How Do You Know If You Are In Love?

Love is a collection of behaviors and emotions characterized by emotional intimacy, commitment, passion, caring, and emotional investment. It usually involves emotional connection, caring, loyalty, affection, trust, and attraction. Love can vary significantly in intensity and can shift rapidly over time.

In humans, romantic love is the emotional response to attachment. Scientific studies in humans have found that people are attracted to others and develop romantic love when they experience the attachment of a caring relationship. The brain regions related to attachment have several types of reward systems which include the ventral tegmental area (VTA), the nucleus accumbens, the amygdala, and the prefrontal cortex. However, the most common brain regions activated during this process include the nucleus accumbens, the amygdala, and the prefrontal cortex.

While love may involve many different feelings, the most common emotions they produce are anger, passion, familiarity, trust, sadness, and happiness. Individuals are naturally attracted to others with similar attitudes, behaviors, characteristics, talents, or personality. However, when two individuals begin to develop romantic attachments they often move beyond the realm of attraction and start to develop feelings of intimacy. This development typically involves feelings of closeness and security, which are the result of their unique attachment to a partner or friend. Emotional intimacy is not the same as sexual intimacy. It is very different from sexual intimacy because it involves an emotional bond that goes beyond the physical attraction a person feels for another individual.

Romance is defined as intense, unrestrained feelings of love and affection for someone or a group of people. Romantic relationships are based on feelings rather than lust, and they last longer than relationships that are based on purely physical attraction. Most people experience intense feelings of love during childhood. As adults, these feelings may be related to feelings of friendship, loyalty, or even guilt. Although everyone has different experiences with their relationships, love is a universal experience for all people.

Love provides an emotional release by allowing individuals to feel emotionally secure and fulfilled. As adults, we all know that feeling happy, content, secure, and well-informed is a powerful motivator for all of our actions and thoughts. When individuals enter into a romantic relationship they are able to feel these same feelings for the other individual. The emotional value of love includes but is not limited to, the feelings of safety, security, intimacy, and well-being.

Love may involve feelings of anger, envy, resentment, jealousy, anxiety, stress, pain, sadness, pain, confusion, fear, worry, or sadness. The level of these negative emotions can also increase as individuals get closer to expressing their romantic love for another person. Those who are in long term relationships are particularly susceptible to the build up of negative emotions as their intimate relationships become deeper. Regardless, of how a couple handles the early part of their relationship, once it advances to romantic love, these feelings are often difficult to overcome.