The Science Behind Love: Cycle of Love, Faithfulness, Marriage and Commitment

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.