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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff? Mom never told you?

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Speaker 1: From House Towards dot com. Hey there, and welcome to

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Speaker 1: the podcast. This is Kristen. What's up? This is smilling Molly.

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Speaker 1: Today we are tackling an important question. Why does the

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Speaker 1: sizzle sizzle? It sounds like Sex and the City and Cosmo. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but we were actually gonna we're gonna get deep. We're

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Speaker 1: gonna get inside some brains and talk about love and

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Speaker 1: passion and places. Carrie Bradshaw never took you. Yeah, when

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Speaker 1: it and more importantly, when it fizzles out, which reminds me,

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Speaker 1: Molly of a little bit of a story story. It's

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Speaker 1: homeschooling involved. No homeschooling involved. This was it? Um, Well

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Speaker 1: the day and time we'll just leave in the ether,

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Speaker 1: um remain anonymous. Yeah that when you see just at

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Speaker 1: this title, why is the sizzle fizz? And it reminded

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Speaker 1: me of a certain name in my cell phone directory. Um, Fizzle.

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Speaker 1: There's someone who could have a friend named Fizzle. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there was there was a guy, um who thing you know,

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Speaker 1: I met him. Things started to sizzle and Uh, it

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Speaker 1: just seemed really great. And you know, I had all

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Speaker 1: of those characteristics of romantic passion. I just I couldn't

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Speaker 1: think about anything else. I you know, I was so

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Speaker 1: nervous I couldn't even eat. Sometimes. It was just whenever

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Speaker 1: I would see him, my palms would sweat. It was awful, really,

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Speaker 1: And then after a while, you know, it just fizzled. Fizzle. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And so I decided one night um to change his

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Speaker 1: name in the phone to Fizzle. And I actually forgot

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Speaker 1: about that and I ran into him um the other day,

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Speaker 1: in fact, and I got a text message and I

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Speaker 1: was like, who is Fizzle? Oh, yeah, that's Fizzle. That's

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Speaker 1: what I renamed him as. I can only hope Fizzle

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Speaker 1: listen to this podcast, fizz All, if you're out there,

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Speaker 1: this one's for you. Um. So I thought this would

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Speaker 1: be a pretty pretty good story to maybe chart the

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Speaker 1: path of romance and passion in our brains. Because Molly,

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Speaker 1: I felt I felt crazy. I really did. I consider

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Speaker 1: myself a very practical, rational person, and when I met Fizzle,

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Speaker 1: there was no practical or rational reason why I was

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Speaker 1: so drawn to him. It was something I just I

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Speaker 1: was out of my mind. I didn't understand it. But

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Speaker 1: I took a lot of comfort in this research that

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Speaker 1: we've been doing because I can blame my brain. You

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Speaker 1: can blame your brain along with the whole host of

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Speaker 1: my favorite word, hormones. Chemicals. Yes, but we have to

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Speaker 1: remember with hormones. With a special episode on Passion and Love,

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Speaker 1: we talked a lot about how hormones affect women's behavior specifically. True,

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Speaker 1: but you know what, Molly, when it comes to the

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Speaker 1: neurobiology of love, men and women are on an equal

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Speaker 1: playing field, right. These hormones are affecting everyone. By the way,

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Speaker 1: I think Neurobiology of Love is going to be east

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Speaker 1: Lean Dion's next albumin so maybe then I'll Listensten to it. Alright,

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Speaker 1: So we're gonna first of all, make a little disclaimer.

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Speaker 1: Even though a lot of what Kristen described in her

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Speaker 1: attraction to Fizzle sounded a little lustful, we're gonna skip

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Speaker 1: right over lust. Yeah, I don't think that it wasn't

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Speaker 1: purely it wasn't purely less I will I will say

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Speaker 1: that straight out. There was definitely a attraction phase to

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Speaker 1: an attachment phase, and there was a build up. This

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Speaker 1: was connection is being made. Yeah, it was more than

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Speaker 1: just how do you do? Yeah, we forged a friendship. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So what was going on in your brain past less?

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Speaker 1: Which is a lot of chemicals like testosterone, sex drive chemicals.

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Speaker 1: When we get into this sort of what's termed the

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Speaker 1: attraction phase of love, first you have we have the

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Speaker 1: visual input. I saw Fizzle from a disc and I

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Speaker 1: was attracted. And this visual input becomes very important later

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Speaker 1: on that basically, when you see someone that you care for,

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Speaker 1: there's this huge visual indentation they make on your brain.

