5. Love Is Just Chemicals
It might feel as though you and your soulmate connect on a higher plane, but being all loved up basically your brain's way of drugging you into passing on your genes. "Endocrinology" is not a word you'd expect to find on a Valentine's card but, as the study of hormones, it's pretty instrumental in our understanding of love and relationships. One of the chemicals we're concerned with when it comes to love is, you've probably heard of it, oxytocin. Oxytocin is released during labour, sex, maternal bonding, nipple stimulation and even social bonding. It generates a feeling of trust and contentment and awakens the urge to "mother" in women. It essentially increases your trust levels when you find a person willing to mate with you, and rewards you for it by making you feel all nice, safe and lovey-dovey in the hope that you'll do it again. There is a lot of chemical trickery that goes on around love and sex.
Studies have shown that your disgust response is dampened during sex (because, objectively, it's pretty gross), as well as some other guest stars: vasopressin, adrenaline, serotonin and dopamine - all there to ensure that you spawn another generation of your genes. Quite the cocktail.