A Critical Realist's Analysis of Love

Why do I feel this way? I have butterflies in my stomach, a longing for him, I go weak when I see him and speechless when I look into his eyes. I am possessive of him, suddenly wary of other women paying attention to him. I want him here with me. I enjoy him, I wonder what he is doing in a daydreaming moment. I have fallen for him, I’ve got it bad. I love him. Love. What is it? All of the above?

It's ecstasy when you fall in love, agony and heartbreak when the person you love does not reciprocate or end the love affair. It hurts. Love is a drug, with symptoms of withdrawal. Like any other physiological reaction to which the body has accustomed itself to, when the hormones produced by being attracted to someone are taken away (or go away on their own) the body will react in a homeostatic manner, realigning itself to normalise its system (commonly known as ‘getting over it’).

The feeling of excitement first felt when in love is said to last about 90 days before a relationship levels off into the stability of mutual comfort zones. After this, and when bonding between two people occurs, the deeper concerns of marriage and children are often considered.

But back to love. What happens? Boy meets girl, their eyes meet, words are exchanged, they make a date. The dance begins. Special efforts are made to attract that person. “He/she must be mine.” Common bonds are formed to hold the attention of the special person. Can it be anyone? No, it must be him. But why? Man (sic) is simply another species of animal that lives on earth. Our circadian rhythms are, whatever 24/7 culture we live in, tuned in to the integrated mechanisms of nature. Everyone eats, sleeps, lives, dies, loves. We are here, on earth, not for a particular moral reason, we are just here, a sophisticated biological organism, as prone to primal evolutionary urges as the next species.

Because we have evolved in a different (but not necessarily better) direction, we have our consciousness and culture and society. These strata of social interaction mask the mechanisms of nature which are reality. To clarify this, think about what would happen if you simply disappeared forever, now. The world and nature’s rhythms and mechanisms would continue to work, unaffected. The implications of your disappearance for your family, friends, workmates and pets are socially constructed rituals. Conversely, if you wanted to reproduce yourself and you need another person to help you with this natural mechanism, socially constructed rituals are present in culture to facilitate this. We cannot just go and immediately mate with the first person whose pheromones attract us to. Our sophisticated culture and society has embellished this process, like so may other complex organisational strategies such as work, parenting, shopping, going to the theatre, going to the toilet and disguised the primary natural mechanism with social construction which involves normalisation with rules and construct of society.

But we have not evolved out of the primal mating strategies. With hunting and gathering we have facilitated a culture (in the Western world) which is organisationally co-operative. We are hardly likely to become highly alert and vigilant because of raised adrenaline levels due to primal fight or flight responses when buying meat and veg in the supermarket. However, there is only one way to pass on your genes. Because mating to produce offspring can only be done by certain processes between two people, the physiological responses are less evolved out. In fact, as they are still and advantage, if not a necessity, it is unlikely that they will evolve out as long as intercourse remains the primary way to make a baby.
This process is completely outside psychological control. The reproductive mechanism is an intransive reality. For example, a woman who does not want children due to personal or career choice (social constructs) can choose to use birth control, but cannot, without chemical or surgical intervention, stop her menstruation at will. The woman who has undergone sterilisation can still experience the physiological response to love, even though she is 100% certain that the union will not result in a child. The reproductive system, which involves a complex interaction between the brain and reproductive organs, will, until partially or fully removed, continue until the circadian cycle is complete. In women, this is not at the moment of menopause, but in the wind-down years of the perimenopause leading to the age we must die signaled by the reduction of the physiological hormonal system. But by then, is this love thing a learned behavioural response? Is it like Pavlov’s dog, where we experience the physiological signals of love and mating rituals in our peak maturity, reproduce, then, anticipating lower reproduction we act out the salivation when the pheromone bell rings?

It’s a complex situation with many standpoints. But ask the person who is ‘in love’ and they will describe a powerful egocentric chemical reaction. Fireworks in the neurons! The competitive battle to keep a mate in, frankly, a polygynous society, adds to the initial rush of chemical through the reproductive mechanism to produce the fight or flight stress reaction with a little bit of added serotonin pleasure principal of sexual attraction.

