[SPEAKER_02]: What can science tell us about the most ineffable, complex and deeply human experience?
[SPEAKER_02]: Love.
[SPEAKER_02]: We often think of love as something that just happens, a feeling we fall into, but what if understanding the psychology, biology, and even chemistry of love could actually help us deepen our connections and make more conscious choices and how we love?
[SPEAKER_02]: In this episode, we're joined by Dr. Anna Meachin, an evolutionary anthropologist, researcher, and author of Why We Love The New Science Behind Our Closes Relationships.
[SPEAKER_02]: She teaches at Oxford University and has spent the last two decades studying the science behind intimate bonds.
[SPEAKER_02]: What sets her work apart is its inclusivity.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is just about romantic love.
[SPEAKER_02]: Dr. Meichen explores friendship, familial bonds, queer love, polyamory, chosen families, and even the emotional connection we feel to pets, celebrities, and spiritual figures.
[SPEAKER_02]: We dive into how our earliest attachments, neurochemical responses, and evolutionary instincts.
[SPEAKER_02]: shape how we love and who we choose to love.
[SPEAKER_02]: We also unpack love's more difficult dimensions.
[SPEAKER_02]: Why it can be addictive?
[SPEAKER_02]: The psychological risk of coercive dynamics in how social comparison and modern disconnection can warp our experiences of closeness.
[SPEAKER_02]: This conversation is for anyone who wants to understand themselves and their relationships on a deeper level.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because as
[SPEAKER_02]: and while it may be messy and unquantifiable, it's also the single most important factor in our health, happiness, and sense of meaning.
[SPEAKER_02]: Remember to go to Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a rating and review, and better get a comment about what you learned from this episode.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the psychology of relationships and you're listening to an episode that may just change the way you show up for love.
[SPEAKER_02]: Enjoy!
[SPEAKER_01]: What is love and why do we love?
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the focus of our conversation today with our guest, Dr. Anna Mechan.
[SPEAKER_01]: How are you, Anna?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm good, thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for joining us all the way from the UK.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's get right into it because our listeners love talking about science and data and numbers and anthropology.
[SPEAKER_01]: So why in your words?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why is love the most fundamental and unquantifiable human experience?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the most fundamental because without it we don't exist as a species.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it evolved because we needed it because it infiltrates every aspect of your being.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every fiber of your biological being, every aspect of your psychological being, every aspect of your cultural life is infiltrated by ideas about love.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's unquantifiable because however much we know about love from a scientific point of view, which is quite a lot now.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's always a bit of it we all never be able to touch and that's the bit that is subjective because I don't know whether what I say is love is the same as what you say is love.
[SPEAKER_00]: How you're feeling are they even in the same ballpark we will never know because I can't experience your love.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the bit that we'll never be able to touch which I actually quite like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's good that there's that little bit of mystery left however much we dig into into you know the science behind it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why we want love, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's gonna be sad.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's like growing evidence, you know, that human happiness comes down to the quality of our relationships.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's been a lot of studies, you know, about being lonely and loneliness is the big endemic and it's more dangerous, that smokey, you'd be a gopease.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like why do you think this is the case?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like why is love so essential to our core being?
[SPEAKER_00]: The several reasons, I mean, as you're putting it right, there's a lot of evidence now about that lots of studies are coming out, which are showing that yeah, the key factor in your longevity, your physical events or health, your life satisfaction, your happiness is the relationships you build with other people and the several reasons why that might be.
[SPEAKER_00]: It might simply be that having all those people around you supports you in times of need, so it might be that you support you practically, they might support you financially, they might support you emotionally.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's probably because the neurochemistry that's released when you're with them is just so many happy chemicals and it really underpins your mental health.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's the newest angle on this is the possibility that particularly something like beta endorphin, which is released when we enter out with each other, actually underpins your immune system.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there is actually a role in Betrendulfing making sure that your immune system is sort of in tip top shape.
[SPEAKER_00]: So those are probably in the main reasons why it's linked to all these positive results we're finding about social contacts and health going forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think also just from my point of view, looking at all the different mechanisms that are involved in love, just because it just engages every part of your being.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you're in love, every part of your being is tuned to be with that other person, to be as close to that other person as possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually 95, behavioral synchrony.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we might talk about that later maybe.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you're with somebody else, everything is sort of angled towards them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's probably got something to do with it as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's how we're supposed to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are a social species.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, and speaking of love, I mean, there are different kinds of love.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's romantic love, but there's all kinds of platonic love, the meal you love, there's animal love.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there a hierarchy in terms of which kind of love we prioritize?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's definitely one in terms of what we prioritize.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of, I get a bit like ranting about this, like, rats away.
[SPEAKER_00]: So romantic love is definitely privileged.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, we place it on top of the hierarchy if you think of all messages We get from the media in from our cultures the idea is you couple up and you you know you end up with somebody And if you don't do that in your life, then you're some sort of lonely sad figure That's kind of how we prioritise it and it's strange because there's nothing Biological to underpin that to be honest
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, um, so in terms of the benefits of love to you, you will get those from, if you love your friends, if you love your family, possibly even something like if you love your God, we need to do a bit more research on things like that, but certainly it's more like a flat spectrum of different sorts of lugs rather than a hierarchy and that's one of the reasons I wrote my book is because I wanted us to re engage with that spectrum.
[SPEAKER_00]: because a lot of the books that have been written before have been unraveling romantic love.
[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously that's really helpful, but they disregard the other sorts of love.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the things that makes us human is this amazing array of people and beings we can love and no other species does it to the extent that we do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I definitely, you know, like, I feel like as someone that was single, if there are 30s, what a lot of my friends were coupled up, having friends, you know, filled a lot of that void of loneliness, and I definitely agree with that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I can also hear people arguing, you know, now being in a couple, I do see how it's a little different.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you have this person that does life with you, born.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's your partner where your friends kind of have their old lives, and it's not intertwined as much.
[SPEAKER_02]: How would you respond to that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Would you feel that, you know, is it still important to fight that robotic love or can you do life without it?
[SPEAKER_00]: You can certainly do life without it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've written recently a lot on things called platonic life partnerships.
[SPEAKER_00]: And platonic life partnerships are all about aiming towards having that companion in life.
[SPEAKER_00]: That person that your life is intertwined with, that person you live with, possibly even decide to have children for assistive fertility, but it's based on platonic love.
