Falling in love is an evolutionary mechanism provided for successful procreation. “Love lives for three years”: approximately such a time period is necessary for people to conceive, bear, give birth to offspring and survive the first crises in growing up the newborn together.
How does falling in love affect people, if they have not even thought about offspring?
It makes sex especially passionate
In his book ‘Why We Love’, the renowned anthropologist Helen Fisher describes the main changes that happen to a person when he/she falls in love.
We attach special importance to the object of our love, focus our attention on it, magnify it, constantly think about it, feel a surge of energy, and a strong flow of emotions. On top of everything else is the desire for emotional unity, emotional dependence, empathy and literally uncontrollable passion.
This is the work of the hormones dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline, and then vasopressin, which play a role in finding a partner. Of course, oxytocin also matters, which forms a romantic attachment.
When we are overwhelmed with feelings, it can be difficult to express them in words, but the bodily expression of love and infatuation is easier.
It adds more fun
Both the feeling of falling in love and sexual desire are born in the same part of our brain – the insular cortex. Each of the centers works independently, but most often the activation of one center leads to the excitement of others, closest to it.
Therefore, in some cases, it may seem that you feel in love with your partner after good sex.
This also explains why falling in love still makes sex better: when two centers are activated at once, more hormones are produced that are responsible for our pleasure and happiness.
It offers trust and experimentation
Sex for one night and sex with an unfamiliar person are assessed by the brain as a stressful and dangerous situation. Desire and excitement here come more from a sense of risk. But intimacy with a loved one, although accompanied by a release of adrenaline and norepinephrine into the blood, is not perceived as a danger.
While sex without falling in love has room for both caring and responsibility, it is still designed to cover your sexual needs in the first place. On the one hand, this is even good: we think less about the feelings of our partner, we strive first of all for our own pleasure, and not for the gratification of the person sharing the bed with us. However, this kind of sex is good at a moment when the brain is overcome by passion.
During sex with a loved one, there is no fear of being judged or condemned, constraint disappears, a feeling of security and happiness appears. The person we are in love with can be trusted with our desires, fears, and experiences.
In addition, the desire to give the partner pleasure, growing on the basis of a love affair, encourages the lovers to study each other’s bodies and reactions, to remember what actions in sex they like or dislike, which affects the quality of sex positivity.
Sex brings together
Without love, sex is simply “an exercise” to achieve relaxation. But intimacy with the person we are in love with covers not only the needs of the body but also closes the need to seek emotional closeness with a partner, which a person in love inevitably strives for.
It’s not only about sex, but about everything that happens before it – whether it’s a date, going to the movies, or when you just return home, standing in the elevator, and literally feel the air sparkling between you. After sex, there are hugs, conversations, a snack in the kitchen at four in the morning, and sleeping in an embrace.
In the presence of a sensory-emotional connection, sex allows partners to move to a new level of intimacy and emotional closeness.
