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Speaker 1: From House Towards dot com. Hey there, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. This is Kristen. What's up? This is smilling Molly.
Speaker 1: Today we are tackling an important question. Why does the
Speaker 1: sizzle sizzle? It sounds like Sex and the City and Cosmo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we were actually gonna we're gonna get deep. We're
Speaker 1: gonna get inside some brains and talk about love and
Speaker 1: passion and places. Carrie Bradshaw never took you. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: it and more importantly, when it fizzles out, which reminds me,
Speaker 1: Molly of a little bit of a story story. It's
Speaker 1: homeschooling involved. No homeschooling involved. This was it? Um, Well
Speaker 1: the day and time we'll just leave in the ether,
Speaker 1: um remain anonymous. Yeah that when you see just at
Speaker 1: this title, why is the sizzle fizz? And it reminded
Speaker 1: me of a certain name in my cell phone directory. Um, Fizzle.
Speaker 1: There's someone who could have a friend named Fizzle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was there was a guy, um who thing you know,
Speaker 1: I met him. Things started to sizzle and Uh, it
Speaker 1: just seemed really great. And you know, I had all
Speaker 1: of those characteristics of romantic passion. I just I couldn't
Speaker 1: think about anything else. I you know, I was so
Speaker 1: nervous I couldn't even eat. Sometimes. It was just whenever
Speaker 1: I would see him, my palms would sweat. It was awful, really,
Speaker 1: And then after a while, you know, it just fizzled. Fizzle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I decided one night um to change his
Speaker 1: name in the phone to Fizzle. And I actually forgot
Speaker 1: about that and I ran into him um the other day,
Speaker 1: in fact, and I got a text message and I
Speaker 1: was like, who is Fizzle? Oh, yeah, that's Fizzle. That's
Speaker 1: what I renamed him as. I can only hope Fizzle
Speaker 1: listen to this podcast, fizz All, if you're out there,
Speaker 1: this one's for you. Um. So I thought this would
Speaker 1: be a pretty pretty good story to maybe chart the
Speaker 1: path of romance and passion in our brains. Because Molly,
Speaker 1: I felt I felt crazy. I really did. I consider
Speaker 1: myself a very practical, rational person, and when I met Fizzle,
Speaker 1: there was no practical or rational reason why I was
Speaker 1: so drawn to him. It was something I just I
Speaker 1: was out of my mind. I didn't understand it. But
Speaker 1: I took a lot of comfort in this research that
Speaker 1: we've been doing because I can blame my brain. You
Speaker 1: can blame your brain along with the whole host of
Speaker 1: my favorite word, hormones. Chemicals. Yes, but we have to
Speaker 1: remember with hormones. With a special episode on Passion and Love,
Speaker 1: we talked a lot about how hormones affect women's behavior specifically. True,
Speaker 1: but you know what, Molly, when it comes to the
Speaker 1: neurobiology of love, men and women are on an equal
Speaker 1: playing field, right. These hormones are affecting everyone. By the way,
Speaker 1: I think Neurobiology of Love is going to be east
Speaker 1: Lean Dion's next albumin so maybe then I'll Listensten to it. Alright,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna first of all, make a little disclaimer.
Speaker 1: Even though a lot of what Kristen described in her
Speaker 1: attraction to Fizzle sounded a little lustful, we're gonna skip
Speaker 1: right over lust. Yeah, I don't think that it wasn't
Speaker 1: purely it wasn't purely less I will I will say
Speaker 1: that straight out. There was definitely a attraction phase to
Speaker 1: an attachment phase, and there was a build up. This
Speaker 1: was connection is being made. Yeah, it was more than
Speaker 1: just how do you do? Yeah, we forged a friendship. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what was going on in your brain past less?
Speaker 1: Which is a lot of chemicals like testosterone, sex drive chemicals.
Speaker 1: When we get into this sort of what's termed the
Speaker 1: attraction phase of love, first you have we have the
Speaker 1: visual input. I saw Fizzle from a disc and I
Speaker 1: was attracted. And this visual input becomes very important later
Speaker 1: on that basically, when you see someone that you care for,
Speaker 1: there's this huge visual indentation they make on your brain.
