Love Lives - Neuroscientist on the science of falling in love

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

When it comes to matters of the heart, what’s going on in our heads?We’re joined by neuroscientist Nicole Vignola to discuss the science of falling in love, the chemicals that induce that giddy feeling, and how to trick our brains into creating lasting love.Nicole also reveals how long it really takes to get over a breakup, why love can feel addictive, and why the head and the heart don’t need to be at odds with each other.Catch Love Lives on Independent TV and YouTube, as well as all major social and podcast platforms.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/millenniallove. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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What happens in the brain when we feel lust? Cocktail of neurochemicals, you know, someone you've just started a relationship with maybe and you really like them. You know that feeling where you can't stop thinking about them. That's those levels of serotonin, all those levels of dopamine that are basically driving your attention to this person and this person only. Hello and welcome to Love Lives, a podcast from The Independent where I, Olivia Petter, speak to different guests about the love of their lives. Today I am so excited to be joined by author and neuroscientist Nicole Vignola. Hello Nicole. Thank you so much for having me. So can you start us off by explaining what the term neuroplasticity means?

Because I know that that's something you talk about a lot online and you talk about it in the book as well. But to the layman's like me, I have absolutely no idea what that even means. Absolutely so when we are children we gain an amount of knowledge of how the world works from our parents, our peers, our religion, culture, school etc and we create a set of rules as to how this world is. We also adopt habits, behaviours and for a long time we used to think that we weren't capable of changing after the age of 25, that the brain was rigid thereafter to how this world is. We also adopt habits, behaviors, and for a long time we used to think that we weren't capable of changing after the age of 25, that the brain was rigid thereafter

and anything that was acquired before then was how you were going to be forever and ever. But through research, we've seen that we can actually have neuroplasticity all the way into old age. And what that means is that we can reorganize the wiring of our brain to change habits, thoughts and behaviors. It's the reason why the book is called Rewire. God, I guess that's first of all, very reassuring

to someone who constantly wonders, am I going insane? Am I losing my mind? What's going on? So that's good to know. And one of the things that you talk about in the book, that is something that I hear about a lot now is negativity bias, how you know as human beings we are kind of predetermined to think the worst case scenario whether it's you know oh i really shouldn't have said that last night that was so embarrassing or you know nobody likes me or my friends are ignoring me when they aren't replying to my messages this kind of thing so talk to me about where that comes from and and how we rewire our brains to get past that, because it's something that I think holds so many of us back.

Absolutely. Well, as an evolutionary species, we have been hardwired to be adjusted to survival. So we need to detect threatening stimuli for our environment and make sure that we stay alive. Of course, we don't need to do that anymore but the brain still has most basic emotions wired towards being negative. So out of the eight basic emotions two are positive, joy and trust and then you have surprise which could be positive or negative depending on the situation. So we do have a tendency to lean towards more negative thinking and negative assumptions. If you get 10 lovely comments on your Instagram, but one nasty one, you're going to go to

bed worrying about that one. And that's because the brain wants to improve and evolve and make sure that it doesn't do that again. And, you know, we want to self-preserve, but we can change our bias, our negativity bias. I think if we leave it up to fate, we'd probably go down that route. Also, depending on our environment, you know, I have a lot of clients and friends and followers who will have parents who've been very negative, and they've adopted that same behavior through observational knowledge. But we can actually change that to be more positive. And actually, I would say more neutral, more realistic. You know, we can engage parts of our brains that are more logic.

So the frontal cortex, which is responsible for decision-making, more cognitively demanding tasks, tends to be switched off or lower activity when we are more emotional. So we tend to go down the spiral of negativity and we become more and more emotional, which switches off the frontal cortex and then we can end up catastrophizing ah that makes so much sense okay so we lose the

ability to be logical and rational when we're overly emotional yes okay but accurately naming your emotions and how you're feeling can actually help re-engage that frontal cortex and put you back in the driver's seat as to how you're feeling. And then ultimately also rewire and strengthen that part of the brain, which then later down the line, when you are feeling emotional, you have more cognitive control over the situation. God, I love that. That's so fascinating. So if someone is in the midst of a downward spiral, where, like you say, you're catastrophizing, so I think what tends to happen is you have one negative thought, and then you let it in. And then it's like a rolling kind of basis of one after the other, after the other. How can you stop that from progressing? So you said about naming,