[SPEAKER_00]: and this is certainly something that's starting to happen more within the queer community, particularly amongst a romantic and a sexual people, but it's something that's starting to spread into wider communities, into the straight community, where you, yeah, you want, obviously, we want someone to grow old with.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want someone to maybe share a house with share a life with share memories within that very close way.
[SPEAKER_00]: But again, tell Ray, we recently, that's always been what that person has to be romantic.
[SPEAKER_00]: That person has to be a romantic partner.
[SPEAKER_00]: And actually we're starting to think about that in different ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, could that person be a platonic person?
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone who, because platonic love is very powerful, very, very powerful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And certainly we know for women, if we look at things like emotional intimacy, quite often, women are more emotionally intimate with their female best friends
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think we disregard close Platonic love, actually.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's more about as we orientating our ideas from our culture than necessarily because it's a lesser form of love.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think what I'm hearing from you is it's less about like romantic versus platonic but more about someone that's going to
[SPEAKER_02]: be you're like life partner and like intertwined where I think what happens in platonic love a lot with friendship is it's two people that you know there is a love but they're also on their own past but I heard like I don't know some of my friends were joking like we're just gonna go golden girls style and I'll get a home together and I feel like that you're saying could be could give you the same biological effects of romantic love.
[SPEAKER_00]: absolutely and it's something that we have had in history before and certainly some cultures definitely do it but even if I look at like British history in the Victorian era there's this thing of of spinsters becoming companions for each other there was this understanding that these spinsters did not want to grow old on their own um and for what you know then there were very strict rules about you know if you if you hadn't got married by the time you were 22 then you were definitely on the shelf
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, so they would become companions for each other and they would grow all together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I must admit for some of them it was a front for being gay when that was unacceptable, but for some, it was very much a platonic relationship that they lived their lives together.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, what do you think is a downfall of, so we observed this and I've definitely done this myself is that when you're so focused on finding romantic love,
[SPEAKER_01]: You close yourself off to platonic love, or maybe you just don't work on those relationships as much.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think is a, as a downfall of that is when you're so laser focused on finding romantic love?
[SPEAKER_00]: You're right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think if you're very laser focused and you spend a lot of your time trying to find that romantic love, and obviously there are so many tools now for helping you do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we do then start to neglect our friendships.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we do underestimate the importance of our friendships.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's your in our society.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're kind of like the backup relationship, you know, the one you fall back on when, you know, you can't find your romantic partner or Yeah, yeah, your boyfriend or your girlfriend's not around to do something with, I know I'll go with my friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think we do, I think we do neglect it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's, again, it's just about a change and again, that's why in the book I say this is like a whole chapter, which is just about friendship.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I think we need to re-engage with that, that body of people, that group of people because they are really, really important.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're, you know, they're important not just as maybe a counter to romantic love, but for a lot of people counter to family love, not everybody gets on with their family.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I expect a lot of people who have chosen families and their chosen families are their friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: And these people are as if not more important to them than their blood family.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I think even if you don't not get along but like I know for myself like I live across the country for my family so it's just you know proximity alone doesn't allow me to be as close to them.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think my biggest pet peeve is what people are like I'm going to drop all my friends when I find a romantic partner.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the worst, and I guess like how do you start, you know, appreciating people, and like seeing that value that you're saying, that this is just as valuable to my overall well-being and also not even just the selfish side I value my love with this person.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you need to reflect on those relationships and I am as guilty as anybody else have not doing that.
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, my relationship with my best friend, apart from those I have with my parents and my sibling, is the longest relationship I've had longer than I've been married.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we met when we were 10, 36 years ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she is still my best friend.
[SPEAKER_00]: She actually does live in Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_00]: She lives over there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I saw her again after two years, a couple of weeks ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: and it was just so amazing and it was kind of like really emotional and I wasn't expecting it to be as emotional even with what I studied.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you have to kind of reflect on that you have to you have to think of the benefits of that relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: One person, if you're not, cannot bring you everything.
[SPEAKER_03]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: They just can't in a romantic relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you need that hintalander friendship.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think it's about positively really thinking about what do these people bring to my life?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is it that's different about them?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do I need them?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do they have to fit together in the jigsaw of who supports me?
[SPEAKER_00]: And certainly, we know again from studies comparing sort of romantic relationships and best friendships.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then and women, actually.
[SPEAKER_00]: The friendships bring kind of an unjudgmental, uncomplicated, relaxing, reassurance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: because the thing about romantic relationships is that there's always a very, even in the happiest romantic relationships, there's always a tension there, just a very slight tension.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's because you kind of both know even unconsciously that there was competition out there, if you see what I mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's conditional love.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's conditional.
[SPEAKER_02]: There is, like if this person doesn't do this, a hundred percent, I may leave where with the friendship, you would never think that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You would never think that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very rare for you to think that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think a friend has to do some
[SPEAKER_00]: actually, this is a win not doing this anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think for my study certainly that's what that shows you know women get this emotional intimacy and a lot of the women I spoke to for the book it was all about that non-judgmental support whereas maybe their families judge their decisions or you know romantic partners had judged them or not been good for them or whatever it was but their friends had always been there like this rock that you could return to and one woman said to me you know they've seen me at my worst they've seen me at the most vaulting at just the most
[SPEAKER_00]: and I sell here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you believe, because I certainly have seen this in myself, is that when you work on love in other areas of your life that aren't romantic, it actually helps with romantic love.
[SPEAKER_01]: And something that you, you have research backing this up is our love for our pets.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I got my first pet, Mojo, and I talked about them all the time, this was four, five years ago, I've never felt that kind of love before, and that's when I really open myself up to find
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess there's a two-fold question, is what is the love we feel for our pets?
[SPEAKER_01]: And how do the different kinds of loves affect romantic love?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think certainly, yeah, you can, because again, as you said, very romantic love, we, some, we might be scared of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We might have been hurt by it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We might, there might be various things, or reasons that it makes us quite anxious.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think a thing about pet love or animal love is it's pretty pure, actually.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty uncomplicated.
[SPEAKER_00]: This thing, I mean, particularly, I don't know,
[SPEAKER_00]: He's my son.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's a dog.
[SPEAKER_00]: So dogs are amazing because they live in the moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are always pleased to see you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the love they have for you is unconditional.
[SPEAKER_00]: They unconditionally adore you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's very pure sort of love.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you mentioned that he's your son where when we put people in scanners and we get them to interact with their pets, particularly with their dogs, the bits of the brain that light up are the parental bits.