Speaker 1: And um. So once I established this visual input, and
Speaker 1: I started seeing Fizzle more and more, and I got
Speaker 1: progressively more nervous every time I would see him, at
Speaker 1: least for a while. There were certain parts of my
Speaker 1: brain that were probably more active than others. Right, So,
Speaker 1: when I first started seeing Fizzle and I, like I said,
Speaker 1: I would get very nervous, maybe my heart would raise
Speaker 1: a little bit more. I could never think of anything
Speaker 1: interesting at all to say. Uh, it was because certain
Speaker 1: parts of my brain were really active. In other parts
Speaker 1: weren't so active, right, Molly, that's correct. Have you ever
Speaker 1: heard of your hypothalamus, Kristen, Well, I have, Well, it
Speaker 1: was screwing you over. It was. The hypothalamus is this
Speaker 1: little part of the brain that releases a little hormone
Speaker 1: we like to call dopamine. Yeah, and dopamine, uh is
Speaker 1: a pretty big part of the reward system. Basically, even
Speaker 1: though it made you nervous, you thrived on seeing fizzle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course. And in addition to dopamine, there was another
Speaker 1: chemical called nora benephrin that was surging through my veins
Speaker 1: whenever I would see a fizzle and Nora benefern is
Speaker 1: similar to adrenaline, which is why it feels like this
Speaker 1: fight or flight where when I would see him, there
Speaker 1: would be a split second in my brain where I
Speaker 1: was like, will I approach or will I flee? Because
Speaker 1: sometimes I would flee just because you didn't take it,
Speaker 1: because your brain is just on overdrive essentially, but not
Speaker 1: all of it. Certain parts of the brain do shut down,
Speaker 1: um the prefrontal is it the prefrontal cortex. Prefrontal cortex
Speaker 1: essentially shuts down, and this is sort of why love
Speaker 1: is blind and why fools fall in love because when
Speaker 1: this part shuts down, you're able to overlook all these flaws.
Speaker 1: Everything is just perfect. Fizzle is the most important wonderful man.
Speaker 1: I'm sure no flaws at all. Yeah, exactly, well, I mean, well, yes,
Speaker 1: that's another story for another time, but exactly the prefrontal
Speaker 1: cortex is associated with our social judgment, So yeah, for us,
Speaker 1: for women, it would it would make us more trusting,
Speaker 1: you know, even though maybe maybe Fizzle didn't have a
Speaker 1: college degree and maybe Fizzle you know, maybe didn't have
Speaker 1: the steadiest job, but that didn't matter to my prefrontal
Speaker 1: cortex because it wasn't even registering. Yeah, you had no
Speaker 1: fear essentially, and scientists have kind of described this as
Speaker 1: kind of a push pull, like basically you're getting it
Speaker 1: from all sides to getting pushed into that reward system
Speaker 1: you want more dopamine and getting pulled forward by the
Speaker 1: fact that you have no judgment about this person, essentially
Speaker 1: that you can love them despite all their flaws and
Speaker 1: despite the fact that they make you incredibly jumpy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in addition to the jumping nous, there's also you
Speaker 1: know where when you get the weird mood swings where
Speaker 1: you just I was so happy about Fizzle and then
Speaker 1: I'd be like, well, Fizzles not calling, why is this
Speaker 1: not happening? And then you know, sometimes it was just
Speaker 1: like my appetite would be weird, and that is to
Speaker 1: blame on saratonin. When the dopamine goes up, levels of
Speaker 1: serotonin in my brain would go down. And seratonin is
Speaker 1: that makes you feel calm, relaxed, And once that drops,
Speaker 1: that's when I got a little more anxious and uh
Speaker 1: and maybe you know it just wasn't wasn't eating as much.