naming what you're feeling. How do you go about identifying that? There are wheels of emotion online, which you can search or, you know, I actually have one printed out on my fridge, which has all sort of basic emotions there. I do that with my niece, who's three and a half years old. So we're sort of teaching her emotional regulation. And another thing is journaling or speaking out loud. That's why calling a friend can be really helpful. Because what happens is you're putting a narrative to that emotion.

You're putting a narrative to the story, which can help you conceptualize it. you're putting a narrative to the story which can help you conceptualize it. When we are catastrophizing or in that downward spiral, our thoughts are running around seemingly incoherently in our brains. They don't really have a beginning and an end. I don't know if you can resonate with that. But if you ever try to put how you're feeling into words, and then when you try and do that, you realize that you can't, or perhaps you didn't actually feel like that really, because internally thoughts can exacerbate the situation in your head and they

take up more space. But when you have to generate words through either writing or talking to a friend, they take up a smaller part of the brain and engage the frontal cortex. You start to realize that things are perhaps not as bad as you've made them out to be in your own head. So getting them out is really useful. You also write about confirmation bias. So talk to me about how that is different from negativity bias and what that actually means and how that looks. Well, the brain wants to be correct. It's not energy efficient to be incorrect all the time, right? So if you have a belief or you repeat a certain narrative or a certain negative thing

about yourself like i'm not good enough your brain will then go throughout the entire day trying to prove that that statement is correct confirmation bias you want to confirm and reaffirm your beliefs so it's really important to pay attention to what you say to yourself and the things that you um the energy if you will that you put out into the world because you know as an example when i first started doing public speaking i would feel very nervous and then say things like oh my goodness i'm so nervous i'm so scared what if i mess up and then that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy in itself so i would stop that right in its tracks and go, you're fine. You know exactly what you're talking about.

It's absolutely fine. And be more realistic because it can send you down a trajectory. Then you're in the crowd and let's say someone's maybe minding their own business, replying to a text, and you have this perceived idea that you're nervous. You're going to interpret that as they don't care about your talk. But actually, they're just probably responding to something very important. So it's very important to again as I said make sure that you paying attention to what what beliefs and what things you say to yourself one thing I've heard people talk about is um and I think this is something you referenced in other terms but is

that thoughts are not facts and that seems to kind of be feeding into everything you're saying that when you have a negative thought about yourself about the situation learning to acknowledge that it's just a thought and it's not necessarily reflective of reality can be really helpful in terms of processing that and kind of coming back to yes frontal cortex the logical side of your brain yes because thoughts are spontaneous you know they can be derived from something that you've seen on the tv from something that somebody else said that you may not necessarily truly believe so you know we have something called metacognition as humans which means that we can observe our thoughts and i like to play fact or fiction is this thought fact and is it fiction because once you start trying to gain evidence to whether it's either

or you start to realize that perhaps it's not again as bad as you may have seen and if it is there's generally a solution and how does the power of positive thinking come into all of this because this is something that i think has really kind of overtaken social media in the last couple years and i'm talking about manifesting, which is ostensibly perhaps the least scientific thing. I mean, that's how it seems to most people, like what you just think about something positive and then it's going to happen to you. So I know it's more complex than that, but I'd love to know from a scientific point of view, how that factors into everything and whether, you know, there is actually neuroscience to back up the process of

manifesting yes so i i appreciate that it has probably been diluted in the sort of industry there is some science to it you know we have something called the reticular activating system in our brain and what that does is it filters out irrelevant information. So at the moment, there are things in our periphery that may be sounds in the background, but you're paying attention to me. Your brain is saying, this is what's important right now. And when we focus on the things that are important, so we can say, okay, you're important, Olivia, right now, or somebody else might be important, you can shift that attention. If I say to you you now how many blue things are in the room you could start counting and then i say okay how many red ones were in your environment you're

going to say oh i don't know because i didn't look for that so manifestation can work like that because if you start looking for whatever it is that you're trying to manifest you can start getting that confirmation to say yes you are worthy yes you can get this yes this is the trajectory i should be on so you start looking for the signs a bit more. So there is some science in there. In terms of the positive thinking, I like to say more realistic thinking, because I think where we've got it confused is that we've become a bit toxic with it, right? There's that whole toxic positivity side of that.

