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00:00 What happens in the brain when we feel lust?
00:02 Cocktail of neurochemicals, you know, someone you've just started a relationship with maybe
00:06 and you really like them. You know that feeling where you can't stop thinking about them, that's
00:10 those levels of serotonin, all those levels of dopamine that are
00:13 basically driving your attention to this person and this person only.
00:17 Hello and welcome to Love Lives, a podcast from The Independent where I, Olivia Pretor,
00:28 speak to different guests about the loves of their lives. Today I am so excited to be joined
00:34 by author and neuroscientist Nicole Vignola. Hello Nicole. Thank you so much for having me.
00:41 So can you start us off by explaining what the term neuroplasticity means because I know that
00:46 that's something you talk about a lot online and you talk about it in the book as well,
00:50 but to the layman's like me I have absolutely no idea what that even means.
00:54 Absolutely. So when we are children we gain an amount of knowledge of how the world works from
01:01 our parents, our peers, our religion, culture, school, etc. And we create a set of rules as to
01:07 how this world is. We also adopt habits, behaviours, and for a long time we used to think that we
01:13 weren't capable of changing after the age of 25, that the brain was rigid thereafter and anything
01:17 that was acquired before then was how you were going to be forever and ever. But we've, you know,
01:22 through research we've seen that we can actually have neuroplasticity all the way into old age.
01:27 And what that means is that we can reorganise the wiring of our brain to change habits,
01:32 thoughts, and behaviours. It's the reason why the book is called Rewire.
01:36 God, I guess that's first of all very reassuring to someone who constantly wonders,
01:40 am I going insane? Am I losing my mind? What's going on? So that's good to know.
01:43 And one of the things that you talk about in the book that is something that I hear about a lot now
01:48 is negativity bias and how, you know, as human beings we are kind of predetermined to think
01:55 the worst case scenario, whether it's, you know, oh I really shouldn't have said that last night,
02:00 that was so embarrassing, or, you know, nobody likes me or my friends are ignoring me when they
02:05 aren't replying to my messages, this kind of thing. So talk to me about where that comes from
02:10 and how we rewire our brains to get past that because it's something that I think holds so
02:16 many of us back. Absolutely. Well, as an evolutionary species we have been hardwired to,
02:22 you know, be adjusted to survival. So we need to detect threatening stimuli for our environment
02:30 and make sure that we stay alive. Of course, we don't need to do that anymore,
02:33 but the brain still has most basic emotions wired towards being negative. So out of the eight basic
02:40 emotions, two are positive, joy and trust, and then you have surprise, which could be positive
02:46 or negative depending on the situation. So we do have a tendency to lean towards more negative
02:52 thinking and negative assumptions. If you get 10 lovely comments on your Instagram, but one nasty
02:57 one, you're going to go to bed worrying about that one. And that's because the brain wants to
03:00 improve and evolve and make sure that it doesn't do that again. And, you know, we want to self
03:05 preserve, but we can change our bias, our negativity bias. I think if we leave it up to
03:12 fate, we'd probably go down that route. Also, depending on our environment, you know, I have
03:16 a lot of clients and friends and followers who will have parents who've been very negative and
03:21 they've adopted that same behavior through observational knowledge, but we can actually
03:26 change that to be more positive. And actually I would say more neutral, more realistic. You know,
03:31 we can engage parts of our brains that are more logic. So the frontal cortex, which is responsible
03:37 for decision making more cognitively demanding tasks tends to be switched off or lower activity
03:43 when we are more emotional. So we tend to go down the spiral of negativity and we become more and
03:50 more emotional, which switches off the frontal cortex and then we can end up catastrophizing.
03:55 Ah, that makes so much sense. Okay, so we lose the ability to be logical and rational
04:00 when we're overly emotional. Yes. Okay. But accurately naming your emotions and how you're
04:06 feeling can actually help re-engage that frontal cortex and put you back in the driver's seat
04:10 as to how you're feeling. And then ultimately also rewire and strengthen that part of the brain,
04:15 which then later down the line, when you are feeling emotional, you have more cognitive control
04:20 over the situation. God, I love that. That's so fascinating. So if someone is in the midst
04:25 of a downward spiral where like you say, you're catastrophizing. So I think what tends to happen
04:30 is you have one negative thought and then you let it in and then it's like a rolling kind of
04:34 basis of one after the other, after the other. How can you stop that from progressing? So you
04:38 said about naming, naming what you're feeling. How do you go about identifying that?
