You can often hear the phrase that love lives for three years. Someone explains such a cooling of feelings from a physiological point of view, while someone is convinced that simply nothing lasts forever.
The first few months, a year after meeting, for many couples is the brightest period in a relationship: the intensity of passions, emotions, euphoria. It seems that it will always be so. But now two years, three years pass … Vivid emotions are replaced by a more even attitude, and then even routine. And now the soul again demands flight, and the body demands a hormonal surge. It seems to people that love has passed and it is time to look for a new one.
Love is like a drug
According to one theory, people are genetically programmed to feel affection for each other for three years in one version and seven years in the other. Proponents of this theory say that evolutionarily, the main needs have formed in man - to survive and continue their race, and over the past several millennia they have not changed. And together it was easier for people to survive and raise offspring than alone. But there had to be something else to keep the man and woman together for some time, and nature invented falling in love. The chemical processes in the brain arising under her influence created an emotional dependence on the partner, forced to see, first of all, his advantages and not notice the shortcomings. When the child grew up and became relatively independent, the feeling between his parents began to fade away. Proponents of this theory see in procreation the only goal of rapprochement between a man and a woman, and in their attraction to each other - only a consequence of the action of hormones. Some scientists even compare the passion of love with drug addiction.
Helen Fisher, professor of anthropology at the American University of Rutgers, has researched the chemistry of love for many years. The results she obtained indicate that emotions at different stages of a relationship are accompanied by an increase in different hormones. So, falling in love is associated with estrogens and androgens, long-term relationships with serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine, and attachment is accompanied by an increase in oxytocin and vasopressin. It is oxytocin that helps the couple to refrain from impulsive actions and from breaking off relationships during periods of crisis, when the action of other hormones comes to naught. At this time, partners gain the opportunity to look at a loved one with an unclouded gaze, they finally realize that he is the same ordinary person with his own advantages and disadvantages. Emotional and physical dependence is passing, and now it depends only on the people themselves whether they decide to continue to stay together and work on their relationship or not.
All cases are individual
You can believe in the theory about hormones, especially since everything looks pretty logical. But that would be too easy. In practice, one can observe that a huge number of couples break up after a year or a few years, but there are also those who manage to maintain a happy relationship and interest in each other for a very long time. And it depends on many factors. Love does not necessarily pass in 3-5 years if: partners continue to amaze each other and remain interesting, develop together, value each other, know how to diversify their lives and get vivid emotions from various joint activities, thereby warming up passion. But in order for such a relationship to be possible, a man and a woman should initially be united not only by physical attraction, they must have something in common, so that they would be happier next to them than apart.
