The feeling starts in your nervous system.
Your pupils dilate, you become short of breath, sweat collects on your palms, and suddenly you can’t eat a bite. You’re in love – or in lust, at the very least.
It’s what psychologist Kristina Feeser, a professor at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, calls “activation.” The rest of us call it a crush.
“Bodies only know arousal,” Feeser said. “There’s a stimulus, and then our bodies have a response to that stimulus.”
When someone attractive walks into the coffee shop you’re at, or a new student joins your class, you unconsciously begin to react. You cycle through a variety of responses: Are you scared? Hungry? Tired?
“When you cycle through all the choices, we’ve come to associate those kinds of feelings, when connected with another person, as attraction. Then that attraction eventually will either die out, because it was a physical attraction, or it’s turned into lust, and that either burns itself out, or it turns into love, which is a long-term attachment that is reciprocated by the other person,” Feeser said.
Kristina Feeser is a developmental psychologist who teaches the psychology of love at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise. (Contributed photo)
Feeser said psychologists like the definition of love as being when you care more about another person than you care about yourself. But before love develops, “attraction” is simply how you have decided to label your visceral response to a stimulus.
Maybe, like Ella Fitzgerald, you fell, and it was swell. Or maybe those butterflies felt more like a heart attack. But Feeser agrees with the common sentiment that love is a little crazy making.
“It suspends good sense,” Feeser said. “You can call it the childish part of you, or your fun-loving nature, but the fact of the matter is, we get sort of drunk on the hormones that are being released when we find someone attractive.”
The body releases oxytocin, dopamine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine when you have a crush on someone, each associated with happiness and bonding. Dopamine suppresses serotonin, a hormone that helps regulate your mood, according to the American Heart Association. Cortisol – which is associated with stress – shoots up. Falling for someone sends you sky-high, stresses you out and leaves you stranded without a good way to soothe yourself. It makes you crazy.
“It’s not that we become a different person; it’s that we make the decision we think will make us feel good,” Feeser said. “Is that always the one that’s best for us? Probably not.”
Even so, the feeling can be addictive. Without a crush in your midst, life can feel a little flat and boring, even if you have other social bonds.
“That’s the way people are designed – we’re social beings. You see the same thing in primates and herd animals. … Once we know we’re not about to die, then it’s like, ‘Well, I also don’t want to be alone,’” Feeser said.
Most cultures have pair bonds, Feeser said, and social structures to regulate and promote pair bonding. It’s a key part of many religions, and public for a reason.
