Neuroscience Of Romantic Love For Real Relationships

Romantic love can feel like magic, but the brain tells a clearer story and it is even more surprising. We talk with Dr. Lucy Brown, a professor of neurology who helped pioneer brain-imaging research on romantic love, about why love can take over your attention, distort your priorities, and make you feel euphoric and anxious at the same time. When you understand that romantic love recruits deep survival and reward systems, it stops looking like “lack of willpower” and starts looking like biology doing its job. 

We dig into how romantic love differs from lust, friendship, and long-term attachment, and why attachment pulls in more of the thinking brain where real-life questions live: trust, care, memory, compatibility, and the life you build together. Dr. Brown also shares a fascinating finding from follow-up research: people who stay together show reduced activity in brain regions linked to negative judgment when viewing their new partner, suggesting that successful bonding can involve suspending harsh evaluation early on. 

If you are single and wondering whether you have ever been “really in love,” you will love the practical tools here, including the Passionate Love Scale and the hallmark sign of early-stage passion: intrusive thinking you cannot switch off. For couples feeling stuck, we explore relationship advice grounded in neuroscience, like deliberately remembering the beginning to reactivate the brain reward system and learning to balance irritations with the traits you truly value. 

Take the Passionate Love Scale Quiz Here: https://theanatomyoflove.com/relationship-quizzes/the-passionate-love-scale/

If this helped you think differently about dating, attachment theory, or long-term relationship health, subscribe or share this with a friend. 

Transcript

Meet A Neuroscientist Of Love

Renee Richel 0:04

Hello, loves. Welcome back. I am so excited to be sitting here with Dr. Lucy Brown, who is a professor in the neurology department at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, who specializes in the study of, here we go, folks, romantic love, which is our entire department around matchmaking and the Lord's blessing of love. So I'm so excited to be diving in and asking you the questions that, you know, God gave us mind, body, reason, and skill, but our mind is the most empowering muscle that we have to practice to be smart in all decisions we make, right?

Dr. Lucy Brown 0:48

Right.

Renee Richel 0:49

Welcome. We're so excited we're here. And I feel like I have with you have a ton of questions. So I don't want to waste time. I want to also just hear from you so our audience can also be educated when it comes to all the things that you studied and you help couples and singles and things go through. So what specifically led you to studying the neuroscience of romantic love?

How Love Became A Research Topic

Dr. Lucy Brown 1:14

Well, you know, it was really another person who began it. Her name is Helen Fisher. And I met her at a meeting. You know, this often happens to scientists, and they um meet up at uh some kind of conference and start talking. She was an anthropologist, she died recently. She's written several books, and so people may know her.

Renee Richel 1:35

I remember when I started my practice, I studied her. I love I did. I mean, I started 16 years ago. I don't mean to interrupt you, but she was one of the people that I studied getting into all of that. So that's awesome.

Dr. Lucy Brown 1:48

So we started talking, and she knew that I was a neuroscientist. And she said, you know, Lucy, it'd be so great if we could look at the brain systems of romantic love. And there have been some studies in animals of attachment, but you know, probably although she certainly talked about attachment and kind of romantic love behaviors that other mammals and even birds can show us really hasn't been studied in humans. I said, Well, I'm not so sure that we can do it. You know, it's really hard to look in the human brain and study emotion because this was like in 1990, 1990 or something like that. And um, neuroscientists were really hesitant to look at emotion in the brain. But then Helen also talked to a guy named Art Aaron, who's a social psychologist, and Art had been studying romantic love a lot as a psychologist and had all kinds of questionnaires that he had used to study people and and and their feelings, you know, and to quantify them. That's the big key. You want to be able in science, you have to quantify something. So when I learned from art that there was something called the passionate love scale, so that we could quantify, we could put a number on love, no matter what, you know, not maybe not the number, but a number. I said, okay, I think we can try this. I think we can try to study the human brain in love. And of course, I also was very interested in studying euphoria. I'd looked at euphoria and the and how you know the taste when something tastes good or you're thirsty. I'd studied hunger and thirst in animals, and I really wanted to see if the brain systems were the same in humans. Okay. So uh, and romantic love, what what could be more predictable euphoria than that? When you're first in love, you know, that first feeling of uh nothing else matters in the world, right? Except being with that person. And when you're with that person, you feel so great. And the word is euphoria. Sometimes you're anxious, you know, especially when you're away from them. But um, when you look at a picture of them or you look into their eyes, you know, really you feel euphoric. So that's what got me started, really. Helen Fisher, Art Aaron, we formed this great collaboration and um and decided, okay, this is going to be hard work, but let's go. Yeah. Let's look at the physiology, the brain physiology of romantic love.

