By: Lacey Barke
Despite collaborating with Jay-Z on her hit song Crazy in Love, Beyoncé got at least one thing right- the title. Love does indeed make you crazy.
I would like to think of my cousin Mikayla as a relatively typical, rational college student- she eats breakfast, tries hard in classes, and supports her school by going to sporting events. Then the after-party comes. I find her dancing with a cute man (you know, back when we could do stuff like dance within six feet of each other). Let’s call him Sparky. She’s getting nervous, and she’s sweating. A lot. Later on in the week, she’s getting anxious when he isn’t texting back.
There was no practical or rational reason why Mikayla was drawn to Sparky, but there she was, losing sleep over a man who didn’t wear matching socks, have a job, or go to classes sober.
Why are powerful women like Beyoncé and my cousin singing about love driving them crazy and obsessing over men who can’t tell the difference between there, they’re, and their? Luckily, there’s a reason behind the madness- we can all blame it on some hormones.
Our Chemical Romance: The good
In a detailed article titled Love, Actually: the science behind lust, attraction, and companionship, Harvard writer Katherine Wu explained the three different phases of love, and demonstrates how the second phase, attraction, is a key culprit in 2am text message-sending.
“Attraction involves the brain pathways that control ‘reward’ behavior, which explains why the first few weeks or months of a relationship can be so exhilarating and even all-consuming,” Wu said.
In other words, getting a text back or a little wave in passing from Sparky sets off the reward system, releasing dopamine and norepinephrine- a related chemical. When this happens, we get all excited, think about bae at all times, which makes us distracted and euphoric.
In fact, if Sparky were to Snapchat my cousin, she would practically ooze with happiness. Seeing a picture of a person is enough to cause reward centers such as the caudate nucleus to, “fire like crazy.”
In this stage, objects of attraction will spend as much time as possible getting to know each other, giggling on the phone about memes and video games for hours.
Our Chemical Romance: The bad
However, Dopamine is produced by the hypothalamus when we do things that feel good, no matter if they are actually good for us or not. These chemicals can also have negative effects, such as decreasing our appetite and making it so we can’t sleep, a perfect combination for that regrettable “You up?” text.
In an article for How Stuff Works titled The Chemistry of Love, love researcher Helen Fisher explains the chemicals in further detail, as well as the actions and emotions that they elicit.
“Together these two chemical produce elation intense energy, sleeplessness, craving, loss of appetite, and focused attention,” Fisher explained. You have intense focus on the person you are attracted to, and you idealize them- they can do no wrong.
In other words, when attraction happens, we lose the ability to think rationally. Wu stated that the chemicals released and how people act in love has been compared to the behavior and chemical process involved with drug addiction. No wonder.
Luckily. . .
Luckily, it doesn’t last forever. The attraction phase either sticks and turns into attachment, or it fizzles out, which is a whole separate album of Beyoncé songs. I’m happy to say that eventually my cousin snapped out of it, but let’s be honest- we’ve all had or will have a Sparky in our lives. good news is that we don’t have to be so hard on ourselves for it- it’s simply the trial and error of human romance.