But in that moment in time, it's really important to honor and feel those emotions the question is are you lingering on those emotions are you letting it ruin the rest of your day so it's about being realistic in the situation allowing yourself to feel what you need to feel regulating from that so letting that stress response diminish and then being realistic in terms of like so looking for something and then seeing it happen there is an element of some people would say I'm psychic how much is there is there something in the brain where you can almost predict things that are going to happen that then happen or is it just is it just instinct and where does that come from and how powerful can that be?

Because I say this because there have been moments in my life where certain things, I have a really strong intuition that things are gonna happen and then they do. And then I literally like, well, I'm a witch. I mean, there's no other solution. I imagine that that's not what the science says okay you tell me what the science is behind well like the great Carl Sagan said he was

an astrophysicist he said that somewhere something incredible is waiting to be known so who knows we might figure out witchery in a few years time through the science but what I will say is that your brain does subconsciously problem solve without your conscious attention. That's why sleeping on it, trusting your gut is actually a thing. Because you have an entire system or software database of information that you've acquired throughout your entire life, from childhood to the age that you are now. And you're not able to access all of that information all the time but those memories and the semantic knowledge that you've gained is still in there it's just that our conscious brain can only process a limited amount of information at the time like you're paying attention to me right now you're not pondering your nine-year-old life

but when we kind of step away from a problem we allowing, the way that I sort of explain it is that we're allowing the subconscious to kind of cross-reference with the entire database, almost like an algorithm, to find the solution. That's obviously relating to problem solving, but I do believe that there's an element of being able to anticipate a future outcome based on how you've seen things maybe unfold before. I never say never a scientist don't speak in absolutes and anyone that does is okay that's really good to know for the next time I have a psychic moment um the other thing I wanted to ask you about is attachment styles um because I think that is again something that is talked about so much now and again I think to a detrimental level because people are talking about it without really understanding what it is and misdiagnosing themselves with certain attachment styles and having too much of a binary approach to it so to those listening who actually don't know what

attachment styles even are can you just start off by describing what they are I mean I'm going to say that there are three but I think there are maybe four depends on who you ask yes i'm not entirely sure all of them you know you can have attachment avoidant you can have anxious attachment styles you can have avoidance attachment style so depending on how you attach to to relationships now rewire the book is all about the labels that we have attached to ourselves or that have been attached to us by people before us and then drive our trajectory so and I and I'm always careful with the labels because for labels can be super helpful especially with individuals who have neurodivergencies that can help them you know in understanding their their brain chemistry

but oftentimes we attach ourselves to labels that then keep us stuck. So, you know, I've had attachment styles in relationships where they were more anxious, more, what's the word I'm looking for, codependent. But my current relationship is very stable. I wouldn't say it's avoidant or or anxious it's it's pretty reciprocal um requited love so i and i think that it can change according to the person you're with um it can also change according to where you are in yourself in that point in time obviously when i was having more anxious attachment styles i had lower levels of self-worth that I needed to work on so you know I think it's very very important to say maybe you have this attachment style right now knowing that it can change because the brain

can reorganize itself one of the things that you mentioned and you talk about online a lot is is learning to hack your serotonin and dopamine can you tell us the difference between those two chemicals? Am I right in saying they're chemicals? Yes yes yes yes. I got an A in GCSE biology, I don't know if that's even the right science but I feel very smug. I got a C in GCSE biology by the way. Did you? Yeah I actually nearly failed high school I had to redo everything in my adult years because yeah but um the way that scientists are describing serotonin and dopamine is more like serotonin is your here and now neurochemical makes you feel good gives you a feeling of belonging um security love attachment and dopamine is reward seeking so it puts you in motivation drive to gain something.

