Our brains have neural circuits that help us survive and get our genes into the next generation.
Romantic love is part of those circuits. It uses the same cells as those that drive us toward essential,
and delicious, food and drink. It uses transmitters and hormones like dopamine, oxytocin, and
vasopressin, which are critical to basic functions like reward detection, movement, thirst, and
reproduction. Romance and attachment are so basic, so important to our survival, that love is a
normal, positive addiction that nature has built into our brains. We need each other, and we spend a
lot of time looking for romance, in the same way that we become focused on food when we are
hungry. We need each other for protection in this world and for fun, not just for having children and
raising a family. The romantic drive is there at all ages, without children, and in same-sex
relationships. Intimate romantic relationships enrich, reward, and protect us. We may differ when it
comes to the cognitive brain areas that we use in a romantic relationship, but we all share a primitive
reward and drive system. We use it to fall in love and pursue another person day in and day out, to
form a lasting emotional bond with that person. The brain-scanning data suggest that there is no
essential mystery here about our feelings and actions but rather an ancient, evolved natural survival
system that is not unique to humans.
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