04:43 There are wheels of emotion online, which you can search. Or, you know, I actually have one
04:49 printed out on my fridge, which has all sort of basic emotions there. I do that with my niece,
04:54 who's three and a half years old. So we're sort of teaching her emotional regulation.
04:58 And another thing is journaling or speaking out loud. That's why calling a friend can be really
05:04 helpful, because what happens is you're putting a narrative to that emotion. You're putting a
05:08 narrative to the story, which can help you conceptualize it. When we are catastrophizing
05:14 or in that downward spiral, our thoughts are running around seemingly incoherently in our
05:20 brains. They don't really have a beginning and an end. I don't know if you can resonate with that,
05:24 but if you ever try to put how you're feeling into words, and then when you try and do that,
05:28 you realize that you can't, or perhaps you didn't actually feel like that, really. Because internally,
05:35 thoughts can exacerbate the situation in your head, and they take up more space. But when you
05:40 have to generate words through either writing or talking to a friend, they take up a smaller part
05:45 of the brain and engage the frontal cortex. You start to realize that things are perhaps not as
05:50 bad as you've made them out to be in your own head. So getting them out is really useful.
05:54 You also write about confirmation bias. So talk to me about how that is different from
05:59 negativity bias and what that actually means and how that looks.
06:03 Well, the brain wants to be correct. It's not energy efficient to be incorrect all the time,
06:07 right? So if you have a belief or you repeat a certain narrative or a certain negative thing
06:13 about yourself, like I'm not good enough, your brain will then go throughout the entire day
06:18 trying to prove that that statement is correct. Confirmation bias, you want to confirm and
06:22 reaffirm your beliefs. So it's really important to pay attention to what you say to yourself and the
06:30 things that you-- the energy, if you will, that you put out into the world. Because as an example,
06:38 when I first started doing public speaking, I would feel very nervous and then say things like,
06:43 oh my goodness, I'm so nervous. I'm so scared. What if I mess up? And then that can become a
06:49 self-fulfilling prophecy in itself. So I would stop that right in its tracks and go, you're fine.
06:53 You know exactly what you're talking about. It's absolutely fine. And be more realistic,
06:56 because it can send you down a trajectory. Then you're in the crowd, and let's say someone's maybe
07:01 minding their own business, replying to a text, and you have this perceived idea that you're
07:06 nervous. You're going to interpret that as they don't care about your talk. But actually, they're
07:10 just probably responding to something very important. So it's very important to, again,
07:15 as I said, make sure that you're paying attention to what beliefs and what things you say to
07:20 yourself. One thing I've heard people talk about is-- and I think this is something you reference
07:25 in other terms-- but is that thoughts are not facts. And that seems to kind of be feeding into
07:30 everything you're saying, that when you have a negative thought about yourself or about a
07:35 situation, learning to acknowledge that it's just a thought and it's not necessarily reflective of
07:41 reality can be really helpful in terms of processing that and kind of coming back to
07:45 the frontal cortex, the logical side of your brain.
07:48 Yes, because thoughts are spontaneous. They can be derived from something that you've seen on the TV,
07:53 from something that somebody else said that you may not necessarily truly believe. So we have
07:59 something called metacognition as humans, which means that we can observe our thoughts. And I like
08:04 to play fact or fiction. Is this thought fact? And is it fiction? Because once you start trying
08:10 to gain evidence to whether it's either or, you start to realize that perhaps it's not, again,
08:15 as bad as you may have seemed. And if it is, there's generally a solution.
08:19 And how does the power of positive thinking come into all of this? Because this is something that
08:24 I think has really kind of overtaken social media in the last couple of years. And I'm
08:29 talking about manifesting, which is ostensibly perhaps the least scientific thing. I mean,
08:36 that's how it seems to most people, like what you just think about something positive,
08:39 and then it's going to happen to you. So I know it's more complex than that. But
08:43 I'd love to know from a scientific point of view, how that factors into everything and whether,
08:49 you know, there is actually neuroscience to back up the process of manifesting.