It's either to move your body. We've got different pathways, one that governs movement. And then the other is reward related as well. That can put you in a reward seeking behavior. So what is making you feel good? Because that's how we learn. And that's what we want more of. We want the things that make us feel good.

Now, dopamine can send you down on a slippery trajectory with wanting to reward seek all of the time and then if we have sort of i put easy in inverted commas but things that don't require a lot of effort like say social media junk food which in moderation is all fine but when you are doing it often and frequently can disrupt that dopamine system and make you feel like you constantly need something to make you feel good. And how do you regulate that? So the dopamine system is actually anchored in the pain system. So what that means is when you finish the chocolate, your brain will say, oh want more and that feels uncomfortable so you have to sit through that discomfort to reset that dopamine system if you tilt the scale

too much then that's when it becomes addiction and alemka wrote about this in dopamine nation her book and um the the trick is to sit through that boredom you know to to kind of allow yourself to just be without a stimulus how many times have you maybe left your phone in your bag or your pocket or at home and you reach for it without even realizing you've done that I actually sometimes move the Instagram app to somewhere else on my phone and I still go and click where it used to be subconsciously I'm just like doing it as an automatic behavior. And going back to serotonin, how do we go about, that sounds like it's easier to regulate.

Yes and no. I mean, it's implicated in many things, including breakups. I talk about that in the book and it can, you know, lower levels of serotonin can make you feel obsessive. It's one of the reasons why we obsess over our ex, obsess over wanting to correct the things that we did wrong. We have an error detection area in the brain, which tells us what we should do correct the next time. And that can lead you down a path of, I should have done

this. What if it had gone like this? And that's lower levels of serotonin, which can make you feel very irritable because serotonin is responsible for regulating your mood and keeping it stable across time so when that's diminished there's an attempt to regain that serotonin by again somewhat seeking behavior as well so you mentioned breakups there which i know is something that you discuss a lot um and people come to you to ask about a lot um I feel like the phrase and the concept how long does it take to get over a breakup has kind of been pathologized so much yes there is this universal theory that it well it takes us half as long as the time that you were together that's like the kind of general thing that people say um so I'm interested in hearing from you why that is not correct and how long does it

take to really get over a breakup and what does that actually depend on research says between 6 to 18 months now you know we we study people in a lab you know how many people are you looking at in what demographic in what circumstances it's very multifaceted. So, you know, we've got this number, but I don't feel like it's truly representative. You know, I think everybody is completely different. I've had situations where I've gotten over someone in two months, I've had situations where the relationship was shortened, I've gotten over them much longer, sorry, it took me longer to get over them. And like you said, it is dependent on the situation. A lot of people will also find themselves in maybe toxic cycles in relationships that perhaps weren't as long.

Maybe they were again shorter, but the depth and intensity of them meant that they bonded a lot quicker. What happens in traumatic or more like toxic relationships is the correct term is there's a big surge of dopamine and then a big drop. And those big surges and drops actually bond you even closer, even though it's not correct. Because what a toxic individual will do is it will lull you into a false sense of security by saying, I will never do that again, then hurting you. Then you have this ideology that you want to leave, but you don't really want to leave, you want them to change, then they say, I'm really sorry, it will never

happen again. And it becomes this reinforcing cycle. Dopamine is responsible for learning. So even though it's incorrect, we just all bond ourselves tremendously to these individuals. And that's why toxic relationships can feel so hard to leave. It's essentially taking the brain through very, very toxic cycles of reward and drop, which can mimic a strong emotional response potentially related to trauma, especially if there are emotional abuses, physical abuses involved in there. And the issue is is is where do we draw that line because physical abuse you can say okay that's the line with emotional abuse it's hard right we have this phenomenon called creeping normality so over time we start to shift our normal

