Why Spring is the Best Time to fall in love, ft. neuroscientist Dr Helen Fisher

8:06PM May 13, 2022

Speakers:

Keywords:

people

called

dopamine

question

brain

singles

trigger

love

spring

marry

data

kiss

world

years

serotonin

linked

excited

melatonin

season

personality traits

I'm here in the northern hemisphere, it's spring. And you can tell by both my allergies and the fact that everything is yellow with pollen does that happen where you live? But did you know that in addition to allergies and pollen spring is the best time to fall in love? It's actually psychologically scientifically proven. So pop in your headphones, get your allergy meds, go for a walk, smell the flowers, get ready to hear all about the science behind springtime and falling in love on this beautiful day. I'm Sarah Wendell. I'm Alisha Rai. I welcome to lovestruck daily where we bring a love story to your ears every single day.

I'm in love with the sea you should know. I'm in love with you. Sarah, ma'am, Guess what time it is? What time is it? It is time to do the New York Times 36 questions to fall in love. Get to know each other better.

I love this plan. I'm thrilled to be part of it.

So here's our question for this week. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else? What would you want to know? Oh, gosh, anything, anything about anybody or anywhere?

My first thought is I would want to know for sure that my kids are going to be okay as adults. Oh, because I mean, there's going to be parts of their lives that I won't see. And my goal is to raise some autonomous healthy humans who, as I've said, have a childhood they don't have to recover from, I want to know if my kids are going to go out into the world and be happy and content humans. That's my goal is apparent. But if I'm thinking about myself, I don't know. Oh, my goodness, this is a hard question. Do you have an answer? This is a very hard one.

I mean, as far as myself, I think I would want to know, like, what kind of legacy do I leave behind? Because I do think about that a lot. And it's a question, I think on the Myers Briggs test, like, do you care what people think of you and you're gone, and I do care very deeply. So I would like to know, I would like to know what I what I'm going to leave to the world. And if it's going to make a difference,

really a beautiful love stories in the world in multiple venues.

I hope so. But in general, and this is a little bit of a morbid thought. But I would like to know if the sun ever wipes us out? Oh, that is a that is a big question. I

don't think it's going to happen in our lifetime. Fair,

big question I don't think is gonna happen in our lifetime. I don't think so chi is very into space and all this stuff, as you know. But he is convinced we've got a good like, two or 3000 years left, we have to worry about the earth being destroyed. Because my concern always is when the earth is destroyed, we're going to have a descendant who's scared. And that makes me sad. Yes, of course, like the thought of that makes me cry. But you know, like the last person is going to be really sad. So I'd like to know, I would like to know for certainty. So I have, I can feel good. Like, okay, well, that'll be like eight generations 20 generations 30 generations removed? Oh, that's a big question. That is

a good question. Well, I mean, we're always looking into the past and the present and the future for love. And we feel like we know a lot about love. We write about it. We talk about it every day on the show. But today, we have a guest who really knows about love in the scientific sense. Neuroscientist Dr. Helen Fisher has studied the brain and love for over 40 years. And she's here to answer all of our questions about love and sex and brain chemistry.

Dr. Fisher, thank you so much for joining us. We're so excited to talk to you.

I'm delighted to be with you. Can you give us

a little bit of a rundown about what your research areas? Yes,

I'm a biological anthropologist and I study love. And my colleagues are the first in the world to put anybody into a brain scanner and study the brain circuitry of romantic love. I've written six books on this. My most well known ones are probably anatomy of love. And why him why her why you fall in love with one person rather than another. And I'm the chief science advisor to the dating site. match.com I have been for 17 years. And I still have a lot of data right now on where we're headed in the future actually a very positive direction. And I'm a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute.

Oh wow. Well, can you I am interested to know what what is the future for love in what you found?

Oh, I'm I'm extremely excited about it every year 11 years I do an annual study with match called singles in America, we do not pull the match members. This is a national representative sample of singles based on the US Census. And every year I and my colleagues create about 200 questions, then we get them, the data collected, and then our lives are destroyed for a few months assembling all this. And the last questionnaire was done in last July in August, that data was collected. So that was still people being very scared of the pandemic, etc. And what we found was post what I call post traumatic growth, singles are growing up. It's remarkable how they have changed that there is a historic change. And I think that if I had to sum it up in in one basic data point, one of the questions out of the 200 was, do you want to meet somebody who wants to marry? And in 2019, before the pandemic 58% of singles said, Yes, I'd like to meet somebody who wants to marry this year, a 76%. Who wants to be and that's an 18% rise. It's absolutely phenomenal. They're very focused on their career. And they really want now somebody who's emotionally mature, that's even more important. In a be sexual attraction. Sexual attraction will always be there. And they want it within the next year, too. They're in a rush for it. I don't think they're going to marry right away. People, I think, I think they're going to usher in a few decades of relative family stability.