08:54 Yes. So I appreciate that it has probably been diluted in the sort of industry. There is some
09:02 science to it. You know, we have something called the reticular activating system in our brain. And
09:06 what that does is it filters out irrelevant information. So at the moment, there are things
09:13 in our periphery, there may be sounds in the background, but you're paying attention to me,
09:17 your brain is saying this is what's important right now. And when we focus on the things that
09:23 are important, so we can say, okay, you're important, Olivia, right now, or you know,
09:26 somebody else might be important, you can shift that attention. If I say to you now, how many
09:31 blue things are in the room, you could start counting. And then I say, okay, how many red
09:35 ones were in your environment, you're going to say, Oh, I don't know, because I didn't look for
09:38 that. So manifestation can work like that. Because if you start looking for whatever it is that
09:43 you're trying to manifest, you can start getting that confirmation to say, yes, you are worthy.
09:48 Yes, you can get this. Yes, this is the trajectory I should be on. So you start looking for the
09:52 signs a bit more. Okay, so there is some science in there. In terms of the positive thinking,
09:58 I like to say more realistic thinking, because I think where we've got to confused is that we've
10:05 become a bit toxic with it, right? There's that whole toxic positivity side of that. But in that
10:09 moment in time, it's really important to honor and feel those emotions. The question is, are you
10:15 lingering on those emotions? Are you letting it ruin the rest of your day? So it's about being
10:20 realistic in the situation, allowing yourself to feel what you need to feel, regulating from that,
10:26 so letting that stress response diminish, and then being realistic.
10:29 In terms of like, so looking for something and then seeing it happen,
10:33 there is an element of some people would say, I'm psychic. How much is there? Is there something in
10:42 the brain where you can almost predict things that are going to happen that then happen? Or
10:49 is it just instinct? And where does that come from? And how powerful can that be? Because I say
10:57 this, because there have been moments in my life where certain things I have a really strong
11:01 intuition that things are going to happen. And then they do. And then I literally like, well,
11:07 I'm a witch. There's no other solution. I imagine that that's not what the science says. So can you
11:14 tell me what the science is behind that? Well, like the great Carl Sagan said, he was an
11:19 astrophysicist. He said that somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. So who knows,
11:24 we might figure out witchery in a few years time through the science. But what I will say is that
11:31 your brain does subconsciously problem solve without your conscious attention.
11:35 That's why sleeping on it, trusting your gut is actually a thing. Because you have an entire
11:42 system or software database of information that you've acquired throughout your entire life,
11:48 from childhood to the age that you are now. And you're not able to access all of that information
11:52 all of the time. But those memories and the semantic knowledge that you've gained is still
11:57 in there. It's just that our conscious brain can only process a limited amount of information at
12:02 the time. Like you're paying attention to me right now. You're not pondering your nine-year-old life.
12:07 But when we kind of step away from a problem, we're allowing, the way that I sort of explain
12:13 it is that we're allowing the subconscious to kind of cross-reference with the entire database,
12:18 almost like an algorithm, to find a solution. That's obviously relating to problem solving,
12:23 but I do believe that there's an element of being able to anticipate a future outcome based on how
12:28 you've seen things maybe unfold before. I never say never. Scientists don't speak in absolutes
12:33 and anyone that does is... Yeah, okay. That's really good to know. For the next time I have
12:39 a psychic moment. The other thing I wanted to ask you about is attachment styles. Because I think
12:45 that is again, something that is talked about so much now. And again, I think to a detrimental
12:52 level, because people are talking about it without really understanding what it is and misdiagnosing
12:58 themselves with certain attachment styles and having too much of a binary approach to it. So
13:04 to those listening who actually don't know what attachment styles even are, can you just start
13:09 off by describing what they are? I mean, I'm going to say that there are three, but I think
13:11 there are maybe four, depends on who you ask. Yes. I'm not entirely sure all of them. You can
13:16 have attachment avoidant, you can have anxious attachment styles, you can have avoidant attachment
13:22 styles. So depending on how you attach to relationships. Now, Rewire, the book, is all
