A Long Distance Connection

When we’re falling in love with someone, the first thing we notice is how good it feels. It’s because the brain releases feel-good neurotransmitters that boost our mood. When we find love, it is like biological fireworks. Our heart rate is elevated, our levels of the so-called love hormone oxytoc...

If you don’t feel that you have a meaningful relationship, it’s as if you are socially thirsty, and your brain sends a signal to tell you that you need to help your social body. Some of the same alarms activated when people are thirsty are activated when people feel socially disconnected from oth...

Love doesn’t have to be with a living person. If you are really in love with life, with your passion, with your hobby, it can also be a buffer against loneliness.

Love is a biological necessity, just like water or exercise or food. My research has convinced me that a healthy love life — which could include your beloved partner, your closest circle of friends, your family and even your favorite sports team — is as essential to a person’s well-being as a goo...

When we start feeling a deep sense of calm and contentment with our partner, brain areas are activated that trigger not just basic emotions, but also more complex cognitive functions. This can lead to several positive results, like pain suppression, more compassion, better memory and greater crea...

Our levels of serotonin, a key hormone in regulating appetite and intrusive anxious thoughts, fall down. So when we are in love we might find ourselves eating irregularly or fixating on small details, worrying about sending “the perfect text,” “saying the perfect words” and then replaying the tex...

No one feels guilty when they are thirsty, right? So no one should feel guilty when they are lonely.

There is a paradox in loneliness; we want to approach others, but the lonely mind has been lonely for so long that it detects more threats — inaccurately, of course — and makes you want to w...