People in love should call each other "my hormone" or maybe "my adrenal gland". The traditional affectionate way of addressing the loved one as "you are my heart" is completely irrelevant. According to the latest discoveries the basis of such a tender feeling as love is solely chemical and biological processes.

So what is love? And how is it explained that it always comes unexpectedly and everything that until recently has been so important - career, money, reputation, responsibilities - becomes so meaningless? All we need is love, and nothing except for love…

From the standpoint of logic this feeling is beyond analysis - we love because we... love. And that's it! Philosophy explains this feeling differently. Aristotle attributed love with one of the original energies of the human body. Plato perceived love as an "unearthly flower", as a mystery, touching which does not yet mean comprehending it.

Contemporary scientists explain the origin of this unearthly phenomenon as the effect of biologically active substances and hormones, which have the properties of natural opiates (constituents or derivatives of constituents found in opium) - drugs in a sense. In part they originate directly in the cerebral cortex of the brain as well as in sex glands and suppress the parts of the brain responsible for fear, negative emotions, criticism, and stimulate the pleasure center. So what about the heart, you might ask? Does it have anything to do with love? The answer is the very chemical one. People in love are actively producing the brain hormone called adrenalin. Once it gets into the blood stream and to the sinus node of the heart, it accelerates the heartbeat and creates a special rhythm of being "in love". The symbol of people in love - the red heart - has nothing in common with the person's heart. It owes its origins to the couple of swans swimming towards each other against the background of the bright red sunset.

The fact that love is an absolutely not controllable phenomenon is known to everyone who has ever been in love or is in love right now. There are many examples when a man adored by beautiful and talented women gets married to a woman that does not stand out in any of her qualities. At the same time the man concentrates only on the subject of his passion without noticing anyone around him. It turns out that even in such a critical process as choosing a partner our feelings are controlled by the biologically active substances called pheromones, which are responsible for sexual attraction and arousal. This theory has been confirmed by an experiment including 840 women, carried out by the scientists at the University of Birmingham. The scientists sprayed one out of ten chairs with the extract containing male hormones and offered each woman to enter the room one after another and sit in the spot that they liked. As a result 810 women chose the chair with pheromones and they could not even explain their choice. And it is understandable since unlike the perfumes, pheromones have no actual smell and affect the person's subconsciousness. By the way, the summer short-lived intrigues and stormy romances at the resorts are related to nothing more than the influence of these chemical combinations. If you are sweating excessively, pheromones start to be actively produced and drive men and women crazy, forcing them to forget everything and plunge into love with full force.

Love can be different for everyone. Some grow wings, others experience real torments. We experience the most intense stress from a romantic love. A glance, a touch, the sound of the voice, all of these set in motion the hormone of desire called dopamine and activate the pleasure center in our brain. This leads to a whole variety of feelings ranging from uneasiness and fear to absolute happiness. Scientists assert that romantic love usually lasts anywhere from 18 months to 3 years. It can last even longer if there is a real obstacle in the relationship, for example one of the partners is married or the love birds live in separate cities. Any obstacles to intimacy extend the romantic love and make it more intense. According to scientists, it is the romantic feeling that is the hardest to let go of.

When the pleasure gets delayed, the brain continues to activate the dopamine-based system thus intensifying the feeling of love. If the brain does not get what it wants, pain and suffering take place, or in other words unrequited love. The person in love is beside themselves with anxiety and can easily reach a state of a nervous breakdown. Some people are capable of overcoming this condition over a relatively short period of time, others suffer for years, decades, and some even until the end of their life. All of this takes place under the effect of chemical combination called phenylethylamine. It lulls the rational thinking center's vigilance and activates the part responsible for feeling dependable on the object of desire. The situation resembles the game of roulette: first the person is overtaken with euphoria, then the willpower is paralyzed, and the more the person loses, the stronger the dependency becomes. The same thing happens with love: the harder the road to a beloved one's heart, the stronger the dependency is.

Mutual love lacks the passion described above because the feelings are controlled by the hormones called endorphins. The people in love feel good together, and all they want is to stay along with each other. And as far as feeling absolutely happy and the surges of tenderness toward each other, they happen when there is another hormone that joins the endorphins called oxytocin - the hormone of desire and procreation. Oxytocin is released into the blood stream by hypophysis (the small gland at the base of the brain) and activates the procreation instinct at the expense of provoking the craving for physical touch and contact.

By the way, most biochemists have come to a conclusion that we can truly fall in love with only one person. Thus God has programmed an ideal partner for each one of us. Our task is to find him or her and remain together. But this is already not up to chemistry and biology.