Is love just a fleeting chemical high in the brain?

Romantic feelings rely on a complicated concoction of chemicals and psychology. But as part of our series on Life’s Big Questions with The Conversation, we ask, can they wear off?

  Love Is Medicine for Fear

Life, especially pandemic life, is full of threats and uncertainty. When we feel afraid, bringing more love into our lives can help.

  The Type of Love That Makes People Happiest

When it comes to lasting romance, passion has nothing on friendship.

 Love and Health: The Surprising Health Benefits of Romance

Forget the medicine cabinet— romantic relationships can be a ticket to good health! (Thanks, sweetie.) But is Cupid’s bow a double-edged sword? We took a closer look at love and health— from long-term relationships to casual encounters, marriage to heartbreak— to see how it really affects our health.

 Love in the time of coronavirus: 5 tips for communicating with your partner while stuck at home

As a scholar and a couple and family therapist, I offer five practical, evidence-based tips for couples when being stuck at home is making you feel stuck in your relationship.

 Love Just Might Be The Reason You Live A Long, Healthy Life

While we cannot control our genes or all the things that happen to us, we can help ourselves a lot by nurturing both our mind and our body and by placing a stronger emphasis on love. This undertaking requires focus and devotion, but the results are impressive.

 What does love do to your body?

Everyone wants to be loved and find their better half who they can spend their lives with. However, have you ever thought about the effects love has on one's mind and body? Surely, it can have a great influence on our psychology. If we have a nice, stable and healthy relationship, it will give us peace of mind. On the other hand, a problematic relationship would probably hurt.

 Why Being in Love Makes You Gorgeous (and Healthy, Too)

Being in love can make us feel like we're on top of the world, but it's something that affects a lot more than our mood -- loving relationships improve our health, our looks and even our mood. Just how powerful is love? It just may be the best medicine out there.

An expert guide to love and sex during a pandemic

“With the proper safety measures in place, that can be very good for relationships,” Rodriguez-Diaz says. “Perhaps this experience is giving us the opportunity to experience other things.”

Love yourself to stay healthy

Having high self-esteem doesn’t just feel good, it has physical benefits too. It seems that thinking well of ourselves may protect both the heart and immune system.

Optical Illusions and the Illusion of Love

Contrary to the anatomy referenced in all of our favorite love songs, love (as with every other emotion we feel) is not rooted in the heart, but in the brain.

For a Better Relationship, Try the 7-Day Love Challenge

Get a week’s worth of simple, science-based steps you can take to help foster a deeper connection to your partner.

How Did Our Brains Evolve To Equate Food With Love?

The dopamine system becomes active in people when they look at someone they love or a favorite food, Allen says. So in our brains, at least, food really is connected to love and a sense of well-being.

How to Revisit Your First Date

Your relationship might be sorely in need of attention. Why not recreate the special day that sparked it, with an enhancement or three?

I Married Him for Love—and So He Could Be on My Health Insurance

Young adults are often in bad financial health. The ability to get coverage through a spouse can make marriage more enticing.

Is It Love or Mental Illness? They're Closer Than You Think

At some point in life, most of us will face a major mental-health crisis. It is called love. Science is beginning to pay more attention to the chemical storm that romantic love can trigger in our brains. Recent studies of brain scans show that being in love causes changes in the brain that are strikingly similar to serious health problems like drug addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Love at First Sight Is Real, If You Believe

Scientists say we are genetically wired for the possibility of love at first sight, but why it happens to some people and not others is largely a matter of timing and self-assurance.

Love in America

“It is as if the experience of being in love could only be one of two things: a superhuman ecstasy, the way of reaching heaven on earth and in pairs; or a psychopathic condition to be treated by specialists.”

Love Is A Messy Science

Every few months, a new study comes out that claims to have unleashed the secrets of human romance. It's a new technique to predict whether a relationship will last, or a new way to revive the spark of passionate love, or a new study that says relationships are doomed. They make great headlines, but a few months later, another study comes along and says the key to love is found somewhere else.

Love Is: A Crowdsourced Valentine's Day Poem

Instead of greeting cards and chocolates this Valentine's Day, poet Kwame Alexander has packaged up for you a poem inspired by kids' definitions of love.

Love Means Never Having to Say … Anything

A relationship between a young man and woman with similar illnesses presents unusual challenges. For starters, he can’t speak.

Love, Explained: The Science of Romance

Sex, speed dating, monogamy--for Valentine's Day, we look at the science behind the mating game.

Masters of Love

Science says lasting relationships come down to—you guessed it—kindness and generosity.

Older men and women don’t get the same health benefits from love

When it comes to heart health, at least, women win.

On “tough love” and your fat friend’s health.

Let us soften. Love is tough enough without tough love.

Staying Healthy May Mean Learning To Love Our Microbiomes

"We're not just us by ourselves but a combination of us and them," Rhodes says. "And that makes us very much more a part of our environment as opposed to something freestanding and separate from our environment. Those are very radical changes in the way we see self-identity."

Survival Of The Friendliest: How Our Close Friendships Help Us Thrive

On average, people have only four very close relationships, Denworth finds, and very few people can sustain more than six. But the effect of these few core relationships extends beyond our social lives, influencing our health on the cellular level — from our immune system to our cardiovascular system.

The health benefits of falling – and staying – in love

“Love has the ability to powerfully influence our physical and mental wellbeing,” explains Niels Eék, psychologist and co-founder of mental wellbeing and self-development platform Remente. “Humans are typically social creatures and, often, we are strongest, healthiest, and happiest when we feel close to others.

The Love Connection: Intimacy, Health, and Longevity

When relationships slump, so does health.

The myth of romantic love may be ruining your health

But we do know that socially constructed notions of romantic love, and of marriage, constitute our selves. They start in early childhood and continue throughout adolescence and adulthood. Google “romantic love” and see what comes up. We develop expectations, consciously and unconsciously, about our love relationships and attempt to realise these. When these notions are unattainable, stress is inevitable. And the impact of stress on our immune system, heart and mental health is well documented.

The scientific mystery of why humans love music

Our brains love patterns. Music is a pattern. Coincidence? Studies have shown that when we listen to music, our brains release dopamine, which in turn makes us happy. In one study published in Nature Neuroscience, led by Zatorre, researchers found that dopamine release is strongest when a piece of music reaches an emotional peak and the listener feels "chills"— the spine-tingling sensation of excitement and awe.

The torturous delight of having a pandemic crush

An unattainable crush is a perfect distraction for these chaotic times.

There's No Such Thing as Everlasting Love (According to Science)

A new book argues that the emotion happens in "micro-moments of positivity resonance."

This is what love does to your brain

You can think of love as an intense obsession, but it’s really an addiction. You think about them all the time; you become sexually possessive; you get butterflies in the stomach; you can read their emails and texts over and over again.

What Goes On in Our Brains When We Are in Love?

Romantic love involves a series of complex changes in the brain’s reward system that make us crave the object of our affection

What is love?

No matter the differences in the way love is experienced, one thing remains common for all: we as humans are social animals who have a deep fascination for it.

When love and science double date

Sure, your heart thumps, but let’s look at what’s happening physically and psychologically.

Why Your Cardiologist Should Ask About Your Love

The heart may not be the origin of our feelings, but it is affected by them.

‘Ordinary Love’ Review: In Sickness and In Health

Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn’s film is a moving portrait of a relationship beset by a cancer diagnosis.