[SPEAKER_00]: So relationship we have with our pets is very much a parental charge relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a sibling relationship It's not a friendship.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a parental child relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that why people do it like a trading like but get the dog before the kid I know I know when I thought might my step daughter is currently in that she's going to plant and she's going to keep the plant And she's going to keep the animal alive, you know, then she's going to have children apparently, but anyway So yeah, you can be so you know can you because think about particularly something like a dog which is actually very reliant on you
[SPEAKER_00]: You're very bonded to you and very attached to you and does genuine love you.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know that now They are a bit like a child because you have to be there for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are useless at looking after themselves daughter as a cat is you know can deal with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dogs are useless at looking after themselves and that is a pure love And maybe that's why it opened your heart because it's there's no games dogs don't play games You know, they just want to be with you and for you to love them
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that, you know, I have three dogs and they really are, you know, the loves of my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I adore them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are just beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they bring something.
[SPEAKER_00]: They bring that absolute just calmness and care.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we know all the health benefits of being with dogs and being, you know, and the wonderful neurochemistry you get.
[SPEAKER_00]: So absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think other forms of love can show you maybe the different sorts of love and they can feed into a more primary relationship definitely definitely definitely.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm kind of just like, you know, tying together some of what you're saying.
[SPEAKER_02]: And do you think some of the reason why there's so much pressure on romantic love is that we're supposed to find that one person, where with family and friends and heads, like, you were saying earlier, like, a friend would have to do, like, really terrible to leave.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's because it doesn't have to be the only friend we have, you know, we more leniency towards it.
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you think love with the one or the way monogamy is set up is challenging to love?
[SPEAKER_00]: It is challenging because we aren't as a species supposed to be totally monogamous.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's actually no totally monogamous species in the world at all, even though people got a better monogamous than no, they're not.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you watch them, they're always sneaking off and mating with somebody else.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: So monogamy is difficult and it's mainly a cultural imposition on this biological phenomenon that is love and it is reproductive love.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very hard because you've got this tension between that social construct that is monogamy and you know most religions preach monogamy, most legal systems preach monogamy, you know most of the images you see in the media are about monogamy and that's the structure that we base our families on in most you know in most cultures.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's very powerful message, but there's this tension because your biology is not quite pushing you in that direction.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also the idea of the warm, this romantic narrative we have is quite unhelpful, because I think it puts a lot of pressure on this like this warm person, you've got to find the person.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's not true.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an algorithm like everything else is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's lots of people out there who will fit you because it's very attraction is very complicated.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we have this message of the warm.
[SPEAKER_00]: We also have this message of that it's all going to be, you know, sunshine and roses and butterflies in this Indian.
[SPEAKER_00]: all of this kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, it's not.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard, all relationships are hard and all relationships take work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, again, within romantic relationships, there is a spectrum which goes from polyamory at this end where you love many people romantically, right down to a romantic who don't feel romantic love at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there is a spectrum and, you know, again, monographies, one bit of that spectrum.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we need to understand that we're a slightly more complex species.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then our cultures would say we were when it comes to romantic love, I think.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think love can disappear?
[SPEAKER_01]: Can just be gone in a relationship?
[SPEAKER_00]: It can.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it happens in an instant.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think you can.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, some people say, I'll wake a one-day on the side.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't love them, but if you look at that trajectory that reaches that point, the will have been a general withdrawal has occurred.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yes, certainly love can completely disappear.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there are two elements.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we look at the biological dimension of love, there are two elements really.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's the neurochemistry, which addicts you to the other person.
[SPEAKER_00]: and then there's the psychological role within that, which is that when we fall in love with somebody, we substitute them into our identity.
[SPEAKER_00]: That relationship becomes part of our identity.
[SPEAKER_00]: So suddenly, your identity is not single woman.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's person in a couple and the fact that you're in a couple with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: particular person becomes part of your identity and your identity changes because of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you fall out of love, generally, if you are the one that's kind of ultimately going to call the end to the relationship, what you tend to see with people when you observe them is they slowly start to physically withdraw and it might be because
[SPEAKER_00]: there's something about the person that's annoying them or, you know, they've both changed too much or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whenever it's called them to be fitting together, they're not fitting together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so first of all, you get this withdrawal of neurochemistry and that is like going called turkey very slow, you know, when you come off like an opiate of heroin, you withdraw slowly.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what tends to happen in relationships, as you slowly withdraw in those levels go down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're just not addicted to the person in the same way anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: and then you have the psychological withdrawal as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which can mean even if you are the person doing the dumping as we call it, you still will feel a form of grief.
[SPEAKER_00]: You still like to feel some psychological pain, because even though you've decided that this is not what you want, you've still got to detangle that person, that relationship from your identity, so that can still be quite difficult.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then obviously, if you're the person who just comes completely out of the blue, you had no idea there was a problem with somebody suddenly says to you, this is it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to do this anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's incredibly painful because you go from big up here with all your lovely neoric chemistry, filling wonderful filling you for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: All your aches and pains are being hidden by lots of lovely neoric chemicals and as soon as you're right down here, you crash and you go completely cold turkey immediately.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is why if you are dumped.
[SPEAKER_00]: it's so psychologically and physiologically painful because one of the chemicals underpins love is bitter and dolphin and that's your body's pain killer.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when it's gone it really, really physically hurts as well and then obviously you then have the psychological grief.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when the love is gone, can you get back the love?
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you fall back in love with someone?
[SPEAKER_00]: Depends, I think it depends how badly it's gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think, yeah, there's always a reverse.
[SPEAKER_00]: People always change again.
[SPEAKER_00]: People at different, you know, we all, I think, know, of people who are different stages of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe, right now, it's not working.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they meet again in 20 years time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, oh, actually, now we are at the right
[SPEAKER_00]: because coming together is not just about all those chemicals and that physical attraction, it's about all those other things that are also in the mix.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I at the right stage live, do we want the same thing?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do my does my family use my family happy with this relationship?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, my friends thing, did, did, did, did.
[SPEAKER_00]: So my God, I really want to do my career.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's so many different things that come here that at this point this might not be right, but in five years' time it might be or you know, you can do a lot of work on yourselves and you can become slightly different people and then that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't think falling out of love means it's forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think in some cases it can come, you can really, or even if you stay together and you're right close to the abyss of it ending, you know, you can pull it back but I think it takes a lot of work at that point.
