Have you ever wondered, “What does love feel like?” Perhaps you’ve already experienced some of its telltale signs: you can’t get someone out of your head, you daydream about them when you should be working, or you imagine a future together. These dizzying thoughts are just a few clues that you may be in love.
Scientists have actually pinpointed what it means to “fall in love.” Research shows that the brain of someone in love looks distinctly different from that of someone experiencing mere lust or a long-term committed relationship.
What Does Love Feel Like? 11 Unusual Signs
Studies led by Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University and a leading expert on the biology of love, reveal that the “in-love” phase is a unique and well-defined period in the brain.
1. Love Feels Like: Believing It’s Special
When you’re in love, you begin to believe your partner is one of a kind. This belief comes with the inability to feel romantic passion for anyone else. According to a 2017 study in Archives of Sexual Behavior, this monogamous focus is due to heightened levels of dopamine—a chemical involved in attention and focus—in your brain.
2. Love Feels Like: Focusing Only on the Positives
People who are deeply in love tend to concentrate on their partner’s positive qualities while ignoring their flaws. Research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that relationships are often more successful when partners idealize each other.
Lovers also focus on seemingly trivial things that remind them of their partner and cherish small memories. A 2013 study in Motivation and Emotion suggests that love makes it harder for people to concentrate on anything else.
3. Love Feels Like: Emotional Instability
Falling in love often leads to emotional and physiological instability. People experience mood swings between elation, euphoria, increased energy, insomnia, appetite loss, trembling, rapid heartbeat, and accelerated breathing, along with anxiety, panic, and despair when faced with even minor setbacks in the relationship.
At its extreme, these mood swings mirror the behavior of drug addicts, as noted in a 2017 article in Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology. In fact, when people in love are shown images of their beloved, the same brain regions activate as those triggered by drug addiction. Fisher even describes love as a kind of addiction: losing it can result in withdrawal symptoms and relapse.
4. Love Feels Like: Attraction Through Hardship
Fisher’s research suggests that overcoming challenges with your partner can intensify romantic attraction. Dopamine may play a role here too, as studies show that delayed rewards make dopamine-producing neurons in the brain more active.
5. Love Feels Like: The “They’re Always on Your Mind” Effect
Lovers report spending over 85% of their waking hours thinking about their “object of affection.” This obsessive behavior may stem from decreased levels of central serotonin in the brain, a condition also linked to obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
6. Love Feels Like: Emotional Dependency
Emotional dependence is a common sign of love, manifesting as possessiveness, jealousy, fear of rejection, and separation anxiety. Fisher and colleagues have studied the brains of individuals who viewed photos of someone who rejected their love, finding patterns consistent with emotional dependency.
7. Love Feels Like: A Survival Instinct
Signs of love include a longing for emotional union with the beloved, seeking ways to connect, and dreaming of a shared future. According to a Harvard University article, as serotonin levels return to normal, the body releases oxytocin—a hormone linked to forming deeper bonds.
Neuroscientist Lucy Brown of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine explains that the desire to be with another person resembles cravings for water or other necessities vital for survival.
“Functional MRI scans reveal that the primitive neural systems behind drive, reward recognition, and euphoria light up when people look at their lover’s face,” Brown told Live Science. “Romantic love is part of our reproductive strategy. It helps us form pair bonds essential for survival.”
8. Love Feels Like: Heightened Empathy
Lovers often feel a strong sense of empathy for their partners, sharing their pain and being willing to make sacrifices. Fisher’s studies have shown increased activity in the mirror neurons of those in long-term loving relationships—neurons tied to empathy.
9. Love Feels Like: Rearranged Priorities
Love can lead people to rearrange their daily priorities to align with their partner’s. While some strive to become more like their beloved, Fisher’s 2013 study presented at the Being Human conference found that people are also drawn to their opposites.
10. Love Feels Like: Emotions Over Sex
While sexual union is important, the desire for emotional closeness takes precedence. Fisher’s 2002 study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found that 64% of lovers disagreed with the statement, “Sex is the most important part of my relationship.”
11. Love Feels Like: Powerless Obsession
In her 1979 book Love and Limerence, late psychologist Dorothy Tennov surveyed 400 people about their experiences with romantic love. Many expressed feelings of helplessness, describing their obsession as irrational and involuntary.
Fisher recounts one participant, a businessman in his early 50s, reflecting on his office romance:
“I’m starting to think this attraction to Emily is a biological, instinctive action that isn’t under voluntary or logical control. It controls me. I’m desperately trying to argue with it, limit its influence, channel it (into sex, for instance), deny it, enjoy it—and, yes, damn it, make her respond! Despite knowing that Emily and I have no real chance of building a life together, the thought of my obsession persists.”
Source: 12 scientifically proven signs of love | Live Science