so we can accept what's going on around us that's how we survive but then you've shifted this entire version of yourself to suit your surroundings because otherwise you wouldn't be able to cope so now your normal is shifted so maybe the barometer for what the threshold is is also shifted and that can be very sort of you know quote-unquote dangerous for the individual yeah and presumably quite hard to get out of the deeper you get into it so in terms of rewiring then how can you rewire your brain out of i guess it's another type of addiction right they're kind of being addicted to the up and down and the decline and the trauma bond how do you go about rewiring your brain to get yourself out of that firstly whenever I explain this to

people it takes that feeling that there's something wrong with them away so they start to realize it's not them it's their brain because people don't see it as an addiction they don't realize the cyclic behavior that you know leads someone to be in that position in the first place and that alleviates the individual because a lot of people who find themselves in toxic relationships blame themselves and think that they're weak, they can't do it, but they don't understand how on a neurobiological level, there's a deep attachment there. And that can actually empower individuals because all of a sudden they see this as a detachment. It's not me, it's my brain. And that can be really helpful. helpful and again re-engaging frontal cortex putting you

back in that driver's seat that i was talking about you know and then in the in the book i have an activity where i help people reconnect with their themselves their core beliefs who they want to be i want you to describe you don't have to do it out loud but just think about uh who your ideal person is like the dictionary meaning of ideal person who is this person what are their values what are their beliefs what do they do how do they behave around the people that they love what do you have in common with this person okay yeah yeah okay and what are the differences right okay yeah most of the time people have described a version of themselves wow that isn't really somebody else yeah and that's when they go

penny drop i am the ideal person right it's always been me oh that's so interesting i just need to reconnect with that. every day easier. So I switched to Google Pixel. It's a phone powered by Gemini, your personal AI assistant. Gemini can help you summarize your unread emails, suggest what to make with the food in your fridge, and it helped me achieve a family photo where everyone is smiling at the camera. I didn't think it was possible, but it is with Google Pixel 9. Learn more at store.google.com. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not, just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are.

So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. We're going to move on to discuss the loves you've chosen, but because we're doing it slightly differently with this episode, we're going to focus on three pieces of neuroscience about love and relationships. So the first one that you've chosen is intimacy. So tell me what actually defines intimacy and what our biggest misconception is around it as a society?

Because, again, I think we have lots of warped ideas about what constitutes real life intimacy between people. Well, intimacy can span across different population groups. It doesn't have to be a romantic love. It could be friendship, it could be your parents, children, friends, I said friends already. And what we've seen in the science is that the aspects or the areas of the brain that encode for love are similar across the different people that you love. It's just that the intensity and the patterns change ever so slightly. There might be an area

of the brain that lights up a little bit more than another. But generally speaking, it's similar across the different people that you love, which I find super interesting because it shows that, you know, love is universal, right? And that depending on the intensity, we can love people more or less. And, but what that shows us is that, you know, friendships can be really intimate. And what's really interesting is that you can also then have, so, you know, there was a psychologist who had the, the, the sort of triangle of love. It was sort of intimacy, commitment, and and in passion and consummate love so the the ideal love sits in the middle where you've got all three ideally because you can have

commitments so like an arranged marriage where there's maybe intimacy but no lust no passion or maybe there's passion and commitment but no intimacy so um intimacy is interesting because it can like i said span across individuals and children and we can we can all feel it to some degree whereas you might not feel the others how does sex factor into it because i think a lot of people would argue that sex automatically is intimacy and is intimate but is that always the case so with that that i categorize into lust and passion that when we're feeling those emotions we have a huge surge of estrogen and testosterone now that isn't um to say that men feel have more testosterone women more estrogen it's actually both the the hormones are responsible for sexual attraction in both male and female.

And that can actually put you in a drive that pushes everything else away. And actually this regulates or temporarily switches off again that frontal cortex. It's the reason why it can get carried away in a passionate moment, but then not actually reciprocate those feelings thereafter. And, you know, anyone who's maybe had an affair would maybe resonate with that. You know, you kind of get carried away in the moment. takes over control and is somewhat, somewhat, I'm not trying to excuse anyone who's been infidelity, but somewhat primal, you know, so you can get caught up in it without actually feeling those feelings of intimacy. Of course, we can then, you know, tap into that as well.