Renee Richel 4:49

I love that. That is the whole thing is fascinating to me when I remember starting all of this thinking, why is it so difficult to fall in love and be equally aligned? Which led town to a lot of it has to do with lust and attraction. So I love that you guys have broken down the actual science behind this of why people fall in love too. So, as a professor in neurology, what is something you teach about love in the brain that really surprises your

Love As A Survival System

Renee Richel 5:20

students?

Dr. Lucy Brown 5:20

Oh, well, kind of what relating to what you just said, um, that romantic love turns out to be really based on survival systems in the brain. You know, and that's why it can be so hard to control. The big question is why do we fall in love with who we fall in love with? But um, but when you fall in love, you are activating a brain system that was designed by nature, by what God gave us. Um for it's it's part of our survival system, just like the the system we need to know to eat, to be hungry. It's like being it's the same system as being thirsty. So you need these systems in order to stay alive. So that's that's one of the reasons it can be so tricky. Um, that's why it's so hard to know sometimes what to do. Or um you some people are, especially when they first fall in love, they're confused. Right. How this kind of takes over their life. And but it's that's what it's meant to be. That's how we're designed, because we do need each other. In fact, you know, we can think of hunger and thirst and romantic love, but even long-term attachment as the original addiction systems or the original addictions that we as mammals had to have, had to have these systems, because if you go without eating, not good. If you can just turn down food, if you can just turn down water, no. And so, yeah, sometimes you just can't turn down another person. So this is partly for um a large part of it, of course, is for the survival of the species. So romantic love encourages sex and human reproduction, definitely which is totally essential for the survival of the human species, and and to go on, we pass on our genetics, and and that's a very important part of our lives.

Renee Richel 7:41

And everybody talks about now the attachment theory, and you had mentioned earlier about that attachment. I'm assuming that's something that you're you implement in, or how do you feel around all of that?

Attachment Meets The Thinking Brain

Dr. Lucy Brown 7:53

Oh, yes. Attachment was the next thing we studied. Um we we looked at people who had been in love for a long time, or we looked at people who were had had had a relationship for at least one year and were about to get married, they were about to make a commitment. And um, this is interesting because you know, the the romantic love systems, these um they're at the reflex level, they're at a non-verbal level, you know, very basic part of our brain. So the attachment system is also at a very basic part of our brain, but it's a little higher up in level, and so it has a lot more connections with the neocortex, which is our cognitive brain. Okay, so the attachment systems are communicating more with cognition, like um, does he remember my birthday? Will will she be a good caregiver for children? You know, that kind of thing. What movies does she like? You know, that kind of thing. That kind of thing, um the cognition, what we do together, the kinds of things that we enjoy together, helps to build the uh the attachment that we feel to somebody. But of course, it's uh it's our history too. So we bring the history of the people who have been our caregivers in our lives to to this attachment physiology.

Renee Richel 9:28

Yeah. Which our brain, I'm assuming, and you you know best, right, then holds on to those memories that we then bring into whatever we see in front of us to help us connect or not, which sometimes I also say can be a good or a bad thing when we're being judgmental, you know, taking over our conscience or subconscious mind, right?

The Brain Learns To Judge Less

Dr. Lucy Brown 9:52

Exactly. So by the way, when you mention the word judgmental, that's another thing here that um we we studied people who were in love and in their first stages of love, the early stage of love, I should say, and then we called them up, like I think it was almost it was a little over three years later, something like that, yes. And we asked them, Are you still together with the person you know who you were in love with then? Like three years ago? And we were lucky because 50% of the people in the study were still together and 50% were not. So we could compare what had happened in the brains of those two groups. Would the people who were looking at their romantic partner in the early stages and then broke up be different from the people who were looking at their romantic partner and stuck with it, you know, or were still together for whatever reason. And it's kind of interesting because yes, there were differences, and the part of our brain, so we have, you know, humans are constantly judging other humans. It's a natural thing to do, and it's okay as long as you don't go too far, right? Right. Um, and you want to kind of watch it, especially in a romantic relationship.

Renee Richel 11:19

Right.

Dr. Lucy Brown 11:20

So a lot is known about that system in the brain. Other people have studied that, that judging system. It's way, it's very cognitive, it's in the front of the brain. And for those people who stayed together, the activity in that part of the brain was way down when they looked at the person they were newly in love with. So they were suspending negative judgment.

Renee Richel 11:44

Sure, that makes sense.

Dr. Lucy Brown 11:45

Isn't that great?

