Is love really a chemical reaction?

If you can figure this out, I’ll nominate you for Sainthood.

Yes it is a chemical reaction. That moment when you realize you and someone have a bond and you want to share your intimate side with them and tons of endorphines are released. Also that moment when you’re feeling “hot & heavy” with someone and blood starts flowing down to your special parts and signals turn that area on.

No, that is not all.

Many people misunderstand the connection between our brain chemistry and the interpretation of the signals by our mind. This is because no one really knows how this interaction works.

The chemicals are present, and interpretations are made, most likely based on experience, but how this happens is a mystery.

Sure, it’s a chemical reaction. Every thought you think and every feeling you feel is because something happens in your brain.

There are some neurotransmitters that have been associated with love, like serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin. And there are brain regions that have activity associated with love, including structures important to memory, pleasure, and emotion.

What it means to have chemistry with another person is an interesting question. I think a lot of times people just mean it metaphorically—but (what I’m about to say is kind of a stretch scientifically)—it’s possible that chemicals secreted by someone else can affect the way you react to them. Have you ever heard of pheromones? They’re chemical signals that animals use to communicate, and they’re important for sexual attraction in some animals. There is some evidence (although it’s limited and controversial) that humans can also use pheromones as part of sexual attraction.

For what it’s worth, I think the idea that love is a chemical reaction in your brain doesn’t make love any less awesome. It just makes chemical reactions in your brain more awesome.

Initial attraction is a chemical reaction. Love can grow from it. Love is caring more for the welfare and well-being of the beloved than you do for yourself.

If you want to understand the relationship between love and chemistry, don’t take chemistry, take philosophy.

No, love is not just a chemical reaction. Saying love “is just” a chemical reaction is like saying Beethoven’s 9th symphony “is just” disturbances in the air (when it is performed) or “is just” ink on paper (when it is not).

I’m pretty sure that’s not where the expression comes from.

Fuck no.

The feeling of falling in love has to do with brain chemistry. Those butterflies and big smiles and warm, fluttery sensations are a result of multiple hormones flooding the system.

I don’t think so. Love is when two people are compatible enough to build a life together.

After 46 years of being married to the same lady, I can honestly tell you…....yes!

It was love at first sight and still is. Our chemistry was unbelievably identical. We liked everything alike. Three years apart in our age and everything just fell into place.

We both knew it was destiny to marry each other.

We have had so many wonderful Christmas’s together. We have taken photos of each Christmas from 1965 to 2011.

We have been truly blessed and her chemistry is my chemsitry.

You cannot bottle that.

If you want to be entirely reductionist, everything you think, remember and do is the result of a chemical reaction. Does that mean that your life is “just a series of chemical reactions”?

Not on your life.

@john65pennington Is it bad forebodings when you have different tastes in things?

I mean, I think my BF and I will get married at some point and I don’t imagine my life with someone else, but it just doesn’t seem like its always that perfect chemistry where we like everything the other likes