Did a talk about love and passion at the Agent Provocateur event - here are clips & the script! (Patreon)

Science time! Let’s talk about love and passion. Did you know that love activates many of the same areas of the brain as opiates and cocaine?? There is a significant overlap between the brain areas activated by love and drugs (Bartels & Zeki, 2000). This includes parts of the deeper frontal cortex, and dopamine-releasing areas of the midbrain. In addition to activating these areas, romantic love also deactivates parts of the brain that are involved in feeling fear, sadness and aggression, including right prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. The fact that right prefrontal cortex is deactivated during the experience of romantic love is an interesting one. One of the newest treatments for depression involves temporarily and artificially inactivating the same brain area using transcranial magnetic stimulation– essentially waving a big pulsing magnetic wand over this region of the brain to interrupt its functioning. The fact that love also interrupts this area’s functioning may be an explanation for the antidepressant effects of love.

But, what is romantic love made of, in terms of behaviors we can see or control?

Researchers have spent a good amount of time operationally defining the components of love, because, of course we have, we’re huge fuckin nerds. Loving bonds are built by repeatedly pairing your experience of a person with positive feelings that are better than expected. This “better than expected” part is key. Love bonds are established through the same dopamine-driven learning process that you get with gambling or other goal oriented action. Getting what you expect to get is good, but getting something better than you expected is GREAT, and keeps you coming back for more. This tells us that wooing your sweetie can be really boosted by the element of surprise, whether it be in small things, such as, just being more reliable or sensitive than women expect the average man to be (because seriously, the bar is on the FLOOR) - or you can go the more flashy route by surprising your lover with a planned date they would really love – and did not expect.

Once romantic love is established, what makes it different than other types of platonic love? Dorky researchers defining love again have also established that it comes down to three main factors: intimacy, commitment, and passion. This is called the triangular theory of love. Commitment is pretty straightforward, and intimacy is about how deeply you know your partner, AND how much interdependence you have with each other– for example, showing them that you will be there when they need you, how much you lean on each other. But PASSION is an interesting one, and one that is more fleeting. Researchers have posited that PASSION is actually a mathematical calculation our brains do and respond to: it’s your emotional response to the CHANGE in intimacy over time. Literally, passion is calculated by taking the first derivative of intimacy over time. What this MEANS is that when intimacy deepens quickly, such as during the beginning of a relationship where you’re getting to know a lot about your partner a lot up front, passion is higher. As you develop and build that intimacy, though, and you’ve been with your partner long term, passion tends to plateau off or decrease. This also explains why those hot-burning love affairs that get very deep very quickly can feel so passionately intense, whereas the gradual building of a connection over a more healthy period of time feels good in a gentler way.

So what can we do to keep passion alive, if once you are already quite intimately entangled with your partner? You know about their complicated relationships with your in-laws, you’ve shown up for them when they were sick, you depend on each other to handle daily responsibilities. The amount of intimacy is already high because you have already gotten to the point of knowing and trusting each other. But, to increase passion, the answer is to deepen your intimacy further. Intimacy has a few components of it you can work to emphasize, even in the most established relationships. Intimacy involves the disclosure of deep, personal, and vulnerable truths about oneself, but importantly, having your partner receive it in a positive way that makes them see you even more favorably, or receiving it in a sympathetic way. So, a passion deepening practice could be sharing a shameful secret about your past, and having your partner express sympathy, understanding, and positive regard for you even with this new knowledge, or exploring a sexual fantasy with your partner that you haven’t before, and having your partner receive this information and participate enthusiastically. If you’re the partner receiving this type of intimate information, it’s very important that you respond to intimate disclosures with acceptance, enthusiasm, and positive regard. Try to avoid judgment or laughing at them because you’re uncomfortable. Focus on being sympathetic and re-affirming how this information enhances your love and fondness, not detracts from it. If you feel there’s not much left your partner doesn’t know about you, the solution would be to go out into the world and have exhilirating adventures– separately or together. Exploring separately gives you something new and personal to share about with your partner when you reconnect, and exploring together lets you deepen your intimacy by acting as a unit to support each other against the world. Doing these things often will change the math equation of passion by increasing your intimacy over time.