I’ll talk it through [in the chapters], because what I hope from the book is that people will realise that there’s a lot of nuance in these situations,” she says.

Love can be both the best and worst thing for you – it can be the thing that gets us up in the morning, or what makes us never want to wake up again. A Deeply Unofficial Study of Dating in the Digital Age Increase quantity for Is This Love or Dopamine? For example: You could load a subject up with all the hormones related to attraction without any greater measurable chance of them becoming attracted to you if they weren’t already. These can be associated with romantic feelings, sexual arousal and a desire for sexual activity, and/or a desire to spend more time with the person.So hugging, kissing and love-making are all things you can continue to do to keep your brain on love. Brain scans of people in love have actually shown that the primary “reward” centers of the brain, including the ventral tegmental area and the caudate nucleus, fire like crazy when people are shown a photo of someone they are intensely attracted to, compared to when they are shown someone they feel neutral towards (like an old high school acquaintance).

Unrequited love over a similar period can also result in a decrease in that initial spike of dopamine.

Really fun read and i’d highly recommend to anyone looking for a laugh - I think it would also make a lovely gift for any Gen Z friend/anyone on dating apps. But now, we finally have someone who can really rationalise today’s digital dating landscape with a wealth of data. That is, as we become more attached to our families, friends, and significant others, oxytocin is working in the background, reminding us why we like these people and increasing our affection for them.

It’s natural for levels of dopamine and oxytocin—two primary hormones associated with euphoric feelings of early love—to fade in a romantic relationship over time. Activities that trigger a rush of dopamine cause the brain to assign importance to them, motivating the individual to pursue those feelings. In many cases, the brain releases dopamine in the early stages of a romantic relationship, causing a person to feel euphoric and excited. I also cant handle books with useless footnotes that try to be funny about the authors inner monologue but its just not funny, in fact its cringe.

Scientists in fields ranging from anthropology to neuroscience have been asking this same question (albeit less eloquently) for decades.