13:28 about the labels that we have attached to ourselves or that have been attached to us by people before
13:34 us and then drive our trajectory. And I'm always careful with the labels because for labels can be
13:41 super helpful, especially with individuals who have neurodivergencies that can help them in
13:47 understanding their brain chemistry. But oftentimes we attach ourselves to labels that then keep us
13:54 stuck. So, you know, I've had attachment styles in relationships where they were more anxious,
13:58 more, what's the word I'm looking for, codependent. But my current relationship is very stable. I
14:08 wouldn't say it's avoidant or anxious. It's pretty reciprocal, requited love. So I think that it can
14:16 change according to the person you're with. It can also change according to where you are in yourself
14:22 in that point in time. Obviously, when I was having more anxious attachment styles, I had
14:27 lower levels of self-worth that I needed to work on. So, you know, I think it's very, very important
14:34 to say maybe you have this attachment style right now, knowing that it can change because the brain
14:40 can reorganize itself. One of the things that you mention and you talk about online a lot is
14:46 learning to hack your serotonin and dopamine. Can you tell us the difference between those two
14:52 chemicals? Am I right in saying they're chemicals? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I got an A in GCSE biology. I
15:00 don't know if that's even the right science, but I feel very smug. I got a C in GCSE biology,
15:04 by the way. Did you? Yeah, I actually nearly failed high school. I had to redo everything
15:08 in my adult years. That's very reassuring. But the way that scientists are describing
15:15 serotonin and dopamine is more like serotonin is your here and now neurochemical. It makes you feel
15:20 good, gives you a feeling of belonging, security, love, attachment. And dopamine is reward seeking.
15:29 So it puts you in motivation drive to gain something. It's either to move your body,
15:34 because we've got different pathways, one that governs movement, and then the other is reward
15:39 related as well. That can put you in a reward seeking behavior. So what is making you feel good?
15:44 Because that's how we learn and that's what we want more of. We want the things that make us feel
15:48 good. Now, dopamine can send you down in a slippery trajectory with wanting to reward seek all of the
15:55 time. And then if we have sort of, I put easy and inverted commas, but things that don't require a
16:00 lot of effort, like say social media, junk food, which in moderation is all fine, but when you are
16:07 doing it often and frequently can disrupt that dopamine system and make you feel like you
16:16 constantly need something to make you feel good. And how do you regulate that? So the dopamine
16:24 system is actually anchored in the pain system. So what that means is when you finish the chocolate,
16:29 your brain will say, oh, I want more. And that feels uncomfortable. So you have to sit through
16:34 that discomfort to reset that dopamine system. If you tilt the scale too much, then that's when it
16:40 becomes addiction. Anna Lemke wrote about this in Dopamine Nation, her book. And the trick is to sit
16:48 through that boredom, to kind of allow yourself to just be without a stimulus. How many times have
16:56 you maybe left your phone in your bag or your pocket or at home and you reach for it without
17:01 even realizing you've done that? I actually sometimes move the Instagram app to somewhere
17:06 else on my phone and I still go and click where it used to be. Subconsciously, I'm just like doing
17:11 it as an automatic behavior. And going back to serotonin, how do we go about, that sounds like
17:16 it's easier to regulate. Yes and no. I mean, it's implicated in many things, including breakups. I
17:22 talk about that in the book. And it can, you know, lower levels of serotonin can make you feel
17:28 obsessive. It's one of the reasons why we obsess over our ex, obsess over wanting to correct the
17:34 things that we did wrong. We have an error detection area in the brain which tells us
17:39 what we should do correct the next time. And that can lead you down a path of, I should have done
17:44 this. What if it had gone like this? And that's lower levels of serotonin, which can make you feel
17:49 very irritable. Because serotonin is responsible for regulating your mood and keeping it stable
17:54 across time. So when that's diminished, there's an attempt to regain that serotonin by again,
18:01 somewhat seeking behavior as well. So you mentioned breakups there, which I know is something that you
18:06 discuss a lot. And people come to you to ask about a lot. I feel like the phrase and the concept,
18:15 how long does it take to get over a breakup has kind of been pathologized so much. Because
18:20 there is this universal theory that it takes us half as long as the time that you were together.
