Dear Future Mrs. Me,
Can celibacy be achieved in the 21st century? The answer is “Yes, maybe... IDK I’m fucking human” in my personal opinion. As I mentioned in my previous letter to you, we are all searching for that first orgasm. The dopamine is released, merely the slightest thought of your hands touching my skin, your lips touching my lips, and your tongue flicking my________ makes me want to explode. As I type this, my vagina starts to pulsate and my heart begins to race but it’s the dopamine that has me an addict to concept of what love making could feel like with you. We’ve just never met, or maybe we’ve crossed paths, or maybe we’ve shared a few laughs.
I wanted to know whether or not the hormones in our body had something to do with the false misconception about love due to sex. Does sex affect our perception of love? I read several articles about the science of love and how our hormones play a key role on how we begin forming an unbreakable bond with physical touch and/or sex.
Helen Fisher of Rutgers University has proposed 3 stages of love (Stage 1: Lust; Stage 2: Attraction; Stage 3: Attachment) and how each stage might be driven by different hormones and chemicals found in the body.
Lust: The first stage of love, lust is driven by the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen in both men and women.
Attraction:This the amazing time when you are truly love-struck and can think of little else. Scientists think that three main neurotransmitters are involved in this stage; adrenaline, dopamine and serotonin.
Adrenaline
The initial stages of falling for someone activates your stress response, increasing your blood levels of adrenalin and cortisol. This has the charming effect that when you unexpectedly bump into your new love, you start to sweat, your heart races and your mouth goes dry.
Dopamine
Helen Fisher asked newly ‘love struck’ couples to have their brains examined and discovered they have high levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine. This chemical stimulates ‘desire and reward’ by triggering an intense rush of pleasure. It has the same effect on the brain as taking cocaine!
Fisher suggests “couples often show the signs of surging dopamine: increased energy, less need for sleep or food, focused attention and exquisite delight in smallest details of this novel relationship” .
Serotonin
And finally, serotonin. One of love's most important chemicals that may explain why when you’re falling in love, your new lover keeps popping into your thoughts.
Attraction or new love, truly does play a role on how people think and process the first stages of love. That is why at this stage, love is blind. Being blind during stages, helps in a way... It helps us to move onto the next stage of love which is... Attachment.
Attachment: In this stage, attachment is a bond that keeps couples together long enough to get married and raise their children. Scientists think there might be two major hormones involved in this feeling of attachment; oxytocin and vasopressin.
Oxytocin (The cuddle hormone)
Oxytocin is a powerful hormone released by men and women during orgasm.
It probably deepens the feelings of attachment and makes couples feel much closer to one another after they have had sex. The theory goes that the more sex a couple has, the deeper their bond becomes.
Oxytocin also seems to help cement the strong bond between mom and baby and is released during childbirth. It is also responsible for a mom’s breast automatically releasing milk at the mere sight or sound of her young baby.
Diane Witt, assistant professor of psychology from New York has showed that if you block the natural release of oxytocin in sheep and rats, they reject their own young.
Conversely, injecting oxytocin into female rats who’ve never had sex, caused them to fawn over another female’s young, nuzzling the pups and protecting them as if they were their own.
Vasopressin
Vasopressin is another important hormone in the long-term commitment stage and is released after sex.
Vasopressin (also called anti-diuretic hormone) works with your kidneys to control thirst. Its potential role in long-term relationships was discovered when scientists looked at the prairie vole.
Prairie voles indulge in far more sex than is strictly necessary for the purposes of reproduction. They also – like humans - form fairly stable pair-bonds.
When male prairie voles were given a drug that suppresses the effect of vasopressin, the bond with their partner deteriorated immediately as they lost their devotion and failed to protect their partner from new suitors.
Now that we're done with the science of love and my brief answer of celibacy in the 21st century... I guess love making is in our future... We’ve just never met, maybe we have, or maybe we’ve shared a few laughs. I hope this letter finds you well and you're in a place of peace. Know that I will love you always even after forever.
Your,
Future
P.S. Do you think there is a science to love?
