Helen Fisher explica a química do amor romântico
I want to start with my work on romantic love. What I and my colleagues did was to put 32 people, who were madly in love, into a functional MRI brain scanner.
You feel intense elation when things are going well, mood swings into horrible despair when things are going poorly. Real dependence on this person. The whole point of this is to pull two people together strongly enough to begin to rear babies as a team.
But the main characteristics of romantic love are craving: an intense craving to be with a particular person, not just sexually, but emotionally.
When I put these people in the machine, before I put them in the MRI machine, I would ask them all kinds of questions. But my most important question was always the same. It was: “What percentage of the day and night do you think about this person?” And indeed, they would say, “All day. All night. I can never stop thinking about him or her.” And then, the very last question I would ask them, “Would you die for him or her?” And, indeed, these people would say “Yes!“.
Romantic love is not an emotion. But actually, it’s a drive. And in fact, I think it’s more powerful than the sex drive.
And I’ve also come to think that it’s one of three, basically different brain systems that evolved from mating and reproduction. One is the sex drive: the craving for sexual gratification. The second of these three brain systems is romantic love: that elation, obsession of early love. And the third brain system is attachment: that sense of calm and security you can feel for a long-term partner.
91 percent of American women and 86 percent of American men would not marry somebody who had every single quality they were looking for in a partner, if they were not in love with that person.
In these three brain systems: lust, romantic love and attachment – don’t always go together. They can go together, by the way. That’s why casual sex isn’t so casual. With orgasm you get a spike of dopamine. Dopamine’s associated with romantic love, and you can just fall in love with somebody who you’re just having casual sex with. With orgasm, then you get a real rush of oxytocin and vasopressin – those are associated with attachment. This is why you can feel such a sense of cosmic union with somebody after you’ve made love to them.
But these three brain systems: lust, romantic love and attachment, aren’t always connected to each other. You can feel deep attachment to a long-term partner while you feel intense romantic love for somebody else, while you feel the sex drive for people unrelated to these other partners.
So I don’t think, honestly, we’re an animal that was built to be happy; we are an animal that was built to reproduce.
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.
Fonte: TED Conferences LLC
Livro: “Porque Amamos – a Natureza e a Química do Amor Romântico” de Helen Fisher