Renee Richel 11:46

That's awesome. So, do you still do these studies today among your own students?

Dr. Lucy Brown 11:52

No, no, I'm retired now, so I just write about it and help other people analyze their data. Yeah, and there aren't that many people doing the studies now, which is too bad.

Renee Richel 12:03

Well, and it's funny because mind you doing this for almost 16 years now, I am very adamant because we've studied, right, the 50 to 60 year olds, we're doing the 40-year-olds and that, but now I'm fascinated with my 20-year-old demographic because they are our future. And as we're starting to get younger clients, like in their 20s to 30s, they're really struggling out there. So I'm like, we need to do another market research. I feel like on that age demographic. I'm gonna be calling you and we're gonna talk this through. I know you're tired, but I'm like, we need this for the future growth of what's happening because of COVID and all these other things that have changed the phones, all these technology that we're gonna we're gonna do a call after this and talk a little bit more. So stay tuned because that's coming.

Dr. Lucy Brown 12:46

Right, great. Yes,

Quick Love Versus Slow Love

Dr. Lucy Brown 12:48

good.

Renee Richel 12:48

Okay, so what uh information do you find most helpful to share with singles looking for love or with someone who doesn't know, you know, they have even experienced love?

Dr. Lucy Brown 13:03

First of all, you know, when you've you know when you're in love. You just do. Uh so if you're questioning it, you can um say, well, maybe it's it's not the early, it's not the early stage intense romantic love that we studied. If you're questioning it, there's it's not quite that um romantic love can be so it grabs you so tightly that you usually know it. So if you're questioning, well, you can try taking there's something, there are questionnaires out there, we have them on a website, the passionate love scale. You can see how you score. Um, maybe you're you know feeling kind of middling, but the fact is, you know, we were designed to fall in love. And ever almost everybody, almost everybody falls in love eventually. Don't worry about it. There are many ways to fall in love. That we studied the quick way, you know, the the quick way that it's some people fall in love, it's uh love at first sight, but then there's something else we call slow love, which it grows out of friendship, and you can never quite tell who you might fall in love with, who you know right now, you know, who's a friend. And there are all kinds of things to learn about yourself to kind of help you be ready, I guess I would say. And so it's kind of relax, is my advice. Relax, it's gonna happen.

Renee Richel 14:43

So when you did your study back in the day, did you do it on quick love versus slow love to see which one lasted longer? No, we didn't do that, but that we need to do that because now I'm just curious because we stay with our couples after we match them, so we track their journey, right? And there's some that some that fell in love quicker, got married sooner, then have challenges, some that didn't that did, you know, it's it's there's like there's no obviously complete proven science behind all of it. It's just impossible because everybody falls differently, but it's just fascinating to me. I was just curious if you had had found that the slower love lasts longer, right?

Dr. Lucy Brown 15:21

No, I mean, if only there were such a prediction for that. I know.

Renee Richel 15:26

I love it.

The Passionate Love Scale Explained

Renee Richel 15:27

Okay. Um, can you explain the passionate love scale that you referenced to and and things that how it benefits individuals and couples today?

Dr. Lucy Brown 15:39

The passionate love scale, again, okay, this is people take it if they're not sure they're in love. So one thing Helen and I used to say, if you want to test out, you know, your feelings of love, and the way we tested people was to say, how how many times a day do you think of this person? You know, or what percentage of the day? A lot of people said, Are you kidding? I never stop thinking about them. You know, that's that's the that's the answer where you know they're really in the early stages of romantic typical romantic love. Some people would say, you know, 80% is good though, too. You know, 80%. Yeah, uh yes, it's it's this intrusive thinking. You just can't stop thinking about them. This is the critical test for knowing if you're in that state that we're describing, if you're part of it. And then you just, you know, see where you are uh in terms of your obsession with the other person or not, and whether, and whether you can track it actually and see if it goes down a little bit, which it does for almost everybody, almost every 70% of people that this get your your score on the passionate love scale. Remember, it's passionate, passionate, not attachment type, not long-term warm, fuzzy feeling. Passionate. Yeah, because some of the the questions include do you know my hands, do my hands tremble a little bit when I'm near that person, or do I get sweaty palms when I'm near that person? So those kinds of things stop happening after you've been with someone a year or so, right? And and and it's a and it's a good relationship, you know, when you're confident in the relationship.

