Full Story
One married man, a machine that can read his mind, and a head-to-head matchup between his wife... and Angelina Jolie. Sounds like no good can come of this. Unless, of course, he discovers the meaning of love.
After studying the results over the years, Fisher has come up with a theory that love is created by three distinct brain systems — those for sex, romance, and attachment. She has described her findings in several books, most recently Why Him? Why Her? Here, an oversimplified version:
The Sex Drive. One of the main lust factories in the brain is a peach-pit-sized lump called the hypothalamus (deep in your skull, sitting just above the brain stem). This controls hunger and thirst. It also has receptor sites for testosterone, which fuels the sex drive in both men and women. So when you're feeling horny, the hypothalamus is working overtime. You don't have to be Richard Dawkins to figure out why evolution gave us the sex drive: Its job is to spread our DNA as widely and often as possible.
The Romance System. This produces the cocaine rush you get from beginning love. And cocaine is more than an idle metaphor. The reptilian brain — one of the nervous system's most ancient parts — floods you with dopamine, just as it does after you snort a line of blow. The dopamine gives you the same high, lack of sleep, delusional optimism, and obsessive thoughts. The great poet Robert Palmer was right: You can be addicted to love. Romance evolved so that you could focus your mating energies on appropriate partners — the most fertile woman, the best providing man.
The Attachment System. This is friendship on hyperdrive. While romance is thrilling, attachment is calming. It's created by a couple of hormones: vasopressin and oxytocin (not to be confused with Rush Limbaugh's painkiller OxyContin). Attachment evolved so that we could "tolerate our partners long enough to raise a kid together," says Fisher.
The three systems are intertwined. For instance, sex boosts attachment. When you have an orgasm, your brain pumps out oxytocin, heightening feelings of closeness. Which is why one-night stands often last past one night. And why exhausted married couples should force themselves to hump once in a while. In fact, semen itself contains oxytocin. You literally have a love syringe between your legs.
