best partner for us, has a couple things that annoy us. And so, you know, when our love life isn't perfectly lovable, we rely on the romantic notion that love is all we need. And that's fine in a way, if you're defining love the right way, of course. And so do you need a loving partner? Yes, you do. But it's not just like that feeling. And I think there's. It. There's more to it than that feeling that we usually just label as love. It's only one piece. And so someone who loves you. Love is a. Think of it instead of a singular feeling, it's a constellation of feelings. It's this group of all this stuff going together. And so what does that involve? Love is kindness. It's caring, it's affection, it's friendship. Love is shared interest and stability and loyalty. It's open communication. It's trust, support, fulfillment, dependability. It's fun, generous, appreciation, listening, respect, predictability, transparency. And love is feeling seen, heard and understood. All of those things are love. So you can't say, well, I just feel like I'm in love. It's like, well, did your partner provide these things? Because that's. It's the whole experience. It's a package deal. It all goes together. Because when you love somebody, don't you show them appreciation? Don't you show them caring and kindness and affection? You do that for other people, you gotta expect that for yourself too. And so a partner who truly loves you does all these things. Partner who doesn't love you, well, they're. Those people that don't love you are demanding and threatening. They're selfish, they're controlling, they're isolating, they're dispers, disrespectful, they're mean, they're manipulative. And at the worst, they're just downright abusive. If you're any of those qualities that I said are part of the constellation of qualities that show that somebody loves you. You can't be simultaneously kind and mean to somebody. You can't be disrespectful and be caring. Those things are inconsistent. So it's one or the other, being kind and caring, that's love. Being mean and disrespectful, that's not. Let's call it what it is. Let's be honest. Let's. Let's see this for what it is. And so, you know, it's something we talk about a lot with clients when we're. We're coaching, is don't give too much credit to what people say. Look at what they do. Because there's the worst guys out there. They throw around the I love yous very easily. Words are cheap. Super easy for some guy to be like, but I love you, but I love you. Oh, yeah, what's that look like? You got to see through that and look at how they're showing up. How do they make you feel and feel in that companionate, love way, not in the butterflies. Because those butterflies and uncertainty, that's also how your body registers risk and danger, butterflies and uncertainty. So let's make sure we're prioritizing the right things. And so a truly loving partner is not going to try to excuse their bad behavior and do a bunch of bad things and say, but I love you. That's not how it works. Truly loving partner just shows you in their actions that they love you. And so I just want to leave you with this one last idea that kind of sums up everything I talked about today, which is love isn't something you fall into. It's something you choose to build, protect, and grow every single day. When you know what real love looks like, like what we discussed today, you won't just find it, you'll keep it. And that's really what we're all about. We're not just helping people find their partner. We're helping people keep those relationships going strong. We have courses, education components. You're gonna. You would learn a lot about how to find the right guy, find the right partner, be the right partner, and keep that relationship going strong. And so if you're interested in any of that, you can check us out. Lovestrategies. Com. Thanks, everybody.