[SPEAKER_02]: So let's talk about heartbreak for a second because we're going to go down that path.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you set it yourself like heartbreak could be completely brutal because, you know, it's grief and it's plagued on our biology and psychology, everything aspects of all of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there a, you know, a scientific way to like get over it more or do you kind of just need to go through it?
[SPEAKER_00]: There are certain things you can do, so for example, try not to shut yourself in your apartment and never emerge again, because actually what you need to do is you need to try and get that nearer chemistry from another source.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, fall back on your friends, see them, get that interaction from them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I always say to people, there are many things that produce those nearer chemicals which aren't love.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for example, dopamine, so dopamine is one of the whole main of love, you can get dopamine from lots of doing anything you really like.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for example, hugging your dog is really good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: because you're going to get that head of Neurochemistry from your dog, eat some chocolate, chocolate produces dopamine, red wine produces tofu.
[SPEAKER_00]: All these things, exercise is really good for beta and dolphin, so if you can, go out and exercise and it's a case of trying to get that Neurochemistry from somewhere else to allow you to withdraw nicely.
[SPEAKER_00]: The psychological thing is really hard, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: to deal with.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for some people that's just about processing in their own time, for other people, that is really about talking it through.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really talking it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's again, when your friends can be really valuable, that sort of rock that's always been there.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can go, you can go.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes people find, you know, reflecting on the relationship, you know, is it a pattern of relationships?
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I doing the same thing over and over again?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, well, if that's not helpful, what do I want to do about that?
[SPEAKER_00]: So that, you know, that can be help, but know the psychological bit of falling out of love is generally much harder than the neurochemical bit to deal with.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think that love is relative to our life experiences?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I think back to when I was even in high school, I was so in love with my first boyfriend.
[SPEAKER_01]: But now looking back, I'm like, was that even love?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because that's not the love I recognized today.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess it's like sometimes we question if we are in love, but I guess if you feel like you are, then you are, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the state of being loved.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean this is the difficult thing because we as humans if I say to somebody are you in love and they go, yeah I go okay and the thing is as you say compared to yeah that's that and that again It's a point I make in my work and in my book is that we can't question somebody else's pronounce them and that they are in love If that at that moment they say they're in love.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay fine
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it could be that later on in life you discover a more intense love and then you go, oh, oh, actually maybe that was fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in a way, it was, love is not a, it's here, it's not here, think.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are different levels of love.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the same way, for example, you know, yes, dogs and people, it's a parental child love.
[SPEAKER_00]: But most people, when they have kids, do feel more powerfully for their kids than they do for the dog.
[SPEAKER_00]: okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there are intensities of love.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think it's difficult to say that you weren't in love when you were at high school, because you were in a form of love, a form of your spectrum of love, but the intensity of love may be you feel later is more powerful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because there are different, you know, I have two children.
[SPEAKER_00]: The love I have for them is, yeah, really powerful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, yeah, I mean, you know, I'm that mama bear who would literally kill for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's kind of like, that's a really, but I wouldn't say that then the values, the other love, loves him, I like that love, I have my husband, for example.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just different, yeah, different sorts of love, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: The most time I've been challenged by the idea of whether somebody is in love is when I've looked at people who live in abusive relationships into a partner violence.
[SPEAKER_00]: and I talk about this in the book because I think the darker side of love it's important to look at, talking to people who've been in those relationships, looking at studies of people who've talked about where love is in those relationships.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they will say, well, yes, I love, even though the partner's doing awful things to them, they will say, yes, I love my partner.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, a lot of people will go, of course, they don't, you know, there's no way, because that's just how could you love somebody who would do that to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't think you can discount someone else's experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: I say, that's not a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what to go into the darker side of love because you know a beautiful relationships verbal abuse is a thing and physical of course it's not just physical and then you know there's the deception, the lying like all these aspects that you know is not good things to experience yet they're kind of maybe sometimes the outcome that happens in some love instances.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, can you kind of describe, I mean, I know every instance is different, but like what happens with someone's like chemistry like brain chemistry when they're in a situation like this of like how do you balance kind of the good aspects of love with these parts that you know you know deep down aren't good, but you're still in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's really difficult to unpack, to be honest.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, I mean, the dark side of love comes from the fact that we are so evolved to look full of and to keep love and to want love.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like a visceral part of us and if we don't have it, then we are like half a person.
[SPEAKER_00]: But because of that, because we need it so badly, people can use love to manipulate us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we are the only animal on earth that users love to manipulate.
[SPEAKER_00]: no other animal does it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So because of that, you know, you can, you know, the classics that, you know, if you, if you love me, you would do this kind of thing, which some of his might have said jokingly, but some people say that very seriously, you know, and that's why it can be used to control.
[SPEAKER_00]: And someone asked me about this other day, so well, well, surely that's like maladaptive, you know, because that's actually going to threaten your survival.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, well, yeah, no adaptation is 100% positive.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the vast majority of love is a good thing, but this is part of it that is negative,
[SPEAKER_00]: it's really hard because some of us are more predisposed maybe by our upbringing in particular to be drawn to people who are more likely to do that to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, and we might be less equipped to recognize it and to be able to go, okay, this is not.
[SPEAKER_00]: this balance is wrong and this is not helping.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a really, you know, the question is to why people stay in abusive relationships is a really difficult one.
[SPEAKER_00]: A really interesting study recently, which is done in South Africa, said one of the things that might keep women in romantic relationships, particularly young women who are in abusive relationships, is the romantic narrative and this idea that we tell them the, you know, romantic love is difficult and it's like a roller coaster and you have to get over all these hurdles to have romantic love.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you might, yeah, exactly, it's hard, and you might have to go against your family's wishes, but real love will try and for all this kind of rubbish.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we tell people this, and so that when they're in this relationship and, you know, like, for example, you know, the hurdle is actually, oh, my God, I get beaten every day or my family, I'm defying my family, even though my family is saying, this person is so bad for you, you have to leave.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the romantic narrative itself is quite unhelpful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or the idea that there is one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, my one happens to hit me, but this is the one.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, you hear that.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a very good study of women who are in abusive relationships along those lines who say things like, you know, but I know him and I know who he is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And first of all, I think my love can change him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they feel this is a space of power that then a love can change this person.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can rescue him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a really good person.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not on the spot and I can rescue him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's all these stories about the power of love.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's really difficult.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think it's something you have to recognize that as where you know grief is the price you pray for love, then I'm afraid this horrible end of it where people manipulate and abuse using it to trap you is also the price I'm afraid.