And there's got to be an element of intimacy there for you to want to do that with somebody, you know know very complicated what would be a situation that some people listening or watching might not think of as intimate in the traditional sense but actually can be an incredibly intimate moment like maybe something shared between friends as opposed to partners absolutely yeah and you know I think to some degree like this is quite intimate you know we're talking about our I don't really know you very well I've told you about my relationships and my attachment styles and you had that penny drop moment with the you know so it's some degree this is intimate of course the magnitude is different to if you were having a deep conversation

with a friend you know you can be intimate last night I there was a homeless man on the street who had a stutter and I started talking to him and he said that he struggles on the street because he has the stutter and my brother has a really bad stutter so I really resonated with him and you know to some degree that's a little bit intimate as well you know so it's it's that human connection and so your second one that you've chosen is passion and lust like which you touched on earlier so talk to me about what part what happens in the brain when we feel lust and when we get that kind of like drunken love feeling what is that yes lots of like a huge surge cocktail of neurochemicals you know um as i said testosterone estrogen you've got dopamine serotonin which can all make you feel like nothing else is more important than this

person right now. And serotonin, as I said, when there's low levels of it, it can feel like you are irritable and obsessive, but dopamine is also responsible for focus and attention. So that's where you can lean towards hyper-focusing on the person that you are thinking about more often. You know, someone that you've just started a relationship with maybe and you really like them you know that feeling where you can't stop thinking about them that's those levels of serotonin all those levels of dopamine that are basically driving your attention to this person and this person only is that healthy to have that level of obsession and fixation on someone it's normal it's normal it's normal okay and I think that it's a wonderful thing because you don't really feel that in any other time except for when it's maybe negative like you've just been told bad news so I think to some degree it's the opposite

so enjoy it be realistic with it I would say you know oftentimes what tends to happen is we ignore the red flags in this moment because we want to have this confirmation bias that this person is the one we want to be with that's what i mean that's why i feel like enjoy it but also it can slip into unhealthy if you are then ignoring red flags yes and kind of getting caught up in it all how long can that period go on for how long should it go on for they say around 18 months that's what we've seen through research yeah 18 months and that's when dopamine starts dropping off you know um sexual attraction starts to diminish a little bit lower levels of estrogen and testosterone and that's why individuals can feel like after 18 months maybe it's more maybe it's less the sex is kind of gone

you know i think a lot of people can resonate with that. And that shifts into a different type of love and more commitment love. I know I'm like now jumping the gun, but that it requires vasopressin and oxytocin. Those are your love hormones, the bonding hormone, which tell you who's part of your social group and who isn't. The interesting thing is that there was a research experiment done at UCL here in England. And what they did is they took individuals who had been in relationships for two years, thereabouts, two, two and a half years. And even after that time, when they saw images of their loved ones, their brains lit up in areas that didn't light up when they just saw photos of their friends.

And that's really lovely because even though that spark or whatever you want to call it may have diminished, there is still something very deeply ingrained in the neurobiology of your brain when you look at your loved one, which will be senses of comfort, attraction still there, but a sense of safety. And that's one thing I always want to talk about is that that safety can sometimes feel foreign to people because that feeling of you know spark has gone they start to associate the the safety with boredom and is it possible to have that same

kind of lusty feeling that you have in those early stages in a long-term partnership like how do you bring that back and cultivate that and kind of nurture that yeah and that's where you know things like forgiveness need to come in because oftentimes we hold on to resentment now you know something happens the relationship you have an argument there's a little bit of resentment there if you don't deal with it. And then the next time it builds on and it builds on and it builds on. The issue with resentment is that it's a defense mechanism from rage and anger. So what that's doing is it's blocking the anger, but it's not dealing with the issue. And resentment is still sitting inside that can manifest in bitterness, revenge, starting to find reasons why you don't like somebody,

you know, all these ugly emotions. So it's really important to practice communication and forgiveness that you can essentially, resentment is like this sort of dark sort of spot inside you that you don't deal with and just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. inside you that you don't deal with and just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Unfortunately, with that commitment, love, we do have to nurture it and kind of keep that spark alive. And that's why it's important to sort of schedule dates, holidays and maybe even detach a little bit temporarily, you know,

