People live for love. They kill for love. They die for love. They have songs, poems, novels, sculptures, paintings, myths, legends. It's one of the most powerful brain systems on Earth for both great joy and great sorrow.
Keep an open heart. We are wired to find love.
Romantic love is an obsession. It possesses you. You lose your sense of self. You can’t stop thinking about another human being.
There's all kinds of reasons that you fall in love with one person rather than another: Timing is important. Proximity is important. Mystery is important. You fall in love with somebody who's somewhat mysterious, in part because mystery elevates dopamine in the brain, probably pushes you over that threshold to fall in love.
Romantic love is an addiction: a perfectly wonderful addiction when it's going well, and a perfectly horrible addiction when it's going poorly.
You fall in love with somebody who fits within what I call your 'love map,' an unconscious list of traits that you build in childhood as you grow up. And I also think that you gravitate to certain people, actually, with somewhat complementary brain systems.
We're apt to fall in love with those who are mysterious and challenging to us.
Saliva has testosterone and estrogen. When you kiss, you're having a chemical experience.
Romantic love is not an emotion. ... It's a drive. It comes from the motor of the mind, the wanting part of the mind, the craving part of the mind.
Sometimes we fall in love with somebody who will probably never love us, for reasons having nothing to do with us but with their own mindset, their chemistry.
A world without love is a deadly place.
Barriers tend to intensify romance. It's called the 'Romeo and Juliet effect.' I call it 'frustration attraction.'
Experiences shape the brain, but the brain shapes the way we view experiences, too.
Nobody gets out of love alive. You turn into a menace or a pest when you've been rejected.
At first I assumed hate was the opposite of love. But it isn't. The opposite of love is indifference.
The main characteristics of romantic love are craving: an intense craving to be with a particular person, not just sexually, but emotionally.
Good-looking people are always looking for other good-looking people.
There's magic to love... Millions of years ago we evolved three basic drives: the sex love, romantic love, and attachment to a long-term partner. These circuits are deeply embedded in the human brian. They're going to survive as long as our species survive on what Shakespeare called, this "mortal coil."
Psychologists maintain that the dizzy feeling of intense romantic love lasts only about 18 months to-at best-three years
Romantic love is one of the most addictive substances on Earth.
Why do we feel jealousy? Therapists often regard the demon as a scar of childhood trauma or a symptom of a psychological problem. And it's true that people who feel inadequate, insecure, or overly dependent tend to be more jealous than others.
What our grandmothers told us about playing hard to get is true. The whole point of the game is to impress and capture. It's not about honesty. Many men and women, when they're playing the courtship game, deceive so they can win. Novelty, excitement and danger drive up dopamine in the brain. And both sexes brag.
From my studies of genetics and neuroscience I have come to believe that people fall into four broad personality types - each influenced by a different brain chemical: I call them the Explorer, Builder, Director, and Negotiator.
There were real reasons that you were attracted to somebody originally. The brain doesn't pick willy-nilly. Unless you part ways hating each other for some reason, that mechanism could get triggered again. You can literally fall in love again.
You've got to remember that men are men and women are women. And although a lot of similarities, there are some real differences.