Speaker 1: So that is yet another factor that makes us quote
Speaker 1: unquote crazy and love. But this is clearly no way
Speaker 1: to live. Like the human species would never survive if
Speaker 1: we were just walking around hungry, space out, jumpy all
Speaker 1: the time, we'd be walk in front of buses, we
Speaker 1: would be just doing bizarre things. Yeah, So thank goodness
Speaker 1: for evolutionary biology that said, Okay, you know this is nice,
Speaker 1: this is pushing you towards someone, but you need to
Speaker 1: actually bond and attached, and in order to do that,
Speaker 1: you can't be flighty and not being able to form
Speaker 1: sentences as all at all. So there's another set of
Speaker 1: hormones that starts to kick in during the attachment phase
Speaker 1: that follows attraction. Yeah, and this is the part where
Speaker 1: the sizzle begins to fizzle. This is not to say
Speaker 1: everyone's just going to break up the way Kristen and
Speaker 1: Fizzle did, because there are sort of the next wave
Speaker 1: of chemicals that come through your brain to help you
Speaker 1: form a connection, right, And the chemicals we're talking about
Speaker 1: specifically are oxytocin and vasopressin, and these are associated with
Speaker 1: um orgasms and for women it is also associated with
Speaker 1: childbirth and breastfeeding. These are the very intimate bonding hormones
Speaker 1: that give you. Oxytosin sometimes called the warm and cuddly
Speaker 1: hormone because it's associated with those most intimate experiences. Right
Speaker 1: when you have sex with someone, eventually begin to form
Speaker 1: this bond, and that's thanks to oxytose so much make
Speaker 1: you want to stay around and be with this person
Speaker 1: and just spend all day with them. And we should
Speaker 1: say that estrogen an testosterone, not surprisingly do interact with
Speaker 1: oxytocin a little bit differently. For with estrogen, it the
Speaker 1: combination of estrogen and oxytocin gives us more feelings of
Speaker 1: trust and bonding, or as with testosterone and oxytocin, it
Speaker 1: actually mitigates the calming effects of the oxytocin and spurs
Speaker 1: that fight or flight a little bit more in males,
Speaker 1: which once again another conversation for another time. But what's
Speaker 1: interesting about sort of the difference between the two stages
Speaker 1: according to um love researcher, which I would like to
Speaker 1: have that title someday, not officially just in my private life.
Speaker 1: Casually seems like a good thing to have it on
Speaker 1: business card. I digress um. According to love researcher Hell'm Fisher,
Speaker 1: the thinking is is that once the basso press and
Speaker 1: which is like uh oxytocin has sort of a clever
Speaker 1: name as the commitment chemical, once that starts surging through
Speaker 1: your brain, it kind of blocks the pathways of the
Speaker 1: dopamine so that you might not be getting as much
Speaker 1: of it. Um. And like we said, in the attraction stage,
Speaker 1: that was the part that was making you just be
Speaker 1: like musty him, musty him, must have reward like mouse
Speaker 1: pushing a pellet, getting the food pellet. Yeah. One word,
Speaker 1: my addiction, because the dopamine reward system that is triggered
Speaker 1: in the insane, romantic, passionate phase of love is the
Speaker 1: exact same thing as uh, let's just say, snorting a
Speaker 1: line of cocaine. Yeah, And so that's I mean, eventually
Speaker 1: they would like to do research. I guess some people
Speaker 1: who have affairs and see if they're oxytocin receptors act
Speaker 1: like other people's do, or if they constantly need that
Speaker 1: that hit, that love junkie hit. Right. They think that
Speaker 1: people who have been in committed long term relationships for
Speaker 1: years and years and still claim to be madly in
Speaker 1: love with each other might have higher level of oxytocin
Speaker 1: in their brains, or might have more oxytocin receptors, which
Speaker 1: makes them more innately monogamous. Right, And you know, there
Speaker 1: are not many monogamous species out there, right, it's kind
Speaker 1: of debatable whether humans are. In fact. The only one
Speaker 1: they're entirely sure about is a little creature called the
Speaker 1: prairie bowl. And they've done experiments where they hinder the
Speaker 1: amount of oxytocin in a prairie bowl's brain and it
Speaker 1: goes from being this very stable, um monogamous creature to
Speaker 1: being like crazy love crazed prairie bowl whatever that looks like.
Speaker 1: They just start they start having a sexs with everything, right,
Speaker 1: Whereas like you said, they will mate for life and
Speaker 1: be perfectly content. And I think in one of the
Speaker 1: studies that I saw, they actually have more sex than
Speaker 1: they need to in order to reproduce, so they're they're
Speaker 1: happy little prairie bowls. Yeah, it's all that best suppressing. Well.
Speaker 1: And now it's time now that we're deep in the
Speaker 1: attachment phase, which you know, Fizzle and I I don't
Speaker 1: think we really got to this point, um, But if
Speaker 1: we had gotten at this point and we were still
Speaker 1: hanging out together, one chemical that would go up in
Speaker 1: my brain would have been saratonin. And that's one that
Speaker 1: I referenced before. It's sort of the antithesis to Nora Pefrin.
Speaker 1: Nor Pefrin is in the early stages where you know,
Speaker 1: palms are sweaty, hearts beating and all of that, but
Speaker 1: Sarahtonin calms you down, makes you feel safe, uh, and
Speaker 1: comfortable with that person, sort of like you know, the
Speaker 1: sweet old couples that you see walking hand in hand
Speaker 1: down the sidewalk, they just got a little just saratonin
Speaker 1: just coursing through their little little veins making them just
Speaker 1: feel comfortable together. Right. I mean, when you know we
Speaker 1: were talking about this before, I sort of made it
Speaker 1: sound like you kind of just get drugged up and
Speaker 1: you just kind of stay with the person m h
Speaker 1: out of but leontia. Right, But we also have thanks
Speaker 1: to evolution, we have these these stabilizing factors in our brain.