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Speaker 1: And um. So once I established this visual input, and

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Speaker 1: I started seeing Fizzle more and more, and I got

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Speaker 1: progressively more nervous every time I would see him, at

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Speaker 1: least for a while. There were certain parts of my

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Speaker 1: brain that were probably more active than others. Right, So,

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Speaker 1: when I first started seeing Fizzle and I, like I said,

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Speaker 1: I would get very nervous, maybe my heart would raise

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Speaker 1: a little bit more. I could never think of anything

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Speaker 1: interesting at all to say. Uh, it was because certain

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Speaker 1: parts of my brain were really active. In other parts

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Speaker 1: weren't so active, right, Molly, that's correct. Have you ever

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Speaker 1: heard of your hypothalamus, Kristen, Well, I have, Well, it

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Speaker 1: was screwing you over. It was. The hypothalamus is this

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Speaker 1: little part of the brain that releases a little hormone

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Speaker 1: we like to call dopamine. Yeah, and dopamine, uh is

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Speaker 1: a pretty big part of the reward system. Basically, even

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Speaker 1: though it made you nervous, you thrived on seeing fizzle. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: of course. And in addition to dopamine, there was another

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Speaker 1: chemical called nora benephrin that was surging through my veins

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Speaker 1: whenever I would see a fizzle and Nora benefern is

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Speaker 1: similar to adrenaline, which is why it feels like this

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Speaker 1: fight or flight where when I would see him, there

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Speaker 1: would be a split second in my brain where I

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Speaker 1: was like, will I approach or will I flee? Because

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Speaker 1: sometimes I would flee just because you didn't take it,

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Speaker 1: because your brain is just on overdrive essentially, but not

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Speaker 1: all of it. Certain parts of the brain do shut down,

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Speaker 1: um the prefrontal is it the prefrontal cortex. Prefrontal cortex

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Speaker 1: essentially shuts down, and this is sort of why love

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Speaker 1: is blind and why fools fall in love because when

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Speaker 1: this part shuts down, you're able to overlook all these flaws.

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Speaker 1: Everything is just perfect. Fizzle is the most important wonderful man.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure no flaws at all. Yeah, exactly, well, I mean, well, yes,

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Speaker 1: that's another story for another time, but exactly the prefrontal

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Speaker 1: cortex is associated with our social judgment, So yeah, for us,

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Speaker 1: for women, it would it would make us more trusting,

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Speaker 1: you know, even though maybe maybe Fizzle didn't have a

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Speaker 1: college degree and maybe Fizzle you know, maybe didn't have

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Speaker 1: the steadiest job, but that didn't matter to my prefrontal

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Speaker 1: cortex because it wasn't even registering. Yeah, you had no

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Speaker 1: fear essentially, and scientists have kind of described this as

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Speaker 1: kind of a push pull, like basically you're getting it

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Speaker 1: from all sides to getting pushed into that reward system

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Speaker 1: you want more dopamine and getting pulled forward by the

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Speaker 1: fact that you have no judgment about this person, essentially

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Speaker 1: that you can love them despite all their flaws and

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Speaker 1: despite the fact that they make you incredibly jumpy. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And in addition to the jumping nous, there's also you

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Speaker 1: know where when you get the weird mood swings where

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Speaker 1: you just I was so happy about Fizzle and then

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Speaker 1: I'd be like, well, Fizzles not calling, why is this

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Speaker 1: not happening? And then you know, sometimes it was just

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Speaker 1: like my appetite would be weird, and that is to

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Speaker 1: blame on saratonin. When the dopamine goes up, levels of

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Speaker 1: serotonin in my brain would go down. And seratonin is

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Speaker 1: that makes you feel calm, relaxed, And once that drops,

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Speaker 1: that's when I got a little more anxious and uh

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Speaker 1: and maybe you know it just wasn't wasn't eating as much.

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Speaker 1: So that is yet another factor that makes us quote

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Speaker 1: unquote crazy and love. But this is clearly no way

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Speaker 1: to live. Like the human species would never survive if

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Speaker 1: we were just walking around hungry, space out, jumpy all

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Speaker 1: the time, we'd be walk in front of buses, we

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Speaker 1: would be just doing bizarre things. Yeah, So thank goodness

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Speaker 1: for evolutionary biology that said, Okay, you know this is nice,

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Speaker 1: this is pushing you towards someone, but you need to

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Speaker 1: actually bond and attached, and in order to do that,

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Speaker 1: you can't be flighty and not being able to form

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Speaker 1: sentences as all at all. So there's another set of

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Speaker 1: hormones that starts to kick in during the attachment phase

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Speaker 1: that follows attraction. Yeah, and this is the part where

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Speaker 1: the sizzle begins to fizzle. This is not to say

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Speaker 1: everyone's just going to break up the way Kristen and

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Speaker 1: Fizzle did, because there are sort of the next wave

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Speaker 1: of chemicals that come through your brain to help you

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Speaker 1: form a connection, right, And the chemicals we're talking about

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Speaker 1: specifically are oxytocin and vasopressin, and these are associated with

