Biologically, humans cannot be faithful to their partner. Biologically speaking, humans are more likely to form polyamory, intimate open
relationship (not merely about
sex) with several persons by mutual consent. What is the basis of my initial premise?
Let's take the science behind love.
First of
all, we
have to distinguish the term ‘falling in love’ and ‘staying in love’. Falling in love
is easy, but staying in love is
another story.
Cycle of Love
Falling in love happens when you
first meet someone,
when you first
feel sparks towards
someone. Falling in love happens in the early
days of love relationship. You're
smitten of your partner. Every activity that you do together with him/her feels more beautiful.
What biological reaction is occurring
in our bodies in this stage? When we get interested in someone new, undergo
early relationship, and does all the new activity
together with him/her, your brain will
release pleasure hormones,
such as adrenaline, serotonin, and dopamine. Our body will
be flooded with pleasure hormones, particularly dopamine. Production
of dopamine in the body is triggered
as we do activities that are new
or exciting. When you are dating
someone or in early relationship, you have a lot of 'new experience' and 'first time experience'. For example, first
time you text, first time you call, first meet,
first shake, first date, first trailer, first kiss, first to place X
and place Y etc.
For every that 'first
time' activity, you burst of happiness, start to think it as love, while actually it’s dopamine working its job.
This phase
is usually
called “passionate love”. However, dopamine
release does have its limit. The body will continue to release dopamine until a certain time course of a relationship.
This passionate love generally last between 3
months - 2 years course of a relationship,
it would be even faster if the couple
had been having sex. After that, the levels of dopamine in the brain that
are stimulated by the presence of your partner will be declined. Your love will enter the next
phase.
The next
phase is
the “compassionate love”. This phase is triggered by the release of oxytocin. It usually occurs when you
are physically in contact with your partner, a cuddle to sex. This hormone creates attachment, bonding,
and a deeper affection
to your partner. The combination of dopamine and oxytocin
is the glue in
relationships. In other words, the
combination of hormones is what we
called LOVE.
However, over time, the relationship
begins to feel flat. You begin to feel bored
and lazy of your
partner. Not because you no
longer love him/her, but it’s
like there’s something missing. What happened? When the relationship reaches a
stable point, oxytocin levels will be stable, but
level of dopamine is low. You no longer feel the high sensation as you experienced first time you start relationship with him/her,
especially if you and your partner
like to maintain the
same old routine in your relationship. Dopamine is fueled by adventures,
challenges, games, and anything new.
When was the last time you have or do that in your
relationship?
This stage of relationship is also vulnerable to unfaithfulness act
(cheating). When someone was bored in the relationship, there is nothing new; he
would easily be tempted by someone else. The temptation of dopamine bursts with
new person. Here, one's commitment is tested. One could be tempted to leave
their current partner for the sake of others as he feels strong sparks towards
this new person. Yet in the end, he will undergo the same love phases with this
new person and most likely also reached bored point as he experienced before
with the partner he left behind.
That's why we can call this series of love phase as cycle of love.
Yuph, the phases above is experienced by every person, every relationship in the world. All
couples in this world will be
experiencing the same series of love phases,
without exception, because it’s in our gene
as human. The
difference however is in how each
couple lives their relationship. It surely depends on the
communication and collaboration of
each couple.
Faithfulness and Love
So, what should you and your partner do
in order not to get stuck in boring
moment even love affair? Do new and challenging things with
your partner. It's okay to
keep routine in
your relationship. But you need to insert new activities
between these routines. Collaborate with partners to continue doing new
activities, challenging each other, and improving quality of each other. If you can do these in the course of your relationship,
you will feel the
relationship is always alive.
Oxytocin and dopamine
levels in the brain are preserved to be balance. Compassionate love will
continue to grow like
a vine grapes that are getting longer, climbing,
wrapped tightly to each other.
Role of Marriage and Commitment
Now we go
back to a question: “Initially, love is passionately hot, but over time, many
couples feel so cold and stiff. Is it normal?” Based on
the explanation above, the answer is yes, it is normal. Our biology
print makes us like
that. It eventually
also explain my initial premise: humans biologically
cannot be faithful to their partner. Without moral
and ethical intervention as well as conscious effort to maintain relationship, biologically,
humans will always be tempted by dopamine
sting of another
individual.
Here lies the importance of
marriage. In the course of its evolution,
humans learned that
to survive, humans need to reproduce, produce offspring. Isn’t it possible for human to reproduce without marriage? Yes. But as a species
that view themselves as superior
and different and want to distinguish themselves from other animals, human
beings created marriage. Marriage is a product
of human culture and creativity that are very
important in maintaining the continuity of the species. The existence of the institution of marriage
and moral features
of the human brain are now
encouraging people to "not give up" on its nature, a species that
cannot be faithful. Moreover,
unfaithfulness is considered as bad
thing to do in human social norms because of
the deprivation of the rights of
another. Also, the responsibility, legality and sacredness of
marriage institution encourage human to not easily break his/her commitment.
However, in modern society, especially in western societies, the popularity
of marriage institution
has been declined.
It's not marriage that necessarily kept
some people together.
Many couple now
manages to lead
everlasting relationship and raise children
without marriage. It's the commitment that
is more important
to them. Marriage
now is more about
the Legality to them.
In the end, it's back to the choice of each individual. We must respect each
individual's choice as long as no harm to others. I personally agree on
the view that it is not marriage
that unites two individuals together. However, I still
cherish marriage as
a form of celebration of love
between two love birds.
