IS LOVE REALLY BLIND?

One Friday Afternoon, I was sitting in my psychology class intrigued by the topic at hand as my professor explained how Love was really much more complex than it seemed. Me being such a sappy romantic thought “well, how could that be? It’s as simple as finding your prince or princess like in the fairytales.” Then she continued further with the lesson and explained how Love is a primary composure of Pheromones, smell, and shared values between the couple. Suddenly my mind became boggled at the question of “what is love truly?” By definition, love is an intense feeling of deep affection, but what is the science behind a subject so deep that happens to only be a feeling?

Love is blind.

The saying seems hard to believe until you realize it is basically true. Because of the great contribution of chemicals that one undergoes in mere sight of someone they are attracted to, it is almost uncontrollable to distinguish if that’s genuinely how you feel about someone or simply nature running its course of love. Ever have one of those moments where you hardly know someone but feel an incredible sense of attachment, like you’ve known them all of your life? Well, that is an example of the science behind love. Scientifically love is determined within 90 seconds to 4 minutes of meeting someone. To be more particular, one’s attraction and attachment to the other person is also a major contribution to how one can decipher if they love someone.

Attraction is the phase where one becomes affected by the person they’re attracted to. It begins to go beyond the phase of a mere crush, which is primarily an external attraction and begins to affect the person internally as you begin to wake and fall asleep to the thought of that person. In fact, the hormone responsible for this occurrence is called Serotonin. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that directs complete focus of one’s significant other in their minds while in the phases of love. It is also the reasoning for feeling excited about love. Like Serotonin, Adrenaline also plays a huge role in the phase of attraction. Adrenaline, by definition, is a hormone secreted by the adrenal glands, increasing the rates of blood circulation, breathing, and metabolism. In other words, Adrenaline is the rationale to why when your crush flashes that dashing smile and utters a heart-warming hello your face gets warm, your cheeks turn tomato red, and your heart beats out of your chest.

Then there is attachment. Attachment is the phase where love is completely discovered, and it's really just a matter of bonding with one’s partner and taking one’s relationship to the next level of starting a life together.

So, as you can see, love is like the fairytales after all. In fact, it’s so much deeper than that. It's a chemically natural binding trap in which nature will set out when you cross paths with a prince/princess or the prince/princess, that chemically matches you.