18:26 That's like the kind of general thing that people say. So I'm interested in hearing from you why
18:31 that is not correct. And how long does it take to really get over a breakup? And what does that
18:36 actually depend on? Research says between six to 18 months. Now, you know, we study people in a lab,
18:45 you know, how many people are you looking at? In what demographic? In what circumstances? It's
18:50 very multifaceted. So, you know, we've got this number, but I don't feel like it's truly
18:54 representative. You know, I think everybody is completely different. I've had situations where
19:00 I've gotten over someone in two months. I've had situations where the relationship was short,
19:04 and I've gotten over them much longer. Sorry, it took me longer to get over them. And like you
19:09 said, it is dependent on the situation. You know, a lot of people will also find themselves in maybe
19:14 toxic cycles in relationships that perhaps weren't as long. Maybe they were again shorter, but the
19:21 depth and intensity of them meant that they bonded a lot quicker. What happens in traumatic or more
19:27 like toxic relationships is the correct term is there's a big surge of dopamine and then a big
19:32 drop. And those big surges and drops actually bond you even closer, even though it's not correct.
19:40 Because what a toxic individual will do is it will lull you into a false sense of security by saying,
19:46 I will never do that again, then hurting you. Then you have this ideology that you want to leave.
19:52 And then, but you don't really want to leave. You want them to change. Then they say, I'm really
19:56 sorry, will never happen again. And it becomes this reinforcing cycle. Dopamine is responsible
20:01 for learning. So even though it's incorrect, we just still bond ourselves tremendously to
20:07 these individuals. And that's why toxic relationships can be, can feel so hard to
20:11 leave. It's essentially taking the brain through very, very toxic cycles of reward and drop, which
20:19 can mimic a strong emotional response, potentially related to trauma, especially if there are
20:26 emotional abuses, physical abuses involved in there. And the issue is, is where do we draw
20:32 that line? Because physical abuse, you can say, okay, that's the line. With emotional abuse,
20:39 it's hard, right? We have this phenomenon called creeping normality. So over time, we start to
20:47 shift our normal so we can accept what's going on around us. That's how we survive. But then you've
20:53 shifted this entire version of yourself to suit your surroundings, because otherwise you wouldn't
20:58 be able to cope. So now your normal is shifted. So maybe the barometer for what the threshold is,
21:05 is also shifted. And that can be very, sort of, you know, quote, unquote, dangerous for the
21:11 individual. Yeah, and presumably quite hard to get out of the deeper you get into it. So in terms of
21:17 rewiring, then, how can you rewire your brain out of, I guess, it's another type of addiction,
21:24 right? The kind of being addicted to the up and down and the dopamine and the trauma bond. How
21:27 do you go about rewiring your brain to get yourself out of that? Firstly, whenever I explain
21:33 this to people, it takes that feeling that there's something wrong with them away. So they start to
21:39 realize it's not them, it's their brain. Because people don't see it as an addiction, they don't
21:43 realize the cyclic behavior that leads someone to be in that position in the first place. And that
21:49 alleviates the individual, because a lot of people who find themselves in toxic relationships,
21:54 blame themselves and think that they're weak, they can't do it. But they don't understand how,
21:59 on a neurobiological level, there's a deep attachment there. And that can actually empower
22:04 individuals, because all of a sudden, they see this as a detachment. It's not me, it's my brain.
22:08 And that can be really helpful. And again, reengaging frontal cortex, putting you back in
22:13 that driver's seat that I was talking about. You know, and then in the book, I have an activity
22:19 where I help people reconnect with themselves, their core beliefs, who they want to be. I want
22:25 you to describe, you don't have to do it out loud, but just think about who your ideal person is,
22:32 like the dictionary meaning of ideal person, who is this person? What are their values? What are
22:37 their beliefs? What do they do? How do they behave around people that they love? What do you have in
22:43 common with this person? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What are the differences? Right. Okay. Yeah.
22:54 Most of the time, people have described a version of themselves.
