“Being in love is one of the finest states that does not come from a jar or a syringe”

Fire away.  What all goes on in your body when you’re in love?
“A lot. Human beings are made up of emotions, cognitions, and behaviors. We are basically a collection of molecules that we borrow from nature, wander around in, and eventually have to give back.”
 
“That’s special enough, but being in love also completely changes your whole being. The basic joy gets higher and you can only think of the other person. Your cognitions cloud, the so-called ‘rose-colored glasses’ go on. You constantly try to figure out what the object of your infatuation thinks about you.”
 
“And that whole change has only one purpose: to conceive offspring. The Chinese have a proverb which says something like: If you put a grain of rice in a basket for every time you get into bed with each other in the infatuation phase, and you take one out every day in the days after that phase, you still have more than enough grains of rice until the end of your life. That’s how important the infatuation phase is to the reproductive drive. That infatuation system is ancient and you also see it in animals, by the way.”
 
Oh, so infatuation is not something exclusively human?
“Certainly not. Think of the peacock and its big feathery tail, which inflames the female peacock considerably. The difference is that most animals only mate in the spring. Consider ducks, who normally sit quietly in the water, but in the spring suddenly run into residential areas behind a female duck. The male ducks lose track of everything around them. But that is universal between humans and animals: losing yourself completely in the other is essentially what falling in love is about.”

How necessary is falling in love?
“Falling in love is not a prerequisite for a good romantic marriage. After all, infatuation always passes. My daughter once told me that she had found her soulmate. I immediately thought: Let’s see if she still says this next year. Irritation and annoyance are not nouns that occur in the infatuation phase. They come later. If those irritations turn into tensions, that’s a bad prognosis. My wife can describe with relish the series “Married at First Sight,” where two total strangers say yes to each other. You can see that irritation strikes as early as the wedding night. That’s a telling sign.”
 
“Infatuation stimulates the reward system, and all kinds of fun substances are released. That stops at some point when the rose-colored glasses come off. Then another substance takes its place with a much weaker pleasure stimulus: the cuddle hormone oxytocin, which no longer gives the feeling of pure pleasure but feelings of security, satisfaction, and relaxation. Also necessary. Mother Nature devised this so that parents do not separate after the infatuation phase, but stay together to perform their parental duties.”
 
You said in an earlier interview that the characteristics that create arousal are culturally determined.
“Oh yes, definitely. Fat women used to be very desirable, in the days of the painter Peter Paul Rubens. Now it is precisely very thin women who attract attention. TikTok is full of images that generate interest and sexual arousal and what is found attractive. Some people put green spray into their hair, I see tattooed pieces of skin[BA1]  that make other people very happy and metal in places where the dear Lord had not thought of them. Culture and environment are enormously important and determine what is found attractive.”

Poet Ingmar Heytze described falling in love as “a lot of fuss, bad for your back. It doesn’t exactly makes you a better person,” he wrote. Do you agree with him?

“Oh no, definitely not. On the contrary, I would say to everyone: Enjoy it because it is finite. “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” I’m married now but previously divorced, and it’s a sobering observation that the people who first give you the very best sometimes then give you the very worst, if you’re unlucky.”
 
“So of course there are negative sides to being in love. You begin to neglect your duties. Everyone has had a friend who is in love: Well, you never see them again. I once received a message from a student saying he had not been able to study for a test because he was so terribly in love, asking whether the exam could perhaps be given at another time. This actually happened.”
 
“People in love like to feel that way. Some like it so much that they are always looking for it, the so-called love junkies. It’s one of the finest states you can have as a human being that doesn’t come from a jar or a syringe.”
 
Only one in 20 people can hold a crush. That sounds very romantic. How do they manage it?
“We don’t know. Most people who are in a long-term relationship recognize that after 20 years it all becomes jaded and predictable. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a bad thing that every Wednesday looks the same, so to speak.”
 
“Many people say that when their partner gets dressed up or made up nicely, the same old feeling from before comes back at the sight of them. Something of that excitement, of, wow, that’s the man or woman I fell in love with, is a universal perception. So there are also people who can hold that. In them, the same areas on the MRI scanner light up as in an acute infatuation. The rest of humanity - unfortunately - has to put a little more effort into that.”