Speaker 1: And when we talk about why does the sizzle fizzle,
Speaker 1: it seems like there is you come to a crossroads.
Speaker 1: Everybody hits that initial attraction phase, and um, you know
Speaker 1: if the if the sizzle fizzles, it's you know, it
Speaker 1: all has to do with these sets of chemicals in
Speaker 1: our brain. And also one thing that we didn't mention
Speaker 1: that comes back online and this attachment phases, that prefrontal
Speaker 1: cortex lights back up, and that's where you start to
Speaker 1: see the flaws and people. But what's interesting is when
Speaker 1: we were researching this, I was like, oh man, you
Speaker 1: know a woman can thought of love with her husband
Speaker 1: because of these chemicals in her brain. But as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: that's the precedent. Oxytocin are also really key chemicals in
Speaker 1: mother child bond. Right. When you look at MRI scans
Speaker 1: of people who are in love with someone else, like
Speaker 1: sexually physically in love with someone else, and look at
Speaker 1: the brains of mother to child, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of interacting overlapping areas that are that are lighting up.
Speaker 1: But there's one place in the brain that really makes
Speaker 1: a difference. Yeah, And remember when we were talking about
Speaker 1: the impact of seeing a face and how that was
Speaker 1: so important. Where that kind of dies off in terms
Speaker 1: of a physical romantic club that never really shuts off
Speaker 1: with a mother, probably because she's always examining her child's
Speaker 1: face because it's changing, because she's looking for signs of illness. Uh.
Speaker 1: That facial recognition part of the brain plays a very
Speaker 1: important part in sustaining that mother child love and where
Speaker 1: you know, the dopamine eventually levels off, and romantic love
Speaker 1: it never really does. In mother child loves you almost
Speaker 1: like don't need the reward of your child loving you back,
Speaker 1: which I guess is a pretty handy, uh evolutionary tick
Speaker 1: when it comes to a child being a teenager. And
Speaker 1: they've also highlighted the hypothalamus as the main difference point
Speaker 1: between in the brain between romantic love and other love,
Speaker 1: if you will, because when I was attracted to Fizzle
Speaker 1: and whoever else, my hypothalamus is kind of going crazy.
Speaker 1: But if I ever, you know, have a child and
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the child, my hypothalamus is not going
Speaker 1: to be active at all, hopefully not right they think
Speaker 1: it's more of the seat of the erotic love. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so pretty heavy stuff. Luckily, I was reassured to know
Speaker 1: that while the sizzle may fizzle between me and any fellow,
Speaker 1: hopefully will never fizzle for my children. Well and more pathetically, well,
Speaker 1: I have to throw out one more study that was
Speaker 1: conducted by Helen Fisher and her Love researcher Love Researchers. Yes,
Speaker 1: they looked at m r I scans of these couples
Speaker 1: who I think the average time they've been together was
Speaker 1: twenty one years. Been together for a long time, and
Speaker 1: according to all of this research that we've been talking
Speaker 1: about now, it would have fizzled out somewhere in the brain.
Speaker 1: They might have had like a nice bonding, a lot
Speaker 1: of serotonine going on, but you can't still be in
Speaker 1: love in the brain. The neurobiology has to be different, right,
Speaker 1: I would think so. Well, they were actually wrong. They
Speaker 1: were really happy to find out that the same areas
Speaker 1: that were lit up during this romantic phase twenty one
Speaker 1: years down the road, we're still lighting up when they
Speaker 1: would see pictures of the person they were mated with.
Speaker 1: That's good because a lot of the Southern research is
Speaker 1: pretty depressing. It just seems like we're on a downward spiral.
Speaker 1: But you know, those old couples shown us that can
Speaker 1: be done. Yeah, it can be done. So and it's
Speaker 1: also once again I take comfort of knowing next time
Speaker 1: the sizzle fizzles, I'll just blame it on, you know, dopamine.
Speaker 1: Just say it's not me, it's my brain. It's not me,
Speaker 1: it's my dopamine. But if you want to learn more
Speaker 1: about dopamine, it's all on how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: You've got an article called how love works. Should go
Speaker 1: on and check it out. And while you're online, you
Speaker 1: should also send me and Molly question comment email to
Speaker 1: mom stuff at how stuff works dot com. For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
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