From the pink glitter and candy hearts of Valentine’s Day to the many movies and songs about it, love is one of our culture’s most enduring themes. And despite its romanticized nature, love is more than just the stuff of fairytales—it can be the key to a happy, healthy life.
Scientific research spanning several disciplines, including psychology and neuroscience, biology and evolutionary studies, and anthropology, offers insights into this complex emotion. One common theory is that love can be broken down into three distinct components: lust, attraction, and attachment.
Lust involves arousal, attraction is about the desire for a romantic partner, and attachment is based on a desire to form close relationships with family and friends. These emotions are rooted in our evolutionary past. But they are also influenced by biological processes that occur in the brain’s ventral tegmental area, which responds to rewards and pleasures—like getting a hug or watching a movie you enjoy—and by the release of neurotransmitters and hormones like dopamine and norepinephrine and the hypothalamus-produced oxytocin and vasopressin.
Love can be a powerful force, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to happiness in all relationships. In fact, the skewed notion of love that has become popular in recent years is more likely to contribute to relationship problems than solve them. These problems often stem from the assumption that once you find “the one” you can stop searching for other partners and that a loving relationship is just about meeting each other’s needs.