We’ve all been there. You're sitting across from someone, maybe at a sticky bar table or on a quiet couch, and you feel that thing. That rush. Your brain tells you it's the real deal. But honestly, most of the time, you don't know what love is—at least not in the way your biology or the local Hallmark store wants you to think.
It's a heavy realization.
We grow up marinated in a specific flavor of romantic storytelling that suggests love is a feeling that hits you like a truck. It’s supposed to be spontaneous, overwhelming, and slightly painful. But if you talk to neurobiologists like Dr. Helen Fisher or psychologists who spend their lives studying attachment theory, you’ll find that what we call "love" is often just a cocktail of dopamine and habit. We confuse intensity for intimacy. We mistake the anxiety of "will they text back?" for the soul-shaking depths of true connection.
Actually, it's often the opposite.
The Dopamine Trap: Why Your Brain Lies to You
When you’re in those early stages of a relationship, your brain is basically on drugs. Specifically, it's flooded with dopamine and norepinephrine. It’s the same reward system that lights up when someone wins the lottery or uses cocaine. This is what researchers call "limerence" or passionate love.
It feels amazing. It also makes you kind of a mess.
In this state, you aren't seeing a person. You're seeing a projection. You’re seeing a version of someone that fits your own needs and unhealed wounds. This is why so many people say "you don't know what love is" during a breakup; they realized the person they were "loving" didn't actually exist outside of their own imagination.
The Three Stages of Attraction
According to Dr. Fisher’s research at Rutgers University, there are three distinct stages of romantic evolution.
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- Lust: Driven by testosterone and estrogen. It’s raw, physical, and honestly, pretty straightforward.
- Attraction: This is the "obsessive" phase. This is where you lose sleep. Your serotonin levels actually drop, which is why you start obsessing—similar to the brain chemistry seen in people with OCD.
- Attachment: This is where the heavy hitters like oxytocin and vasopressin come in. This is the "cuddle hormone" phase.
If you’re stuck in stage two, you’re just chasing a high. You’re a junkie for the feeling of being wanted. That’s not love. That’s just biology doing its job to make sure the species continues.
Attachment Theory and the Great Deception
Most of us carry around "blueprints" for how we relate to others. These are formed before you could even talk. If your caregivers were inconsistent, you might grow up with an anxious attachment style. To you, love feels like "chasing." It feels like a constant state of mild panic.
If love doesn’t feel like a roller coaster, you think it’s boring. You think the spark is missing.
Actually, you’re just healthy.
But because our culture prizes the "chase," we end up in these toxic loops. We think the drama is proof of the depth of the feeling. It’s not. It’s just nervous system dysregulation. Real love, the kind that lasts forty years and survives hospital stays and boring Tuesdays, is actually quite quiet. It’s predictable. It’s safe. For someone addicted to the "spark," safety feels like a cage.
The Difference Between Sacrifice and Self-Erasure
There’s this toxic idea that love means "giving everything."
Total nonsense.
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People think they’re being romantic by losing themselves in another person. They stop seeing friends. They stop their hobbies. They become a mirror. But if you don't have a "self" to bring to the table, what is the other person even loving? You’re just a ghost.
Expert psychotherapist Esther Perel often talks about the tension between the need for security and the need for freedom. To truly love someone, there has to be enough space between you for a bridge to exist. If you’re merged, there’s no bridge. There’s just a blob.
Why We Get It Wrong So Often
Social media has ruined our internal compass for connection. We see the "highlight reels"—the sunset proposals, the coordinated outfits, the public declarations of "my person." It creates a performance-based metric for affection.
We start asking, "Does my relationship look like love?" instead of "Does it feel like respect?"
Common Misconceptions
- Love conquers all. It doesn't. Love won't pay the rent, it won't fix a personality disorder, and it won't make two people with fundamentally different values compatible.
- You'll just "know." Sometimes you do. More often, you build it. Love is a verb, not a noun. It’s a decision you make every morning when you see their messy hair and hear their annoying chewing habits.
- Jealousy is a sign of passion. No, jealousy is a sign of insecurity and a lack of trust. It’s a red flag, not a badge of honor.
How to Actually Know What Love Is
If you want to move past the superficial stuff, you have to look at the "boring" metrics.
Are you better when you’re with them? Not just "happier," because happiness is fleeting. Do you feel more like yourself? Can you disagree without the world ending?
In a study by the Gottman Institute, which has spent decades watching couples interact, the biggest predictor of a relationship's success wasn't how often they had sex or how much they had in common. It was "bids for connection." If one person points at a bird out the window, does the other person look? That’s it. That’s the "secret." It’s the mundane acknowledgment of each other's existence.
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It’s not poetic. It’s not cinematic. But it’s real.
Actionable Steps for Redefining Your Connections
If you've realized your definition of love might be a bit skewed, you don't need to panic. You just need to recalibrate.
Audit your "spark" meter. Next time you feel an overwhelming, immediate "spark" with someone, ask yourself if it's actually compatibility or if they just feel "familiarly difficult." Sometimes the spark is just your trauma recognizing their trauma.
Practice radical autonomy. Spend time away from your partner. Maintain your own interests. The strongest relationships are composed of two whole people, not two halves trying to make a whole.
Learn the "Bids." Start noticing when your partner (or friends, or family) makes a small attempt to get your attention. Turn toward them. Even if it's about something boring like a YouTube video or a weird cloud. These micro-interactions build the "emotional bank account" that carries you through the hard times.
Define your non-negotiables outside of feelings. Emotions change like the weather. Values don't. Sit down and write what you actually need: reliability, humor, financial responsibility, shared goals. If those aren't there, the "feeling" of love won't be enough to sustain the structure.
Stop waiting for the lightning bolt. Start looking for the person who makes the world feel a little bit quieter and a little bit easier to navigate. That’s where the truth is. That's how you finally figure out what love actually looks like in the real world.