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Speaker 1: um orgasms and for women it is also associated with

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Speaker 1: childbirth and breastfeeding. These are the very intimate bonding hormones

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Speaker 1: that give you. Oxytosin sometimes called the warm and cuddly

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Speaker 1: hormone because it's associated with those most intimate experiences. Right

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Speaker 1: when you have sex with someone, eventually begin to form

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Speaker 1: this bond, and that's thanks to oxytose so much make

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Speaker 1: you want to stay around and be with this person

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Speaker 1: and just spend all day with them. And we should

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Speaker 1: say that estrogen an testosterone, not surprisingly do interact with

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Speaker 1: oxytocin a little bit differently. For with estrogen, it the

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Speaker 1: combination of estrogen and oxytocin gives us more feelings of

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Speaker 1: trust and bonding, or as with testosterone and oxytocin, it

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Speaker 1: actually mitigates the calming effects of the oxytocin and spurs

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Speaker 1: that fight or flight a little bit more in males,

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Speaker 1: which once again another conversation for another time. But what's

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Speaker 1: interesting about sort of the difference between the two stages

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Speaker 1: according to um love researcher, which I would like to

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Speaker 1: have that title someday, not officially just in my private life.

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Speaker 1: Casually seems like a good thing to have it on

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Speaker 1: business card. I digress um. According to love researcher Hell'm Fisher,

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Speaker 1: the thinking is is that once the basso press and

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Speaker 1: which is like uh oxytocin has sort of a clever

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Speaker 1: name as the commitment chemical, once that starts surging through

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Speaker 1: your brain, it kind of blocks the pathways of the

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Speaker 1: dopamine so that you might not be getting as much

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Speaker 1: of it. Um. And like we said, in the attraction stage,

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Speaker 1: that was the part that was making you just be

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Speaker 1: like musty him, musty him, must have reward like mouse

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Speaker 1: pushing a pellet, getting the food pellet. Yeah. One word,

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Speaker 1: my addiction, because the dopamine reward system that is triggered

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Speaker 1: in the insane, romantic, passionate phase of love is the

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Speaker 1: exact same thing as uh, let's just say, snorting a

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Speaker 1: line of cocaine. Yeah, And so that's I mean, eventually

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Speaker 1: they would like to do research. I guess some people

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Speaker 1: who have affairs and see if they're oxytocin receptors act

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Speaker 1: like other people's do, or if they constantly need that

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Speaker 1: that hit, that love junkie hit. Right. They think that

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Speaker 1: people who have been in committed long term relationships for

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Speaker 1: years and years and still claim to be madly in

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Speaker 1: love with each other might have higher level of oxytocin

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Speaker 1: in their brains, or might have more oxytocin receptors, which

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Speaker 1: makes them more innately monogamous. Right, And you know, there

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Speaker 1: are not many monogamous species out there, right, it's kind

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Speaker 1: of debatable whether humans are. In fact. The only one

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Speaker 1: they're entirely sure about is a little creature called the

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Speaker 1: prairie bowl. And they've done experiments where they hinder the

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Speaker 1: amount of oxytocin in a prairie bowl's brain and it

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Speaker 1: goes from being this very stable, um monogamous creature to

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Speaker 1: being like crazy love crazed prairie bowl whatever that looks like.

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Speaker 1: They just start they start having a sexs with everything, right,

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Speaker 1: Whereas like you said, they will mate for life and

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Speaker 1: be perfectly content. And I think in one of the

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Speaker 1: studies that I saw, they actually have more sex than

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Speaker 1: they need to in order to reproduce, so they're they're

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Speaker 1: happy little prairie bowls. Yeah, it's all that best suppressing. Well.

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Speaker 1: And now it's time now that we're deep in the

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Speaker 1: attachment phase, which you know, Fizzle and I I don't

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Speaker 1: think we really got to this point, um, But if

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Speaker 1: we had gotten at this point and we were still

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Speaker 1: hanging out together, one chemical that would go up in

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Speaker 1: my brain would have been saratonin. And that's one that

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Speaker 1: I referenced before. It's sort of the antithesis to Nora Pefrin.

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Speaker 1: Nor Pefrin is in the early stages where you know,

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Speaker 1: palms are sweaty, hearts beating and all of that, but

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Speaker 1: Sarahtonin calms you down, makes you feel safe, uh, and

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Speaker 1: comfortable with that person, sort of like you know, the

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Speaker 1: sweet old couples that you see walking hand in hand

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Speaker 1: down the sidewalk, they just got a little just saratonin

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Speaker 1: just coursing through their little little veins making them just

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Speaker 1: feel comfortable together. Right. I mean, when you know we

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Speaker 1: were talking about this before, I sort of made it

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Speaker 1: sound like you kind of just get drugged up and

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Speaker 1: you just kind of stay with the person m h

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Speaker 1: out of but leontia. Right, But we also have thanks

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Speaker 1: to evolution, we have these these stabilizing factors in our brain.

