We know chemistry when we feel it with another
person, but we
don't always know why we're drawn to one person over another. Is it just a cascade of neurotransmitters and hormones conspiring to rush you toward reproduction? Is it attraction borne of a set of shared values? Or is it bonding over specific experiences that create intimacy?
It's probably a combination of all three, plus ineffable qualities that even matchmaking services can't perfectly
nail down.
With few exceptions, behavior has features of both genetics and
history. It's nature and nurture.
Scientists who
study attraction take into consideration everything from genetics, psychology, and family
history to traumas, which have been shown to impact a person's ability to bond or feel desire.
Love can be broken down into three distinct stages:
lust, attraction, and attachment. In each stage, your body chemistry behaves differently. It turns out that "chemistry" is, at least in part, actual chemistry. Biochemistry, specifically.
In the
lust and attraction phases, your body is directing the show, as people can feel desire without knowing anything personal about the object of that desire.
Lust, is nothing more than the existence of a sex drive, or the craving for sexual gratification. It's a sensation driven by estrogens and androgens, the female and male sex hormones,
based in the biological drive to reproduce.
Attraction
may be influenced less than
lust by physiological factors -the appeal of someone's features, or the
way they make you laugh—but your body is still calling the shots at this stage, pumping you full of the hormones cortisol, adrenaline, and dopamine, effecting your brain in a
way that's like the
way illicit substances do.
The attachment phase is characterized by increases in oxytocin and vasopressin; these hormones are thought to promote bonding and positive behaviors to sustain connections over time in order to fulfill parental duties.
Additionally, while oxytocin has
long gotten the credit for being the
love hormone, scientists dont use oxytocin freely anymore, because it has broader functions than simply bonding. It also plays a role in the contraction of the uterus to stimulate birth, instigating lactation, and sexual arousal; low levels have been linked to
autism spectrum disorders.
Chemistry has been linked to a charmingly named hormone known as kisspeptin. Produced in the hypothalamus, kisspeptin plays a role in the onset of puberty, and may increase libido, regulate the gonadal steroids that fuel the sex drive, and help the body maintain pregnancy. There is a lot more
study about the role kisspeptin plays in attraction.
Chemistry predicts nothing but chemistry. This is because chemistry can make people
blind to actual incompatibilities or warning signs. A spark can build based on what you have in common. You can grow into
love, but you grow out of
lust.