22:59 Wow. That isn't really somebody else. Yeah. And that's when they go, penny drop,
23:05 I am the ideal person. Right. It's always been me. Oh, that's so interesting. I just
23:10 need to reconnect with that. We're going to move on to discuss the loves you've chosen,
23:22 but because we're doing it slightly differently with this episode, we're going to focus on three
23:26 pieces of neuroscience about love and relationships. So the first one that you've
23:32 chosen is intimacy. So tell me what actually defines intimacy and what our biggest misconception
23:41 is around it as a society. Because again, I think we have lots of warped ideas about what constitutes
23:46 real life intimacy between people. Well, intimacy can span across different population groups. It
23:53 doesn't have to be a romantic love. It could be friendship. It could be your parents, children,
23:57 friends. I said friends already. And what we've seen in the science is that the aspects or the
24:05 areas of the brain that encode for love are similar across the different people that you love.
24:11 It's just that the intensity and the patterns change ever so slightly. There might be an area
24:16 of the brain that lights up a little bit more than another, but generally speaking, it's similar
24:21 across the different people that you love, which I find super interesting because it shows that,
24:26 you know, love is universal, right? And that depending on the intensity, we can love people
24:32 more or less. But what that shows us is that, you know, friendships can be really intimate.
24:37 And what's really interesting is that you can also then have, so, you know, there was a
24:42 psychologist who had the sort of triangle of love. It was sort of intimacy, commitment,
24:48 and then passion and consummate love. So the ideal love sits in the middle where you've got all three
24:54 ideally, because you can have commitments. So like an arranged marriage where there's maybe
24:59 intimacy, but no lust, no passion, or maybe there's passion and commitment, but no intimacy.
25:05 So intimacy is interesting because it can, like I said, span across individuals and children,
25:12 and we can all feel it to some degree, whereas you might not feel the others.
25:17 How does sex factor into it? Because I think a lot of people would argue that sex automatically
25:23 is intimacy and is intimate, but is that always the case?
25:26 So with that, I categorize into lust and passion, that when we're feeling those emotions,
25:34 we have a huge surge of estrogen and testosterone. Now that isn't to say that men feel,
25:42 have more testosterone, women more estrogen. It's actually both. The hormones are responsible for
25:49 sexual attraction in both male and female, and that can actually put you in a drive
25:57 that pushes everything else away and actually dysregulates or temporarily switches off again
26:03 that frontal cortex. It's a reason why it can get carried away in a passionate moment,
26:08 but then not actually reciprocate those feelings thereafter. And anyone who's maybe had an affair
26:15 would maybe resonate with that. You can get carried away in the moment. And it's a deep
26:22 emotion that takes over control and is somewhat, somewhat, I'm not trying to excuse anyone who's
26:28 infidelity, but somewhat primal. So you can get caught up in it without actually
26:39 feeling those feelings of intimacy. Of course, we can then tap into that as well,
26:44 and there's got to be an element of intimacy there for you to want to do that with somebody.
26:48 Very complicated. What would be a situation that some people
26:54 listening or watching might not think of as intimate in the traditional sense, but actually
27:00 can be an incredibly intimate moment? Like maybe something shared between friends as opposed to
27:05 partners? Absolutely. Yeah. And I think to some degree, this is quite intimate. We're talking
27:10 about our, I don't really know you very well. I've told you about my relationships and my
27:13 attachment styles and you had that penny drop moment with the, so it's some degree, this is
27:18 intimate. Of course, the magnitude is different to if you were having a deep conversation with
27:22 a friend, you can be intimate. Last night, there was a homeless man on the street who
27:27 had a stutter and I started talking to him and he said that he struggles on the street because
27:32 he has the stutter and my brother has a really bad stutter. So I really resonated with him. And
27:37 to some degree, that's a little bit intimate as well. So it's that human connection.
27:42 And so your second one that you've chosen is passion and lust, which you touched on earlier. So
27:46 talk to me about what happens in the brain when we feel lust and when we get that kind of like
27:53 drunken love feeling. What is that? Yes. Lots of, like a huge surge of cocktail of
28:00 neurochemicals. As I said, testosterone, estrogen, you've got dopamine, serotonin,
28:06 which can all make you feel like nothing else is more important than this person right now.