Renee Richel 17:30

So I always say that's when domestic kicks in, right? When it gets to reality. Right. That's funny. So the passion, the passionate love scale, that is what you said is on the website that people can take, right? Just for our audience to to take the quiz. I I have all of our individuals that we work with and take with is the personality assessment, the love languages, all those things that kind of just help us know each other better. So we'll definitely put some notes on how to check that out. There's so much more depth to this than anybody thinks through. They're just going through this love bubble hoping it happens. But there is an art to also being a great partner and the right one too, that we really work hard at when we're matching, because there's so many more uh key functions or you know, details than just two people that are attracted to each other. We want it to stand the length of time, which is the alignment for the future, too, that matters. So I love it. I geek out when it comes to all of this stuff. Um okay.

Men Women And Love Systems

Renee Richel 18:33

So do the feelings of love affect men and women in the women's brain the same, or is it a little bit different when it comes to the way men fall or women do?

Dr. Lucy Brown 18:42

So those basic reflex systems that I was talking about, or the survival systems, those are no different.

Renee Richel 18:49

Okay.

Dr. Lucy Brown 18:50

The same. Men and women are exactly the same in terms of the systems that they use, that survival. And and even for the the basic attachment system, that non-verbal, it's the same system that is used when people are addicted to to drugs. So that that system's the same. What's what can be different, although this still needs more study, is the cognitive systems, that whole complex cortex, as as I mentioned before, things like women are more interested in um, you know, is he going to remember our anniversary? That kind of thing. Uh and parts of the brain that have to do with um remembering that kind of thing, or are more say in some studies are more active in women. It really, it's so variable that whole the whole cognitive part for for men and women, even though men are from Mars, women are from Venus. I mean, yeah, there's something, there, there's something, you know, that it's a little bit there, you know, but it's not a hundred percent reliable. Men and women can be so much the same as well as different.

Renee Richel 20:05

Yeah. So when you talked about earlier, you know, the slow love versus the fast love or however you phrased it, but does the brain process friendship, romantic love and lust all differently, or is it just a pace, or how how no, there are different systems, right?

Dr. Lucy Brown 20:25

It processes them all differently. Yep, there are definitely different systems for each that now at some points they overlap, but it's like a tree, you know, the trunk of the tree. So for romantic love, you're gonna have the trunk here, for sex here, for friendship here. But then as the branches go out, there are places where they overlap and the leaves will overlap.

Renee Richel 20:49

Sure, because I always I do tell everybody you definitely want to build a deep-rooted friendship in with passionate love so it will stand the test of time. Because if it's just lost, it may not, right? Exactly. Okay, how does the brain reward system work in response to romance?

Dr. Lucy Brown 21:10

So it's it it's that's the system that's active, it's the brain's reward system that's active when you look at the face of the person you're in love with. It's your reward system, that reward system that tells you water tastes so good when you're thirsty.

Renee Richel 21:31

That is true. That is true.

Dr. Lucy Brown 21:33

It's the reward system that um to some extent, you know, that uh that also makes you love chocolate. If you're a chocolate lover. Not everybody is. It's that basic reward system that we need for survival that's working. That's the system that's working in romantic love. There's almost no greater reward when you're in love. Then looking at the face and being with your romantic partner and having that depth, right? Right.

Rekindling Reward In Long Relationships

Renee Richel 22:08

So for all of my married couples out there or in exclusive relationships, that you know, their their marriage or the relationship starts to go stagnant. What can you say that is helpful for like rational to get that that euphoria back in those relationships? Is there is there any recipe for um growth when it's gone stagnant?

Dr. Lucy Brown 22:35

So here there are two possibilities. Um one is to activate that reward system again, the way it was activated as much as you can by remembering what it was like. You know, sitting there and remembering what the first kiss was like. And really remembering it, really imagining it. The first kiss, something about the first date, something about you remember that you liked especially much. Remembering the beginning of the relationship and when it was when you didn't know everything about the other person, when there wasn't so much cognitive stuff. So yes, you want to reactivate that reward system as much as you can. And the other thing that is important to do, and Helen Fisher emphasized this a lot. Um when you see something, the example she would give is, oh, he's always late. This drives me crazy. You know, like I cannot bear the fact that he is always late. But he reads to me out loud. You know, and that's something that she loved. So seeing the negative things, yes. But um but then but then saying, yes, that negative thing is there for sure. Notice it. But then say, you know, but you know, it's always a balance, but what balances that out? Yeah, remembering the good things. Remember again, remembering times when your reward system is activated. That's what it is.

