Question: How does love work?

Liza Sazonova answered on 11 Nov 2020: last edited 11 Nov 2020 7:50 pm

That would be a good question for the Pscyhology zone, unfortunately I’m out of my depth 🙂
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Love has many shapes and forms. You can love your partner, friend, parents and grandparents. Of course, the feeling you feel towards your partner (girlfriend/boyfriend/…) and your grandma, for example, are different, but you love them both. So it’s really hard to study something like love, because it’s hard to define.
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But there are some things we do know.
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Love is a very natural feeling. Other animals feel love, too. A mother dog loves her pups, and penguins mate for life. Because we know other animals love, we know it’s something very core to animal life and evolution. It’s something that lets all animals survive better.
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It makes sense: reproduction and survival are very important for animals, and love helps with both. If you love your child, you protect it better. Also if you are able to love, you can build stronger communities: families or wolf packs, and together you can fight off predators better.
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The feeling of love is caused by a very complex relationship between your hormones (chemicals in your body) and your brain. But it doesn’t mean “love is just a chemical reaction” like people say! Of course it is a chemical reaction, but so is everything in your brain – your thoughts, feelings, consciousness, dreams. Brains are really complicated and we don’t know how they work, so these feelings are still very very special.