go on holiday separately so that you can reignite those feelings. Because when you're in the relationship all the time, especially if there are feelings of resentment or bad communication, you don't get that distance that you need to conceptualize and rationalize what is going on and maybe forgive the person. And so moving on to your third piece, which you chose commitment. Yeah. Touching on what you said earlier about distinguishing between safety and that kind of deep level of love and boredom how do you

differentiate between the two of those and how do you know if you are actually done with a relationship because it's not serving you anymore satisfying you anymore or if you're actually just entering the kind of new phase of this relationship and it's about adjusting to that how do you distinguish between those two yeah i mean it's obviously down to the individual you know i i do have friends who who prefer the more exciting relationship and that's why you know they're always in new relationships. So it is down to the individual. You know, when we are in that commitment relationship, there's still that love is still there.

It's just different. It's very deep. It activates brain areas that wouldn't be activated otherwise, you know, like the study that I told you about, which can make you feel really good. It's just paying attention. I think attention is where it comes in. Because as I said, there's so many things going on in our life all the time, information in our

periphery that we can forget about what's important. So reconnecting with the person and maybe even yourself and really analyzing whether this is something that you want or whether this is something that is making you feel good. But speaking you will know you'll know someone's actually not for you and they was just masked by all the you know sort of cocktails of hormones that make you feel a particular way and you mentioned you have friends who kind of just jump from the exciting relationship to the exciting relationship is there something in us that means we're predetermined to do that and that we're not likely to settle down like what kind of person is more likely to do that potentially there may be genetic subtypes that are more reward-seeking like you know potentially but it's hard it's so hard to study that you know and it's so multifaceted

because that could be down to uh an avoidant attachment style where you don't want to commit because maybe you're afraid of someone seeing every part of you so it's easier to just stay in new relationships or you just genuinely do like the thrill why is this kind of long-term commitment love beneficial for us kind of on a neurobiological level and also is it is it what we're wired to do originally like as human beings because you know you hear all the time we're not meant to be alone we're wired to do originally, like as human beings? Because, you know, you hear all the time, we're not meant to be alone. We're not meant to be solo individuals. We're meant to be part of a couple. We're meant to be part of a team.

Is that true on a neurological level? The way that I explain it is that if you've got that commitment love, you can reignite attraction, lust. If you've only got lust, it's hard to ignite the others. If you've only got attraction, you can't fake the others. Whereas the commitment one, you've got the vasopress and you've got that oxytocin, you've got those deep feelings. And then the rest is just about making sure that you're putting in the work to access that attraction, access the love, access the lust, et cetera. So it's easier to attain and long term is more beneficial you know there are studies that show that with individuals who are in love and

committed relationships have a 50 chance of living longer okay so we are wired to be social human beings and loneliness is one of the most detrimental aspects of our neurobiology. It's hugely influential. But why that's important is that the ventral striatum is also implicated in major depression. And that is why feelings of loneliness can really manifest itself in deep feelings of depression, isolation, and then can have a much long-term problem on our systems. Because over time, we then increase a peptide called tachykinin, and that only really comes up in abundance when we are lonely. And that is actually responsible for aggression, social

aggression. And that's why you can become bitter and angry when you're lonely. It really is truly detrimental to be alone. But loneliness is interesting because I think you can be lonely in a relationship as well. Yes, exactly. And I'm so glad you said that because there's a neuroscientist called Emma Sapala from Stanford, and she studies connectedness. And she actually concluded that you don't have to have a single friend to feel connected. You can be connected to yourself, you can be connected to pets, animals, and you can be connected to nature. Now, the research shows that we can spend around 75% of our time alone, give or take, and that it's about the quality of connections, not the quantity. So you could just have one really good friend. And even if they live far away, as long as you're

engaging with that person regularly, you can still, you know, mitigate those feelings of loneliness. That is it for today. Thank you so much for joining us. You can listen to Love Lives on all major podcast platforms, or you can watch us on independent TV, connected devices, and all major social media platforms. I'll see you next time. Bye. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not.

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