Oh, wow. That's, that's so reassuring. Fascinating.

Yeah. Well, you know, you don't want people staying in marriages that don't, right.

Yes. Can you walk us back a little bit to the to the science of falling in love. So what exactly happens in your brain when you fall in love? Yeah,

well, what they what we ended up finding, and it was a surprise to me, I had not anticipated this, we found activity in all of them in a tiny little factory near the base of the brain called the ventral tegmental area. And this brain region pumps out dopamine. And that's what gives you the focus in the energy in the motivation of intense romantic love, and also found activity in a brain region, the nucleus accumbens, it's called link with addiction, all of the addictions, activate the nucleus accumbens, everything from you know, heroin and cigarettes and alcohol, etc, to the behavioural addictions, gambling, sex, addiction, etc. So, but what's most interesting to me is this primary, little factor in the ventral tegmental area, or VTA, that pumps out dopamine gives you these feelings of intense romantic love. It lies right next to the little factory, that orchestrates thirst and hunger, thirst and hunger keep you alive today. Romantic love drives you to fall in love, form a partnership, and send your DNA into tomorrow. So it is basically a survival mechanism. It is romantic love is a drive. It's not an emotion like anger, or fear, or shame, or whatever it is a drive is one of three basic drugs actually, that evolved millions of years ago to get us to reproduce.

And there is something right in the saliva when you kiss, is that correct? That triggers?

Well, it's got some traces of testosterone in it. And as a result, men like sloppier cases. And some apologists have said that, not me, but I don't know. But the bottom line is that maybe with this lab, because they're trying to inject more interested in quite a bit. But when you actually kiss somebody, there's one very good study, if you kiss somebody, you know very well, and you really love, it drives up the oxytocin system in the brain. And that, of course, as is associated with feelings of deep attachment, but it's my guess, that we don't have the data on this, to my knowledge at this point. But, you know, when you when you're madly in love with somebody, and you've just met them, and you're going out for I don't know, you know, just a month or two months or a year or whatever, and everything about them, you know, pumps up the dopamine system, my guess is that kissing them will drive approval. So, at different times in relationship that kiss will serve different purposes. In the beginning it can serve to I assuming, drive up dopamine and make your love of neighbour harder. And with with in an extended relationship, we know that that the data shows that if you are living with somebody for a period of time, and you kiss them, it can drive up oxytocin, the good feelings of attachment

Interesting, very interesting. Now, you've heard the term, probably cuffing season, correct? Right? Absolutely. Yeah. So it's usually means, you know, in the early sort of fall and you want you want to be with a partner to like, get through the winter months, but what is there like a good season to fall in love?

Listen, I gotta go finish this chapter of this book I'm reading, give me one second, we will be right back.

There any season is a good time to fall in love. Absolutely. Anytime at all. But I mean, there are seasonal changes in and often with a lot of people. And, you know, testosterone is actually highest in November and early December. Wow. And there's cuffing season, maybe in part because testosterone levels are higher, but it's also you're facing towards holidays, and you need to sort of bring somebody home for the holidays, or at least go to some of the parties with them. And, and, you know, during holidays, you really, you always miss it when you when you don't have somebody but in holidays, people are saying Oh, you're coming alone, or, Oh, man, you know, what happened to that last relationship? You know, there's, I mean, this sort of reassess where we're at, you know, what New Year's Eve is all about? Here is okay, this is what I did. This is what I didn't do it cetera, et cetera. But it's in the spring, people have long thought that spring is a time of was not only time of gaiety and joy, but there is some physiology to to triggering more of the sex drive. And it's because there's a tiny little factory actually in the middle of your head, it's not a, it's actually not part of the brain, it migrated in there. But bottom line is there's one little factory called the pineal gland, and the pineal gland puts out melatonin. And melatonin is very active in the dark. And so as it gets darker in the winter, people can be more sleepy, or groggy, less energy, etc, because there's more melatonin, which is actually we even use it today as a sleeping aid. In the spring, as it gets lighter and lighter, melatonin activity is reduced and reduced and reduced. And in fact, melatonin is linked with the pituitary, which then goes down to the gonads, and stimulates the Goannas. This the the genitals. So in the spring, there seems to be some trigger more triggering have never really found a trigger to the sex drive. But we've found a triggering of, of mood, definitely mood. And there's other things about the spring too. I mean, you suddenly can see people with less on their outside, they're playing frisbee or some sort of line in a park, or having a picnic. And you're also seeing more colour, more sounds or smells. And those can all trigger the brain to be excited and a sense, Newell, and along with that renewal, I think is gonna it's being triggered, and people really looking for love. I think people love to love it any season. But there is some validity to spring fever. Wow,