[SPEAKER_01]: don't you think there's also a biological factor to this?
[SPEAKER_01]: I've read research about how love makes you dumb.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean literally clouds your judgment and you don't see the red flags and you just want to see this person for their good and not their bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't you think there's an aspect of that that's just like the narrative aside where it just biologically also not seeing these things?
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, that kind of's to happen only though in the very early months of relationships.
[SPEAKER_00]: So people who've been in a long-term relationship for a long time, that's pretty much dropped by that time.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yes, when you're first in love with someone, the bit of your brain, which it's called theory of mind, and theory of mind is the ability to tell what somebody's going to do next.
[SPEAKER_00]: You need theory of mind to spot a cheat, to spot a liar, to spot people who are not being who they say they are.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's that kind of reading mind, who is this person really.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not a theory of mind, and when you fall in love,
[SPEAKER_00]: So love is blind, it's genuinely blind because that bit stops working.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we were having this chat with you today.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going, well, why would that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that puts you a massive risk actually.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because you can't detect these people.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we were just wondering that if it didn't deactivate humans as such a neurotic species that we would actually never go out with anyone, because we'd just simply be going, oh no!
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to kind of shut it down for a bit to give us a chance to go out with anyone at all, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were kind of joking around, but we were kind of like, why would it deactivate?
[SPEAKER_00]: But it does.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, so that's why you know, you might be in a new relationship, maybe a few months in and your friends are kind of like really?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they're not that great, are they?
[SPEAKER_00]: And you just literally cannot see it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, okay, what about, like, unrequited love or, you know, situationships where you're really not getting what you want, it's one sided.
[SPEAKER_02]: Why do people still feel love towards this person?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what, that's a really good question and we don't really know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we don't know whether any other species experiences one sided love, because in one sense, we kind of study this in several different ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: We do, yeah, but study people who are unrequited love with people like, let's say, like, in the office
[SPEAKER_00]: you feel this passionate love for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, it's really hard to know.
[SPEAKER_00]: We haven't really put those sorts of people in the Scani yet and done a lot on them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we do know, for example, if we look at what we call parasocial love and that is love for like a movie star or a celebrity or a character in a book or even an advertiser in a second life game, that's parasocial love.
[SPEAKER_00]: To crash.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a crush, basically.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not allowed to call it that anymore, though.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not acceptable anymore, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
[SPEAKER_00]: without having that interaction, without having that physical interaction, it's like religious love.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I really just love this really well we search now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we know when we put people who are in deep, really just love in a scanner, so there's been some amazing studies done on like, devout Christians, like nons, people like that, put them in a scanner, get them to commune with God in a mystical state.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you see the fingerprint of love in their brain.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they love God.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a genuine thing and all the prefrontal cortex, which is what lights up when you interact with another being with another human, lights up.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they think, genuinely, I'm in a relationship and I'm talking to a fellow human, but I can't see him, I can't touch him, I can't come in with him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we are able to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our brain is able to fall in love with none of the physical presence or activity.
[SPEAKER_00]: So probably unrequited love is maybe a similar experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was definitely in a situation like this by 20s where I actually felt like I was a love with this person.
[SPEAKER_02]: Even though it wasn't a real relationship.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm kind of putting it together now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you think that I could have just been in love with love?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, is that a thing?
[SPEAKER_00]: In a lot, I don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
[SPEAKER_00]: person for reason, there was something about them attracted them to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you can be in love with aspects of being a love.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have people when we in the lab who, you know, we always ask people for their relationship history and you'll get those people who are always just having six math relationships, six math relationships, six math relationships, one after the other and they are quite clearly addicted to the first stage and the real hit of lustful neurochemistry that stood because the neurochemistry changes as your relationship goes on.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first stages is a slightly different cocktail to when maybe six months a year in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as some people who are just completely addicted to that bit and they just love that bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when it gets, when it kind of starts changing that cocktail recipe and things start to become maybe less based upon attraction and passion and more on what we would actually call love, then it's not so much.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, what are the stages of love?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I know that you go through different stages.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're a really two main ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have lust at the beginning, which some people, you know, get a different academic on you, probably get a different answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't classify that as love.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So lust.
[SPEAKER_00]: is the attraction stage lust is underpinned by oxytocin dopamine aceratonein.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's got a lot of unconscious activities, so a lot of lust is unconscious.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in the core of your brain.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you see a lot of hypothalamus activity successful.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sex hormones are.
[SPEAKER_00]: And whilst there is conscious contemplation, there's not as much.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when you move into love, what happens is we introduce a new chemical, which is beta-endorphin, and beta-endorphin is an opiate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so it's your body's heroine.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's powerful enough to un-pip underpin him relationships for decades, whereas the other ones aren't.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we introduced Peter and Dolphin at that point.
[SPEAKER_00]: And passionate love tends to drop slightly in become what we call companionate love and companionate love is much deeper.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's what we call an attachment.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very drilled into your psychology.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is when the person really is part of your identity.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see different behaviors.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, some people, I think, find that transition quite difficult because maybe it's less exciting.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's much more conscious, so you're using much more of your conscious abilities, your cognitive abilities, such as empathy and trust and reciprocity and that kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a very different sort of experience as to the early stages of a relationship.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's your opinion about this because Julie and I always text back and forth about how we're in a love crisis where I think people are afraid to fall in love because they know there's hurt on the other end of it where they feel like it maybe maybe takes up too much work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you feel that if we are indeed in a love crisis if we're not working the love muscles that we could eventually lose the ability to love.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think we'll ever lose the ability to love because love is fundamental to our survival.
[SPEAKER_00]: Basically, those people who are finding that so fearful and not getting together, I'm afraid those genes ain't going down any generations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas the people who do overcome that, their genes will go down and you would probably end up with a lot of people who had a lot of genetics which underpin high motivation to find a partner, that kind of thing which is a genetic oh, underpinning.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, some people are more motivated to find partners to be in long-term relationships to find that they make them happier than others.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's probably your genetics.
[SPEAKER_00]: An interesting genetic influence, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Very interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, some people are more motivated to be like in a couple than others.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people find it a much more satisfying and happy place to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I'm afraid those people would carry on down to the generations and the other guys who were like, yeah, and I don't want to do this with me for juice.