28:11 And serotonin, as I said, when there's low levels of it, it can feel like you are irritable and
28:17 obsessive, but dopamine is also responsible for focus and attention. So that's why you can
28:22 lean towards hyper-focusing on the person that you are thinking about more often. You know,
28:28 someone you've just started a relationship with maybe, and you really like them,
28:31 you know, that feeling where you can't stop thinking about them. That's those levels of
28:35 serotonin, all those levels of dopamine that are basically driving your attention to this
28:40 person and this person only. Is that healthy? To have that level of obsession and fixation
28:45 on someone? It's normal. It's normal. It's normal. Okay. And I think that it's a wonderful
28:50 thing because you don't really feel that in any other time, except for when it's maybe negative,
28:54 like you've just been told bad news. So I think to some degree it's the opposite. So enjoy it,
29:00 be realistic with it, I would say, you know, oftentimes what tends to happen is we ignore
29:05 the red flags in this moment because we want to have this confirmation bias that this person is
29:10 the one we want to be with. That's what I mean. That's why I feel like enjoy it, but also it can
29:16 slip into unhealthy if you are then ignoring red flags and kind of getting caught up in it all.
29:21 How long can that period go on for? How long should it go on for? They say around 18 months.
29:29 That's what we've seen through research. Yeah. 18 months. And that's when dopamine starts dropping
29:35 off, you know, sexual attraction starts to diminish a little bit, lower levels of estrogen
29:41 and testosterone. And that's why individuals can feel like after 18 months, maybe it's more,
29:46 maybe it's less, the sex is kind of gone. You know, I think a lot of people can resonate with
29:50 that and that shifts into a different type of love and more commitment love. I know I'm like
29:55 now jumping the gun, but that it requires vasopressin and oxytocin. Those are your love
30:02 hormones, the bonding hormone, which tell you who's part of your social group and who isn't.
30:06 The interesting thing is that there was a research experiment done at UCL here in England. And what
30:13 they did is they took individuals who had been in relationships for two years, thereabouts, two,
30:17 two and a half years. And even after that time, when they saw images of their loved ones, their
30:23 brains lit up in areas that didn't light up when they just saw photos of their friends.
30:27 And that's really lovely because even though that spark or whatever you want to call it may have
30:34 diminished, there is still something very deeply ingrained in the neurobiology of your brain.
30:40 When you look at your loved one, which will be sense of comfort, attraction still there,
30:46 but a sense of safety. And that's one thing I always want to talk about is that, that safety
30:53 can sometimes feel foreign to people because that feeling of spark has gone. They start to
31:00 associate the safety with boredom. And is it possible to have that same kind of lusty feeling
31:08 that you have in those early stages in a long-term partnership? How do you bring that back and
31:14 cultivate that and kind of nurture that? Yeah. And that's where things like forgiveness
31:20 needs to come in because oftentimes we hold on to resentment. Now, you know, something happens,
31:24 the relationship, you have an argument, there's a little bit of resentment there if you don't deal
31:28 with it. And then the next time it builds on and it builds on and it builds on. The issue with
31:33 resentment is that it's a defense mechanism from rage and anger. So what that's doing is it's
31:39 blocking the anger, but it's not dealing with the issue. And resentment is still sitting inside.
31:44 That can manifest in bitterness, revenge, starting to find reasons why you don't like somebody,
31:50 you know, all these ugly emotions. So it's really important to practice communication
31:56 and forgiveness that you can essentially, resentment is like this sort of dark
32:01 sort of spot inside you that you don't deal with and just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
32:09 Unfortunately, with that commitment love, we do have to nurture it and kind of keep that spark
32:15 alive. And that's why it's important to sort of schedule, you know, dates, holidays, and maybe
32:21 even detach a little bit temporarily, you know, go on holiday separately so that you can reignite
32:27 those feelings. Because when you're in the relationship all the time, especially if there
32:32 are feelings of resentment or bad communication, you don't get that distance that you need to
32:38 conceptualize and rationalize what is going on and maybe forgive the person.
32:42 And so moving on to your third piece, which you chose, you chose commitment.
32:46 Touching on what you said earlier about distinguishing between safety and that kind
32:53 of deep level of love and boredom. How do you differentiate between the two of those? And how
32:59 do you know if you are actually done with a relationship because it's not serving you anymore,
33:05 satisfying you anymore, or if you're actually just entering the kind of new phase of this
33:11 relationship and it's about adjusting to that? How do you distinguish between those two?