that's really yeah, very interesting. What research are you working on right now?

It stemmed from the fact that 17 years ago and match invited me to join them. And that triggered in me the question, are we naturally drawn to people because of basic body chemistry. So that's what I've been doing for the last, I don't know, 10 to 15 years. And and basically, we've evolved for very fundamental foundational styles of thinking and behaving like with the dopamine, serotonin, testosterone and oestrogen systems in the brain, if a lot of systems in the brain, but most of them keep the heart beating, or the eyes blinking or not like with any personality trait, these four brain systems each is linked with a constellation or a suite of personality traits. So I created a questionnaire to see to what degree you express traits linked with each of these four brain systems. And as it turns out, we express all of them but to different degrees. And as it turns out, if you're very high on the traits in the dopamine system, you tend to be novelty seeking risk taking curious, creative, spontaneous, energetic, metal flexible, and you're drawn to people like yourself. I call these people explorers, explorers. As both explores, if you're very expressive of the traits in the serotonin system, I call these people builders. These people are also drawn to people like themselves their traditional infection, cautious, follow the rules respect, authority, detail or oriented, managerial, and conscientious. And so anyway that I'm working on that. I started a company called neuro colour. And we go into companies, all kinds of companies and, and help them understand not only who their colleagues are, and who they are, but how better to build a team. how better to sell, how better to construct think tanks, spur innovation, and lead. So that's what I'm excited about.

It's interesting to me because I was about to ask, you know, what, what the practical application of all this research is, there it is. Yeah, it sounds like that's it. I mean, on a individual level. Do you think knowing about this research helps people be more aware maybe when they are falling in love? Or do you think

Oh, absolutely. Victim? Well, let me give you an example. Please. Yeah, um, yeah, well, I'm older. But I got married recently. And I was at 75. I got married and 75.

graduations. Yeah, that's amazing to an

absolute terrific guy. I mean, I should. Yeah, I mean, I'd had long, lovely partnerships, but I hadn't seen the point of marriage, and now I get it. But anyway, we are both very high on the dopamine system. He is a very well known writer. He travels all over the world all the time. He's very creative, etc. So we're both high on the dopamine scale. And that was just fine. That was to attract that he's a little bit higher on serotonin, he's more likely to follow the rules. Now, there's some people who want something totally different. I mean, which is perfectly fine, as long as you continue to admire it. But if you're suddenly a person who suddenly wants to go around the world, and with a knapsack and a party booking, and your partner wants to stay home and watch TV, you're gonna have trouble and it's not gonna work. So I'm so I'm really excited. I looked through all the physiological data, found all of these little personality traits linked with these four brain systems to create the questionnaire.

Where can people find you if they're looking for you or this questionnaire? Oh,

they can go to mica to websites. Helen fisher.com. I think they can take the question on my other site is called www dot the anatomy of love.com.

Thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate it. Thank you. This has been fascinating, ordinarily educational and entertaining. So thank you.

Thank you very much.

Sarah, what is your love to go?

Well, you mentioned in the intro, that you think about the future and your descendants and what kind of legacy leave and I was really struck by Dr. Fisher's optimism, that right now growth and goodness are coming for people. And that is really lovely. Yeah. Well, if you have love stories that you would like to share, please email us at lovestruck daily at frolic dot media. Please leave a review. We would love to grow our audience and we would love to share your reviews with everyone. So if you leave a review, we will definitely read it and I will probably cry. You can follow us on Instagram at lovestruck daily and also on Twitter for extra content super adorable photos. Don't miss the photos. Our researcher is Jesse Epstein. Our editor is Jen Jacobs. We are produced by Abigail steckler and little Scorpion studios with executive producer frolic media. This is an I Heart Radio Podcast. And above all, we wish you a very optimistic and grateful happily ever after. I'm in love with you I'm with you. I'm in love with you