[SPEAKER_02]: I always thought that was your upbringing more than your chance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you know what?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a really difficult and complicated relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the biggest studies we've ever did at Oxford was on the genetics that underpin love.
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a really complicated relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: So no, your upbringing is really important, particularly because you're upbringing really influences the structure of your brain and influences things like,
[SPEAKER_00]: how much grey and white matter you have in relationship areas of your brain, your baseline levels of neurochemistry, for example, that kind of thing are affected by your upbringing.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are certain things that also have a genetic influence and then there's this really complicated environmental genetic relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for example, the oxytocin receptor gene which underpins oxytocin's ability to operate within your brain has
[SPEAKER_00]: 26 point mutations on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And is there those 26 point mutations?
[SPEAKER_00]: Have an influence on your love relationships.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that underpins a lot of the variability we get between people.
[SPEAKER_00]: The biggest thing that interests me in love research is why we are all different.
[SPEAKER_00]: What makes this different?
[SPEAKER_00]: And part of that is your genes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there is a part of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of those point mutations influences how motivated you are to be in a long-term relationship.
[SPEAKER_02]: interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like we always talk about a touch forever, but we don't ever talk about like the most efficient relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a really, really important attachment, psychology, all that critically important.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm really want to influence how you behave in a relationship, how you feel in a relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: So your attachment profile is really important, but your genes are also have an influential role.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes they both interact with each other and then it all gets very complicated.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, your genetics are an really interesting area.
[SPEAKER_01]: that's fascinating.
[SPEAKER_01]: What are some ways we can awaken our love muscles or ability love?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I thought I wasn't able to for a long time.
[SPEAKER_01]: The last time I said I love you was in 2009.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it took another almost 10 years for me to say I love you again.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for all those years, I thought I didn't have the ability to love anymore until I got home Joe.
[SPEAKER_01]: So are there ways we can just awaken those senses more?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you know what I think it's about being more self-aware, so it would be interesting to know during those 10 years what your attachment profile was?
[SPEAKER_00]: It sounds like you were probably an avoidant personality.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, for sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: A little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's always how, and I always say to people, if you're comfortable, find out what your attachment profile is because I think for a lot of people, it really helps them understand their behavior.
[SPEAKER_00]: and if you're happy with your behaviour and how you feel when you're in a relationship, great, let's go with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're not, attachment profiles can be changed.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can take one along work, but like for example, one of the things that changed for you, you've got a dog, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe, suddenly you can't be avoiding with that dog anymore, you have to be there for that dog.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't just decide you don't want to be there.
[SPEAKER_00]: and that's starting to change your attachment profile.
[SPEAKER_00]: My attachment profile when I met my husband, I was anxious, really anxious, preoccupied, had high anxiety about being abandoned, was really clingy, nightmare person.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's secure, and I am not secure because I've been with someone who just proved all of my fears, and I'm not secure.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can change that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's always really important.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think in exercising those muscles.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think trying to maybe practice some of the behaviors which make you more open to letting people in.
[SPEAKER_00]: So emotional vulnerability is really important in finding relationships and also maintaining them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we know that people are more emotionally vulnerable, more willing to share sort of their deeper thoughts and fears and feelings about something.
[SPEAKER_00]: are much closer to the person they're in a relationship with than those who cannot do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's always about exercising that bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can be really scary, but there are sets of questions that we give to people to try and help them do that starting at really gentle levels of emotional intimacy and vulnerability right down to something that's really quite intense.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can slowly work your way through and slowly open up that bit of you that allows that person in.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there are things you can do that can certainly
[SPEAKER_00]: and also find the love that you want to have.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It might not be that actually romantic love is your thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It might be that dog loves your thing, or when should love's your thing, or god loves your thing, or, you know, so look at the full spectrum and think, well, actually, what kind of love do I want in my life?
[SPEAKER_00]: Interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's so fascinating that love is so different for everyone, you know, and, you know, that's what makes it hard, like you've said to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And y'all do a example about, you know, taking 10 years to say, I love you again.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I think this is a private one.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know we put a lot of weight on those words.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love you.
[SPEAKER_02]: But some people have no problem saying I love you, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: So sometimes it can be said in a month where others, you know, it's a struggle.
[SPEAKER_02]: It takes years to actually mutter those words.
[SPEAKER_02]: Does that just all come back to like you're a biology or how you're raised or you're okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a really good idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's never, what are you about love?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it really complicated?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's never one answer to any question.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, it kind of partly is what you believe love means.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what do you think love is?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we all define love in a slightly different way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Part of it is how we were brought up and how we were sharing what love was.
[SPEAKER_00]: Part of it is cultural.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's been some amazing studies.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I talk about them in the book about asking people in different cultures to answer the question what is love.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you'll get really, really different answers.
[SPEAKER_02]: What are some that you've heard, yeah?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, example, it's you ask about love in somewhere like Russia, not a good choice, but Russia.
[SPEAKER_00]: Russia's love is actually quite a difficult, hard, can be quite a negative feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can be about distress and abandonment, they're kind of, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So love is not necessarily the joyous thing and defined in Russia.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a difficult thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we look at some, for example, some Kenyan cultures, their love is very much tied to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So love is a spiritual thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Love is about being on a higher plane.
[SPEAKER_00]: Love makes you closer to God at, puts you on this higher moral plane.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's very delightful, religion.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we look at somewhere like Brazil, love is the family.
[SPEAKER_00]: So love is about loving your family, providing for your family.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's turning to your family first.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it really depends where you come from as first of all, what you think love is, major cultural component.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us are more able to be emotionally vulnerable and set, others find it a really scary thing to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that might be again because of what your experiences of love have been when you were younger, maybe you loved somebody very much, maybe you loved your parents very much and you didn't feel like that came back.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there was lots of reasons why people, and some people just don't put a lot of weight on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But some people, it's not a very valuable word.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: to be honest.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't mean that much.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's always difficult.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know I'm not a therapist, but I know a therapist talk a lot about love language to the center.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, what do we both mean by love?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it could be you mean completely different things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's about trying to work out, you know, what we actually mean when we say love.
[SPEAKER_02]: What about the word fall like a love like that phrase?
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you feel about that?
