A dozen lessons in love: part 2
Love is the drug
Today’s post is brought to you by Roxy Music’s “Love is the drug”. It was released in September 1975 and reached No2 in the UK charts and No30 in the US. The song highlights how intense feelings of desire can be every bit as addictive as drugs. These feelings are associated with passionate love, which is experienced in the early stages of a relationship. It is distinct from, but closely related to, lust (sexual attraction) and limerence (infatuation).
As I discuss in Happy Ever After, there has been a lot written about passion and, increasingly, its biological manifestations. In one study of love as biology, participants who were in the early stages of a relationship in the US were put into an fMRI scanner and shown a photo of their loved one. The activation in the brain was similar to that found when someone anticipates making money – and when experiencing a hit of cocaine. There have been several ‘scanning love’ studies. One shows that people are better able to withstand pain when they are picturing someone who they feel passionate love for compared to viewing a picture of an equally attractive acquaintance. Part of the explanation for this is that the association of the partner with reward reduces the experience of pain.
Passionate love is associated with many changes in cognition, emotion and behaviour. For the most part, these changes are consistent with the disruption of existing activities, routines and social networks to orient the individual’s attention and goal- directed behaviour towards a specific new partner. If passionate love is reciprocated, then there’s something to be said for the disruption it causes. Experiences of passionate love have been linked to personal growth and to motivation. Those butterflies in your stomach get you out of bed, encourage you to go to new places and to try new things.
But those experiencing passionate love also often report experiencing extreme lows too, and these can be unpredictable and therefore use our attention in ways that make people miserable. Love can lead to lots of intrusive thoughts about the loved one, which can get in the way of good experiences. Some of the psychophysical responses include anxiety, shyness and sleeplessness. There is often an imbalance in the relationship (one will be more ‘into it’ than the other) as well as emotional dependency on the loved one, each of which can manifest itself in possessiveness, resentment and jealousy.
All of this does rather undermine the socially constructed idea of romantic love as being exclusively blissful. Cocaine has many psychological and physiological benefits, but we don’t look on it quite as fondly as we do love, yet their effects on the brain, and on many subsequent behaviours, are remarkably similar. Love is a drug: and like many addictive drugs it has certain benefits and some quite serious side effects.
Thankfully, passionate love only lasts between one and two years, provided you are in regular contact with your partner. Italian researchers have identified distinct differences in hormone levels (e.g. higher cortisol levels, associated with stress) in the blood of volunteers who claimed to have fallen in love in the previous six months relative to those who were single or had been in a relationship for over three years. If a relationship lasts beyond a couple of years, then companionate love takes root. This is essentially where a strong bond exists between two people but where passion is no longer the driving force. Other brain imaging studies have shown that, as the length of time in love increased, activation in specific emotion-related regions decreased, confirming the inevitable decline of passionate love.
If you’re drawn to lust and limerence, you might be inclined to seek passionate love in a new relationship or outside of your long-term one. This could take the form of cheating on your primary partner, or your long-term relationship could become consensually non-monogamous. When passionate love lasts for a long time with one partner, it can become destructive, whereby the physiological reactions accompanying the initial stage of love disturb the usual flow of an individual’s life. For example, increases in arousal associated with passionate love reduce cognitive control, making it harder for people to focus on important tasks.
Notwithstanding those whose lives are genuinely enhanced by regular bouts of lust and limerence, the transition from feeling passion to seeing someone as a companion is a natural and healthy process. Popular discourse, however, places a very high premium on the passionate, biological – and often addictive – aspect of love. After all, the best love songs have been written about passion and heartbreak – and not about watching Eastenders with the missus. But companionate love is longer-lasting, more sustainable and more conducive to getting shit done, and so it’s high time to elevate its status. I accept that “companionate love is the drug” is not such a catchy song title, though.