Renee Richel 24:20

Which I love you say that, because we say that to our couples too. Let's go back to the beginning, right? When you fell in love and remembering all of those feelings and emotions behind it. Also remembering, you know, love is a choice. And it takes two. And no one is gonna be everything you want them to be, and there is no one more perfect than God. So that is what I remind a lot of my couples that remember, you chose to want to be in this relationship. And I love how you said choose the good, because it usually always outweighs whatever little cork they have. We all have corks, we all have little irritating things that we do, but immerse in knowing that you know them and finding a way to be adorable for whatever it is. Or, you know, I have some people in my life that I know, I always tell them 15 minutes ahead of time, the time they need to be there, because I know they're always gonna be late. So you you you get used to it, you work with what you have because it's so much better with all the other things, like you said, that are more important, which relationships are all about compromise too.

How Love Changes Brain Activity

Renee Richel 25:24

Um, okay, how does love change or alter the brain itself?

Dr. Lucy Brown 25:30

So the only um way that I know it's changing the blood flow for sure in your reward system. It changes the the blood flow in this part of the brain, this reflex part of the brain here. It changes the the blood flow there and in other parts, um, certainly uh as I said, in these non-verbal parts of the brain, but it's going to change the neural activity in your brain and the blood flow in your brain. Both things.

Renee Richel 26:05

Yeah. So would you define that you're calling it the the the blood flow or the reward that passion and love are in that same you mean sexual passion? Well, I was just gonna say, like, you could be passionate about something, but then you could also be passionate about a person. Like is thing and love, right? A tangible something that you're passionate about, like you really want to achieve this goal or you're passionate about this mission, the same as being passionate when it comes to love. Two totally different right.

Dr. Lucy Brown 26:41

Well, it's not totally different because it's the same general area of the brain, it's also using that reward system, but for other people, it's on the right side, and for things, it's on the left.

Renee Richel 27:00

Yeah, which is gonna be a whole nother podcast we're gonna talk about because I feel like this is something the better we know when we understand ourselves, then we can understand other people to be open-minded to have these conversations that lead to the other thing.

Dr. Lucy Brown 27:12

Oh, being open-minded is everything, by the way. Yes. And sometimes being able to put the other person first, too, you know.

Renee Richel 27:20

Yes, it makes all the difference.

Books Resources And Listener Questions

Renee Richel 27:22

Um, okay, what resources do you recommend for those interested in studying the science of love for their personal growth and understanding?

Dr. Lucy Brown 27:32

Well, of course, I'm going to recommend the books by Helen Fisher. Yeah, she's amazing. Right, The Anatomy of Love and then Why Him, Why Her. And that emphasizes some of the compatibility issues. But she talks about this, she's very interested. She's one of the very few people who are that interested in the science of love. Right. And and making it some people are studying it still, but they're still in the stages of it's not kind of ready, you know, for them to um put it in the language for the layperson to really understand and get something from it. But I hope this happens soon. Helen Fisher's books, there's always the resource of uh theanatomyoflove.com, that website. There's a lot on there. And because the um the motto of that website is know thy brain, because then you know yourself. Know thy brain, know thyself, know thy partner.

Renee Richel 28:38

I love that. Because I say all day long, if you don't know who you are, how are you ever going to attract the one that you're aligned with, right? So many people just walk around there clueless, they have no idea who they are, and they wonder why they don't get into these successful relationships because they haven't spent the time of self-growth to be able to articulate who they are, what they want, and what you know their desires are too. So I love everything you're doing. How can the audience uh dive into uh finding you the if you could share the website or just information? I know you're retired now, but I'm sure you have other resources of people that they can um connect with or just learn more from.

Dr. Lucy Brown 29:25

The main thing is www.theanatomyoflove.com.

Renee Richel 29:30

And look at speaking of love, your puppy just walked in. I love his background. There's nothing better than animal love as well, too, right?

Dr. Lucy Brown 29:40

That's right.

Renee Richel 29:41

Well, thank you so much, Lucy, for joining us today to talk about.

Dr. Lucy Brown 29:45

I'm so glad you invited me. Thank you.

Renee Richel 29:48

Yes. And I was gonna say, I feel like I have so many more questions. So we might have to do a 2.0 of this. Um, what we always love is when our audience writes in and asks us more questions to maybe circle back around and um, you know, just hear what they're wondering about. And we're definitely gonna have to talk about studying, I feel like the younger demographic as well. So thank you so much for your time and joining us. And we cannot wait for our next chat. God bless and have a great week.

Dr. Lucy Brown 30:19

God bless.

Renee Richel 30:26

It's been another great talk on this episode of 1 True Talks by Renee Richel. I look forward to our next chat. Please write in your questions and comments so I can be sure to talk about whatever it is you want to discuss in our next upcoming episode. Lots of love. God bless, XOXO.