[SPEAKER_02]: I could see you, Craig Jake.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, maybe the falling bit comes because it is such a rush, because then you're a chemistry, particularly for some people, is such a euphoric high.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of these chemicals are made to make you feel euphoric and high and happy and all of these different sorts of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think for some people, particularly people who maybe exist at quite a high level of them, it is a rush.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a falling, you know, you feel slightly out of control, you know, particularly because that theory of my bit has turned off, you know, you are out of control, you can't quite assess what is going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think falling in one sense is maybe just somebody trying to explain what the hell it feels like when you get this rush of, of attraction, you know, for other people, you know, it's, it's more of a slow burn, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people get that rush and fall in the love they think immediately, others, it takes much longer to realise that actually, I am attracted to this person and I, you know, I do like this person.
[SPEAKER_01]: that's interesting you say that because to me falling in love is a transitional period of when you're not yet in love but isn't it that you're either in love or you're not?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there an actual period of like maybe I'm not?
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe I am?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I'm not sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Love certainly grows but again it's about we have no absolute definition for love.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's interesting that you ask that when I do a lot I do a lot of public talks about love and I quite often get asked for the time table.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, if I meet this person on this day at what point does this happen and then what point does this happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then what point do we transition from attraction and lust to love?
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I lose in a day, it's no day.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't work like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone's different.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people fall hard and fast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Other people, it takes a really long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no absolute because your experience of love is multifactorial or are many different things that feed into it which are unique to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, we can never say that day you weren't in love, that day you were in love.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think people who say, oh, I woke up and I knew I was in love, I think they've just come to that conscious realization, you know, their body and their mind have been doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Would you add a long term relationship?
[SPEAKER_02]: Are there ever days that you're just not in love?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like could that just go away for a day or an hour?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like how does that work?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so this is a difference between being in love and experiencing a love, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: In love is a very active thing where you know, you stop and think, yeah, wow, I really do love you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And certainly, there are days when I look at my husband and I really do know all of you soon.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, whatever reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think the problem is we misclassify love as an emotion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Love is not an emotion, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not even a secondary emotion.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just not an emotion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Love is a motivation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like hunger first, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you speak to a long-term couple and you say to them, oh, you and love will go, yeah, but they don't feel love all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the same way, you don't feel thirsty all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't feel hungry all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You feel those things when they are in short supply.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you might feel a desperation for love in a long-term relationship because you've not been with the person you're in love with.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's some really interesting new work on this that love is actually a fundamental life need.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a thing called Maslow's Pyramid needs and write down the bottom of things like food water shelter.
[SPEAKER_00]: and then above that we have security so the ability to feel and be made safe and then up there massively this was 1940 that way but massively placed relationships and love and you've heard it as a psychological need well we now know that actually it's a fundamental physiological need if you do not have love in your life particularly let's say as a baby you don't have love in your life that causes a lot of issues and it's highly highly detrimental to your survival and your health
[SPEAKER_00]: So actually, love is a fundamental life need.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a mediator that makes us do stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not something that's always being experienced all the time because it doesn't need to be experienced all the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, what about, okay, in today's world, people are getting buried later, if at all.
[SPEAKER_02]: Choosing to maybe not even have relationships, not having children, you know, we talked about it up front is that love can come in different ways if you have friendship and family is there a world where you could have zero love and like what does that mean for our species if that continues or do you believe like you'll just continue to find it in different ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we continue to find it in different ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a real individual variation in this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people really do not require many people in their life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's partly an attachment style.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're dismissing a void.
[SPEAKER_00]: It might be that they live at very low levels of neurochemistry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Could be a genetic underpinning.
[SPEAKER_00]: It could be something again that's come from their childhood.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are some people who are very much islands.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as far as we can tell, they don't seem to suffer that much detriment from being like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it is a spectrum in terms of how much people are loving and number of people they are loving.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, I always say to people to have absolutely zero loving your life is a really, really bad idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm, really bad idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the main reason behind that is because of that very strong statistic now between love relationships and mental and physical health and longevity and all that kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know that people who don't have love do suffer detriment.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know particularly children who do not have love are set up for a tricky life.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be really hard, but they are much more likely, for example, to not have the skills to deal with relationships when they're older.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's kind of like a lifelong issue.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're much more likely to suffer issues with addiction.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're much more likely to have mental health issues.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're much more likely to struggle in social context.
[SPEAKER_00]: So having zero love, I think is a tricky, tricky thing and it's a very risky thing to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it is a case of finding that love where might be, it might be that you find your love volunteering in your community.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it may be quite a high level, but you find it with lots of different people and you find it with that process of helping others.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, it might be something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It might be that you're not into like really intimate like two people relationships.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's something about being within your community, for example, that you feel like, or you might, yeah, just be absolutely animal obsessed and having some other animals.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, whatever it might be, you need that, you do need that interaction with something else as a human.
[SPEAKER_01]: Love is important.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's a main message.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're taking away from this.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's actually a basic need and going back to romantic love.
[SPEAKER_01]: What advice would you give to couples where people dating where they feel like the barrier to love is the three words I love you who says it first.
[SPEAKER_01]: We hear this, you know, from our listeners, it's like, I don't want to be the one who says a first that I've lost this game of love.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, for my partner and I took us over a year to say I love you and that took a lot of drugs because we were so afraid to say it to each other.
[SPEAKER_01]: What advice would you give to people who are just afraid to say it first, even though even though they feel it?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think, try to lessen the importance you place on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that's really hard, but it is three words.
[SPEAKER_00]: You could be saying completely different things when you're saying it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I actually think you read people by their actions more than whether they say, I can't remember when I said I love you to my husband.
[SPEAKER_00]: No idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just I just don't remember it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's not what you remember what you remember.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I've been like like 20 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: What what you remember is what that person has bought you, what they've done for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think try and don't get so hung up on it and also please don't see love as a game.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a game.
[SPEAKER_03]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: So all these books we get out here, you know, so, you know, you have to wait this many days before you, you know, message back and you have to do this and you have to do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a game.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's two people who have to find a way to fit together and ride this journey.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's going to be really individual to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So please just go with what works for you and don't try and see it as a game.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think if you see it as a game, you've got a problem because it's not a game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a given take.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, you know, it's a moving, you know, living being and you kind of have to look at it that way, I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what about for the people that are feeling like they're giving up on love?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like I think what you just described is actually the opposite of modern dating.
[SPEAKER_02]: You've been drilled for years about how you play this game and, you know, you also are kind of like hoarding each other and only showing your best sides.