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Speaker 1: And when we talk about why does the sizzle fizzle,

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Speaker 1: it seems like there is you come to a crossroads.

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Speaker 1: Everybody hits that initial attraction phase, and um, you know

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Speaker 1: if the if the sizzle fizzles, it's you know, it

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Speaker 1: all has to do with these sets of chemicals in

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Speaker 1: our brain. And also one thing that we didn't mention

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Speaker 1: that comes back online and this attachment phases, that prefrontal

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Speaker 1: cortex lights back up, and that's where you start to

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Speaker 1: see the flaws and people. But what's interesting is when

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Speaker 1: we were researching this, I was like, oh man, you

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Speaker 1: know a woman can thought of love with her husband

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Speaker 1: because of these chemicals in her brain. But as we mentioned,

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Speaker 1: that's the precedent. Oxytocin are also really key chemicals in

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Speaker 1: mother child bond. Right. When you look at MRI scans

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Speaker 1: of people who are in love with someone else, like

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Speaker 1: sexually physically in love with someone else, and look at

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Speaker 1: the brains of mother to child, there are a lot

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Speaker 1: of interacting overlapping areas that are that are lighting up.

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Speaker 1: But there's one place in the brain that really makes

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Speaker 1: a difference. Yeah, And remember when we were talking about

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Speaker 1: the impact of seeing a face and how that was

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Speaker 1: so important. Where that kind of dies off in terms

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Speaker 1: of a physical romantic club that never really shuts off

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Speaker 1: with a mother, probably because she's always examining her child's

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Speaker 1: face because it's changing, because she's looking for signs of illness. Uh.

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Speaker 1: That facial recognition part of the brain plays a very

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Speaker 1: important part in sustaining that mother child love and where

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Speaker 1: you know, the dopamine eventually levels off, and romantic love

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Speaker 1: it never really does. In mother child loves you almost

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Speaker 1: like don't need the reward of your child loving you back,

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Speaker 1: which I guess is a pretty handy, uh evolutionary tick

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Speaker 1: when it comes to a child being a teenager. And

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Speaker 1: they've also highlighted the hypothalamus as the main difference point

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Speaker 1: between in the brain between romantic love and other love,

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Speaker 1: if you will, because when I was attracted to Fizzle

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Speaker 1: and whoever else, my hypothalamus is kind of going crazy.

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Speaker 1: But if I ever, you know, have a child and

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Speaker 1: I'm looking at the child, my hypothalamus is not going

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Speaker 1: to be active at all, hopefully not right they think

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Speaker 1: it's more of the seat of the erotic love. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so pretty heavy stuff. Luckily, I was reassured to know

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Speaker 1: that while the sizzle may fizzle between me and any fellow,

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Speaker 1: hopefully will never fizzle for my children. Well and more pathetically, well,

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Speaker 1: I have to throw out one more study that was

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Speaker 1: conducted by Helen Fisher and her Love researcher Love Researchers. Yes,

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Speaker 1: they looked at m r I scans of these couples

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Speaker 1: who I think the average time they've been together was

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Speaker 1: twenty one years. Been together for a long time, and

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Speaker 1: according to all of this research that we've been talking

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Speaker 1: about now, it would have fizzled out somewhere in the brain.

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Speaker 1: They might have had like a nice bonding, a lot

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Speaker 1: of serotonine going on, but you can't still be in

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Speaker 1: love in the brain. The neurobiology has to be different, right,

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Speaker 1: I would think so. Well, they were actually wrong. They

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Speaker 1: were really happy to find out that the same areas

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Speaker 1: that were lit up during this romantic phase twenty one

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Speaker 1: years down the road, we're still lighting up when they

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Speaker 1: would see pictures of the person they were mated with.

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Speaker 1: That's good because a lot of the Southern research is

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Speaker 1: pretty depressing. It just seems like we're on a downward spiral.

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Speaker 1: But you know, those old couples shown us that can

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Speaker 1: be done. Yeah, it can be done. So and it's

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Speaker 1: also once again I take comfort of knowing next time

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Speaker 1: the sizzle fizzles, I'll just blame it on, you know, dopamine.

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Speaker 1: Just say it's not me, it's my brain. It's not me,

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Speaker 1: it's my dopamine. But if you want to learn more

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Speaker 1: about dopamine, it's all on how stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: You've got an article called how love works. Should go

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Speaker 1: on and check it out. And while you're online, you

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Speaker 1: should also send me and Molly question comment email to

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Speaker 1: mom stuff at how stuff works dot com. For more

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Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out

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Speaker 1: our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page.

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.

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