What exactly is love? Why does love arise between two people and why does it arise with that person and not with others?
The phases of love
Love goes through several phases, from the moment you meet the other person, until you decide to spend the rest of your life with her.
But not all of us go through all stages or phases. These phases are usually passed by those who are really destined for eternal love or at least to spend a few years together, starting from the initial idea that it is going to be a serious relationship.
1. I like
The “I like” this person very much arises, wanting to see him, wanting to chat with him to get to know him because we like him a lot, because we hit it off.
2. Sexual attraction
Sexual Attraction: it is the moment in which we feel that we need to be with that person, kiss them, touch them… For some, it all begins and ends there. They do not go beyond this purely physical phase. Testosterone and estrogens come through smell and produce a drug-addicting effect.
3. Passion
Passionate love: it already carries an emotional implication for sexual desire. There intervenes love, wanting, the need to be with that person at all times, to see them, to talk to them. Here they act: dopamine, phenylethylamine, serotonin and norepinephrine.
4. Romanticism
Romantic love: as the relationship progresses, they enter this phase in which they share everything and an intimacy between them is born, they begin to share everything in life.
Feel a concern about what may happen to you, total involvement in your life. They have a lot of affinity in their points of view, they share activities, the same tastes for certain things, they get along and share intellectually …
5. The commitment
Love and Commitment: it is when after living these first 4 phases, it leads to the conviction that although physical attraction decreases, the feeling of love, complicity, tenderness, a lifetime commitment prevails over anything.
In this phase, a hormone called oxytocin and vasopressin makes us feel this need and certainty that we are facing a love that will last over time, regardless of the circumstances. Sex may even disappear, but love endures.
The special case of long distance relationships
In the case of Internet relationships, they are slower, but one can fall in love through the “I like”, intellectual exchange, emotional involvement and can reach the obsession to meet that person, which can lead to cause so much expectation. In these cases, smell does not intervene, obviously, but if our hormones are altered just by interacting with it.
Platonic love
Who has not fallen in love with the protagonist of a movie or a book? We have all done it sometime. His personality, his actions… we are falling in love little by little, because we become romantically involved in the plot and we live it as our own.