[SPEAKER_02]: So then when things don't work out, there's this feeling like things aren't matching up or I'm not destined for the real deal.
[SPEAKER_02]: What advice would you have for people that have almost given up?
[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, I would be like, if you really, really want romantic love, then please don't give up.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you aren't that bothered, but you just want some sort of love, find another one on the spectrum.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are a lot of different sorts of love.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd say, yeah, dating apps, the whole thing, they have gamified it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've kind of made it as something else we can do in the really efficient way, which, you know, we can just tick off our list and we just flip, we flip, we flip, we get, okay, you know, we might, you know, I've talked to people who've had like four, five dates and a weekend, not given anybody really more than like 20 minutes half an hour to decide whether they want to be with this person, just stop.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the thing about human love is humans were designed and evolved to love in person for a start.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I always say to people, dating apps are fine if you see them as a tool.
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to control them, not them you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you need to set yourself some rules.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you need to say I will have a certain number of like messages with this person and then I will decide I either see you in person or we forget it Because otherwise what you get stuck on is messaging messaging messaging messaging and never meeting them and you don't allow your brain to do its job Your brain is the most amazing dating algorithm
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, it's really good at taking a loads of sensory information and deciding whether or not this person is for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You cannot do that through a screen, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no way you can do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other thing it handicaps you with is that ability to spot a cheat or a lawyer.
[SPEAKER_00]: All those really good skills you have that you can't use them online.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't work.
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to be in the room.
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to use your instincts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, is this person like genuine?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this person I want someone I want to go further with?
[SPEAKER_00]: And you have to I think try not to prepare a cake too much trouble with all this amazing opportunity of all these different dating apps and as you always feel that something else out there maybe something better it's called the paradox of choice we are not involved to take decisions based upon picking so many different things as like I can't actually
[SPEAKER_00]: So, again, it's about maybe taking more time, deciding again, set some rules.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to just constantly flip.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to prepare, okay, I'm just going to take a decision.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you can give them more time, okay, people are a little bit obsessed with, right off of what I will hear is I didn't get that chemistry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't get that feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: 50% of cases don't give that feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is no instant chemistry going on there.
[SPEAKER_00]: What it does is that's just one aspect of attraction, that instant chemical feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's that unconscious algorithm in your brain, which is lust.
[SPEAKER_00]: which has gone bidding and getting that chemical feeling does not actually predict whether you will have a long-term relationship with that person.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just lust, okay guys.
[SPEAKER_00]: What you need to do is realise that for some people it takes much longer.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might be the kind of person who's actually more drawn by someone's brain.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are they going to say?
[SPEAKER_00]: What are are they funny?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do they read good literature?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do we have a learning common?
[SPEAKER_00]: What do they talk about?
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually the brain is the sexiest organ in your body.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for some people, it takes much longer to get that chemistry than those initial 10 seconds.
[SPEAKER_00]: So give people space and time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe we've kind of made it into a real chore, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a job.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a job.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think maybe the apps have made that happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think maybe if we can step back and reevaluate that a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, it shouldn't be a chore.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not something on your tip list to go, you know, by the age of 30, tip.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got the partner moving on to the next thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, you know, try to, if you can, try to chill a little bit about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Definitely.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I love that the brain is your best algorithm.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think everyone needs to live by that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And sexy as Oregon, those two sexy fun things.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, this conversation has been so incredible.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there's so many takeaways.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the first one that comes to mind for me is that love is everywhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think, you know, we do, there's this, you know, I'm not going to argue.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think romantic love is wonderful.
[SPEAKER_02]: But also the love that you have with your friends and family members and pets, every
[SPEAKER_02]: everyone, that all deserve the same about a recognition almost in.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we hear so many people that are on this quest for romantic love, and it's like, I don't need to spend time with my friends.
[SPEAKER_02]: I need to just go date after date.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I loved the conversation we had, too, like UAE, even you say, by getting Mojo and helped it be up.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think the more we can let love in a different ways, it would reduces the pressure to find that romantic love.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you'll likely actually probably find it faster because you don't have all your exit one basket in the need of just having this.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the second, it just makes you more of a lovable person.
[SPEAKER_02]: So your energy is attracting people that recognize that value.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that's the biggest that I have is that love comes at all shapes and forms,
[SPEAKER_02]: Instead of focusing on what we don't have, let's focus on what we do have and build up that abundance.
[SPEAKER_02]: Other piece too is just that we all experience love differently.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that could be person to person or even us to different type periods.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I love there's no right or wrong.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've definitely been here before too that I'm like did I actually experience love with
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought he was the one, but compared to my card partner, it's not, but it's good to know that like it's just a way that you're evolving and your definition of love is evolving and you need all these experiences to get you to, you know, love the way that you're meant to love.
[SPEAKER_02]: So nothing is wrong in terms of love.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's more of how do you see it and what value can't operate your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, definitely.
[SPEAKER_01]: My big holy shit moment was fact that our predisposition to love can be affected by so many factors including our genetics which just proves that we can't be on other people's timelines for love.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like I went on five dates.
[SPEAKER_01]: I should be in love.
[SPEAKER_01]: We should be saying we're in love now that we're six months in.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like we're all so wired differently that we have to listen to our brain and our heart and our
[SPEAKER_01]: from our conversation, and I just feel like we often talk about finding love, but love is not something we can find.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not something we can just go on a website and be like, I'm looking for love today.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good love is something we need to feel.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in my example, again, with Mojo's, the moment I felt the love was the moment I found love.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so maybe we can kind of switch up our verbage a little bit that I'm not here looking for love.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm here to feel love and we can feel that love in so many different aspects of our lives and it's not just romantic.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I love this idea of not having a hierarchy of love and not placing romantic love above the other kinds of love that's just a spectrum and we should not should.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to use the should.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we can always encourage ourselves to feel the spectrum of love instead of prioritizing that romantic love.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, you've got it right there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you, Anna, for this conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: If people want to learn more about your research, where can they find you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, they can find me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a website, which is justanimation.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm on Twitter.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, and also, say there's loads of articles and podcasts on the website.
[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously, yeah, why we love book is out in America too.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it's all quite summarized in there.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is fantastic, so definitely record read again, so thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you haven't done so yet, subscribe to the psychology of relationships today, so you don't miss an episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we'll see you all next week.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bye!