What is love and can we fall out of it?

This post is a little different than my normal style because it is actually a paper I wrote for a class. I am sharing it because it talks about what love actually is and whether or not it is possible to fall out of it. It has some interesting information that I gathered through my research (I will include my sources at the bottom in case anyone is interested in reading more on the subject). Enjoy!

Love is an extraordinary thing. Think about it: love is the one thing that is felt by every single person in this world. It causes happiness and heartbreak, good and bad decisions, and keeps the world going. So why is it so hard to think of a single definition of love? It’s simply because of that very reason: every single person in the world feels it, yet every single person has a different definition. The definition of love has evolved so much over time that it is almost the opposite of what it used to be. Divorce used to be unacceptable, now it is the norm. People seem to be falling in and out of love nowadays more than ever and it seems so easy. Whatever happened to the idea of a soul mate? There seems to be thousands of definitions of love, however when boiled down to it, two come to mind: love is a scientific phenomenon that effects not only our heart, but chemicals in our brain to change or, as the dictionary explains it: love is a purely psychological feeling that brings on a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person. This brings up the main claim of this argument: Love is much deeper than society sees it to be, because of this, a person cannot simply fall out of it or stop loving someone.

So, what actually happens to our brains when we are in love? Many studies have been done on the brains of people who are in love and the results prove to be very interesting. A study done by Dr. Semir Zeki and his colleagues in 2004 of what happens to a person’s brain when they see a photo of their loved one proved that love effects more than we think: “The results were a surprise to everyone. Certain brain regions, especially those that gave rewards, were responding to the events. A reward obtained will certainly cause a repetition of the activity, which produced the reward. This includes food, water, sex, cigarettes, cocaine and positive social interactions, and the result is subjective satisfaction” (Tarlaci 745). Basically, these results mean that when a person is in love, seeing that loved one can trigger rewards in the brain similar to that of other things, like food, and the person soon develops a need for that loved one. These rewards include releasing dopamine into the system; “The basic function of dopamine is the “want” in the reward system” (Tarlaci 746). It was also found that when a person sees a photo of their loved one, not only are reward systems triggered and dopamine is released, but other parts of the brain seem to “deactivate” (Tarlaci 746). The pre-frontal cortex—which deals with rational decision-making—is one of these things. Another region that is deactivated in the brain is the Parieto-Temporo-Occipital region, which deals with a person’s spatial separation from others; “When this region is deactivated, the separation between self and other is suspended, and the person experiences “unity” with the beloved. In this way, just as a person cannot conceal the fact that he is drunk, he or she cannot conceal the fact of being in love” (Tarlaci 747). Love is in fact much deeper than society sees it to be because when a person is in love, they are in a way addicted to that other person which makes it impossible for them to just “fall out” of love. The phrase “Your love is my drug” may actually be truer than we think.

Society’s view on love seems to be extremely different than the scientific view on love and the media can be thanked for that. Shows like the Bachelor and Rock of Love portray falling in love as a game, and everyone wants to win, but the truth is, you can’t force or fake love, which is what these shows seem to be focused on. How many of the Bachelor couples are actually still together to this day? Only two. Is Bret Michels married to the winner of his show? Nope. Love is a very serious neurological emotion but society treats it like it is easy to fall in and out of and it is perfectly acceptable when this happens. Take divorce for example: currently in the U.S., divorce has surpassed death as the number one cause of marital break up (Savulescu). Fifty years ago, it was unacceptable to get divorced and now it seems to be the norm. It is advertised as a good thing; almost every cover to every magazine has something about a new celebrity getting divorced every week. There is even an article in the New York Times called “The Unbridled Shower: Celebrating Divorce” that talks about a new trend called “divorce parties” that celebrate people’s marriages ending like it is no big deal (Newman). Society has tainted the definition of love so much that the single life and being “independent” is more glamorous than being “trapped” in a loveless marriage. Couples don’t want to take the hard route and actually work on their problems, but take the easy way out and enjoy the “fun” of being alone. A lot of people believe they are in love when they are actually just infatuated with the idea of love. Perhaps, this is why divorce rates are so high and people fall in and out of “love” so often: they were never actually in love in the first place.

There are some people that believe it is possible to fall out of love. In the article “Engineering Love” by Julian Savulescu and Anders Sandberg, they explain that humans are “animals too” and we seem to be outliving our inborn capacity to love (Savulescu). This means that since the life span of humans has greatly increased over time, we are outliving our ability to have lifelong love: “Throughout most of our history, people survived for a maximum of 35 years. Staying alive was a full-time job, and most pair-bonds ended with one partner dying. Given this lifespan, at least 50 percent of mating alliances would have ended within 15 years. This figure is surprisingly close to the current global median duration of marriage, 11 years. It seems unlikely that natural selection equipped us to keep relationships lasting much more than a decade” (Savulescu). In short, this is explaining that it is possible for humans to fall out of love because we are animals and our instinct is survival, which is the main reason we “partner up” with another. While it is very interesting, this theory just seems absurd because the fact that most humans have all the essentials needed for survival nowadays is not even taken into consideration and if this were true, it would be ignoring all the scientific facts that were reviewed earlier. Love is more than just an instinct because once it is experienced it becomes an addiction. After all, how often does quitting a drug cold turkey actually work? Close to never.

There seems to be thousands of definitions of love dating all the way back to biblical times. Even the bible defines love as something that is so powerful that it never ends: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:4). There it is, right there: love never fails. So how is it possible to just stop loving someone? It simply isn’t. Love is truly amazing; it is the one thing in this world that has the power to completely change the way a person’s mind operates, simply by bringing another person into the equation.

Love is an extraordinary thing. Once it is experienced, it becomes an addiction and it is impossible to just “fall out” of an addiction. Society has tweaked the definition of love so much that it has become a casual feeling that happens to everyone. Stop loving your husband or wife? It’s fine, just get divorced. Scientifically, the facts are all there, and new ones are being discovered every single day. After exploring all the evidence, the conclusion is obvious: it is mentally, physically, and psychologically impossible to just fall out of love with a person.

Source list:

Fehr, Beverley, Susan Sprecher, and Lynn G. Underwood. The Science of Compassionate Love: Theory, Research, and Applications. Malden: Wiley-Backwell, 2009. Print.

Newman, Judith. “The Unbridled Shower: Celebrating Divorce.” The New York Times. 14 Sept. 2012. Web. 12 Feb 2013.

Ortigue, Stephanie, et al. “Neuroimaging of Love.” Journal of Sexual Medicine 7 (2010): 3541-3552. Web. 13 Feb 2013.

Savulescu, Julian, and Anders Sandberg. “Engineering Love.” New Scientist 214.2864 (2012): 28-29. Academic Search Complete. Web. 13 Feb 2013.

Tarlaci, Sultan. “The Brain in Love: Has Neuroscience Stolen the Secret of Love?” NeuroQuantology 10 (2012): 744-753. Web. 13 Feb 2013.