The Brain in Love: 12 Lessons to Enhance Your Love Life by Daniel G. Amen Page A

difference may have to do with vasopressin, which has been found in male voles (little rodents) to make the difference between stay-at-home dads and one-night-stand artists, for example. The voles with a certain brain distribution of vasopressin were monogamous, while others with a different pattern were not.
    High levels of oxytocin and vasopressin may interfere with dopamine and norepinephrine pathways, which may explain why attachment grows as mad, passionate love fades. The antidote may be doing novel things together to goose the two love neurotransmitters. Elevated testosterone can suppress oxytocin and vasopressin. There is good evidence that men with higher testosterone levels tend to marry less often, be more abusive in their marriage, and divorce more regularly. The reverse can also be true. If a man holds a baby, levels of testosterone go down, perhaps in part because of oxytocin and vasopressin going up.
    The trust, bonding, and persistence created by oxytocin and vasopressin are critical for a partnership to succeed. However, the release of these hormones is not enough by itself to keep two people compatible sexually and romantically. It is at this time when it is critical for partners to communicate their desires and needs to each other both in the bedroom and outside of the bedroom, to listen attentively and be mutually supportive of the bond that has formed from attraction to commitment. If you haven’t seen it yet, see the movie March of the Penguins for one of the best demonstrations of true commitment.
    Detachment Chemicals: Why It Hurts
(Serotonin and Endorphins)            
    When Shawna and Nick broke up, he was a mess. He couldn’t stop thinking about her, hearing her voice in his head, feeling her touch on his body, and smelling her scent in his clothes. After being together for five years, everything reminded him of Shawna, from songs to pictures to movies to waking up and going to bed. She had been wrapped up in most of the thoughts of his day. A part of him was okay with her going away, in fact, even glad. They could never get on the same page in the relationship, and they had broken up several times before. Nick had the sense that she would not always be there for him and that she would go away if things got tough. Yet despite the deep ambivalence in the relationship, he was still a mess when she left. He couldn’t sleep, he felt constantly anxious and unbalanced, and he even had panic attacks when the longing for Shawna overwhelmed him.
    What happens in the brain when you lose someone you love? Why do we hurt, long, even obsess about the other person? When we love someone, they come to live in the emotional or limbic centers of our brains. He or she actually occupies nerve-cell pathways and physically lives in the neurons and synapses of the brain. When we lose someone, either through death, divorce, moves, or breakups, our brain starts to get confused and disoriented. Since the person lives in the neuronal connections, we expect to see her, hear her, feel her, and touch her. When we cannot hold her or talk to her as we usually do, the brain centers where she lives becomes inflamed looking for her. Overactivity in the limbic brain has been associated with depression and low serotonin levels, which is why we have trouble sleeping, feel obsessed, lose our appetites, want to isolate ourselves, and lose the joy we have about life. A deficit in endorphins, which modulate pain and pleasure pathways in the brain, also occurs, which may be responsible for the physical pain we feel during a breakup.
    Getting a Loved One out of Your Head and the Fishhooks out of Your Heart
    In Dean Koontz’s novel Velocity , the killer uses fishhooks to torture Billy Wilens, a good-natured bartender who finds himself in a random storm of murder and mayhem. The killer, a twisted psychopathic performer, renders Billy unconscious and plants three fishhooks deep in his forehead. The fishhooks were extremely