Love and testosterone, do they coincide or not?

Men are from Mars and women are from Venus, except when they are in love; during this intense period, men and women resemble each other more than at any other time, especially when Valentine’s Day arrives.

We already know that falling in love is a little like going crazy. Donatella Marazziti of the University of Pisa in Italy demonstrated in 1999 that levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which has a calming effect, fall below normal in people who say they are in love, as well as in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder; both groups spend too much time obsessing over something or someone (New Scientist print edition, July 31, 1999).

Another researcher, Marazziti, analyzed the hormonal changes that occur in people who are in love. Her team measured the blood levels of several key hormones in 12 men and 12 women who said they had fallen in love within the previous six months. The researchers compared these hormone levels with those of another 24 volunteers who were single or in stable long-term relationships.

The first finding was that both men and women in love have considerably higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol, indicating that courtship can be somewhat stressful. “But the most intriguing finding concerns testosterone”…. are you curious on Valentine’s Day?

Does love make a difference or not?

Men who were in love had lower levels of testosterone, the male sex hormone associated with aggression and sexual desire, than the other men in the study. Women in love, by contrast, had higher testosterone levels than their counterparts, according to this study published in the journal “Psychoneuroendocrinology.”

Men had somehow become more like women, and women had become more like men

It is as if nature wanted to eliminate what may be different in men and women, because surviving and mating are more important at this stage. But is falling in love really responsible for these changes? Well, Andreas Bartels of University College London points out that the hormonal changes could be the result of increased sexual activity. There is a high degree of affection, but there is also undoubtedly extremely high sexual activity, according to his conclusions.

However, scientist Marazziti thinks this explanation is unlikely because, in her study, those in the control group had sex with the same frequency as those in the “in love” group, and this did not change during periods such as Valentine’s Day.

Is love blind? They say so

Moreover, other studies suggest that testosterone levels in men increase as sexual activity increases (New Scientist print edition, November 27, 1999).

If the hormonal changes were simply the result of sex, testosterone levels would be expected to increase in men rather than decrease.

Converging testosterone levels may not be the only thing that helps a man and a woman overcome their differences; other research has shown that falling in love truly makes us blind to our partner’s flaws. Researcher Bartels’s team discovered that when people look at their lovers, the neural circuits normally associated with the critical social evaluation of other people are suppressed (Neuroimage, vol. 21, p. 1155).

But the state of happiness that is romantic love does not last, according to their findings. When Marazziti tested the same people again one or two years later, when they said they were no longer madly in love, their hormone levels had returned to normal—and this may not be surprising, right when we arrive at Valentine’s Day.

Source

• News Scientist Research: Hormones converge for couples in love