33:15 Yeah, I mean, it's obviously down to the individual. You know, I do have friends who
33:19 prefer the more exciting relationship and that's why, you know, they're always in new relationships.
33:28 So it is down to the individual. You know, when we are in that commitment relationship,
33:34 there's still that love is still there. It's just different. It's very deep. It activates
33:39 brain areas that wouldn't be activated otherwise, you know, like the study that I told you about,
33:44 which can make you feel really good. It's just paying attention. I think attention is where
33:48 it comes in because as I said, there's so many things going on in our life all the time,
33:53 information in our periphery that we can forget about what's important. So reconnecting with the
33:59 person and maybe even yourself and really analyzing whether this is something that you want or whether
34:04 this is something that is making you feel good. But generally speaking, you will know. You'll
34:09 know if someone's actually not for you and they was just masked by all the, you know, sort of
34:14 cocktails of hormones that make you feel a particular way.
34:17 And you mentioned you have friends who kind of just jump from the exciting relationship to the
34:21 exciting relationship. Is there something in us that means we're predetermined to do that and
34:26 that we're not likely to settle down? Like what kind of person is more likely to do that?
34:30 Potentially, there may be genetic subtypes that are more reward seeking like, you know,
34:36 potentially, but it's hard. It's so hard to study that, you know, and it's so multifaceted because
34:42 that could be down to an avoidant attachment style where you don't want to commit because
34:47 maybe you're afraid of someone seeing every part of you. So it's easier to just stay in
34:51 your relationships or you just genuinely do like the thrill.
34:54 Why is this kind of long term commitment love beneficial for us kind of on a neurobiological
35:03 level? And also, is it what we're wired to do originally like as human beings? Because,
35:09 you know, you hear all the time, we're not meant to be alone. We're not meant to
35:12 be solo individuals. We're meant to be part of a couple, meant to be part of a team.
35:17 Is that true on a neurological level?
35:19 The way that I explain it is that if you've got that commitment love, you can reignite
35:24 attraction, lust. If you've only got lust, it's hard to ignite the others. If you've only got
35:31 attraction, you can't fake the others. Whereas the commitment one, you've got the vasopressin,
35:37 you've got that oxytocin, you've got those deep feelings. And then the rest is just about making
35:42 sure that you're putting in the work to access that attraction, access the love, access the lust,
35:48 etc. So it's easier to attain and long term is more beneficial. You know, there are studies that
35:54 show that with individuals who are in love and committed relationships have a 50% chance of
36:00 living longer. Okay, so we are wired to be social human beings. And loneliness is one of the most
36:09 detrimental aspects of our neurobiology. It's hugely influential. But why that's important
36:16 is that the ventral striatum is also implicated in major depression. And that is why feelings of
36:22 loneliness can really manifest itself in deep feelings of depression, isolation, and then can
36:28 have a much long term problem on our systems. Because over time, we then increase a peptide
36:37 called tachykinin. And that only really comes up in abundance when we are lonely. And that is
36:44 actually responsible for aggression, social aggression. And that's why you can become bitter
36:50 and angry and you're lonely, it really is truly detrimental to be alone.
36:54 But loneliness is interesting, because I think you can be lonely in a relationship as well.
37:00 Yes, exactly. And I'm so glad you said that, because there's a neuroscientist called Emma
37:06 Sapala from Stanford, and she studies connectedness. And she actually concluded that you don't have to
37:13 have a single friend to feel connected. You can be connected to yourself, you can be connected to pets,
37:18 animals, and you can be connected to nature. Now, the research shows that we can spend around 75%
37:25 of our time alone, give or take. And that it's about the quality of connections, not the quantity.
37:32 So you could just have one really good friend. And even if they live far away, as long as you're
37:37 engaging with that person regularly, you can still, you know, mitigate those feelings of loneliness.
37:42 That is it for today. Thank you so much for joining us. You can listen to Love Lives on
37:46 all major podcast platforms, or you can watch us on independent TV,
37:51 connected devices and all major social media platforms. I'll see you next time. Bye.
37:57 [Music]