So, love is a chemical reaction which can reinforce a behavioural reaction. And its uncontrollable, as it is a societal masking strategy for the underlying mechanisms of the reality of nature and the continuation of the species. We experience the attraction of and are attracted to another person, and in the anticipation of reproducing ourselves and furthering our gene line we experience the associated strong chemical reaction. This is the first flush of love, which hopefully goes on to be a bonded mating experience where social constructs such as parenting, marriage and finances hold the two people together. The flush of love sensation is numbed a little and becomes mutual companionship, albeit with a sense of territorial competitiveness borne of investment in shared genes present to fuel the relationship in chemical terms.

What happens when things go wrong? Oh dear. He’s gone. It hurts, my heart is broken. I cannot eat or sleep. I think about where he is, what he is doing. Is he with someone else? Why doesn’t he want me? I feel restless. Angry. Something is missing. Too right it is. It’s the hormones you have become so used to, the ones that are preparing you to further the species. Of course, there is always the socially constructed side to deal with. Rituals of reversal such as divorce, separation, what will friends and family think. But, to ‘get over it’ in a chemical way, all these need to be dealt with quickly. In the days and weeks following the longed for person dumping you, the strong hormonal/chemical reaction you have bee used to for quite a while now in damping down leaving you with a drained reproductive system and less adrenaline than you are used to. With the lack of chemicals to stimulate to reproductive part of the brain and the associated pleasure centre, the neurons are inhibited, the axons stop firing and the associated excitement and pleasure behaviour stops being produced. The socially learned behaviour of love, such as obsession, lust and jealousy can be prolonged for however long you wish to psychologically fool yourself that you still ‘love’ him. But the buck stops with the realisation that you will not in the foreseeable future be eliciting an act which will further the genes. A fight to regain the attention of the lost mate may begin, again through socially constructed rituals of ‘playing the game’ and this will emulate the strength of the love feeling through the primal fight/flight stress reaction, but until the mating dance is re-initiated and the right chemicals are flowing again, love cannot be true.

If the partner does not return, eventually the hormone/chemical fluctuation will normalise (you are over it) and you will be on the lookout for someone else to share your genes with. But in the period of ‘getting over it’ the feelings of unbearable emotional and pain associated with loss are heightened by the withdrawal of chemicals from the brain. Supported by a social system of taboos and rituals around ‘breaking up’ this can be a terrible, shocking and upsetting time. We never really know when a partner is going to break up with us, clues may be present but often we are blinded by the happiness of fulfilling our biological destiny (masked of course by the social representations of dating and marriage etc) that we miss what may normally have been an obvious sign. Also, up until that moment of them saying that they don’t want you any more, you have been investing in the possibility of furthering the species by mixing your genes with this person. So, it’s a double shock to the system. Not only do you have to negotiate the societally transient minefield of reverting from couple status to single status, but also the physiological nightmare of withdrawal symptoms from chemicals in your bloodstream which, for days, weeks months or years, have been instigating pleasure. Cold turkey.

Luckily, our friend the socially constructed behaviour strategy can help to alleviate the chemical withdrawal. Its OK to cry, be temporality unhappy, society permits us to be single (better not to be, hence added pressure). But the reaction is so strong that it makes a person almost desperate. Even if you know the relationship is destructive or just plain wrong, the pain associated with breaking up is tremendous.

So, to sum up, love is little to do with the heart and more to do with the whole body. Like most human strategies and behaviours, from a critical realist perspective, it’s a mix of the intransient mechanism of nature in the reproductive cycle (which, if all human animals disappeared, would continue in all non human animals and plants) and the transient and changeable societal and cultural strategies we use to elevate our species above other species and speculate our reproductive power.

On this basis, although we cannot escape from the physiological aspects of love, which are inherent and intransient, as long as we are aware of them and their effect on our outward behaviour, we can more easily negotiate the societal and cultural signposts for love, which are malleable and transient. And change them to suit ourselves!

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Jacqueline Ann Christodoulou PhD

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A Critical Realist's Analysis of Love

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