Love Explained by Science: Dr. Fred Nour

Acclaimed Egyptian neuroscientist Dr. Fred Nour explains love through a scientific lens. Get ready to have your questions and worries about love answered. You're probably madly in love with your partner, can't seem to get enough of them, you're wondering how long that feeling of euphoria could last. Sorry to disappoint you, just about two years and things will never be the same again. "It takes two years, 2 1/2 years, for the romantic phase to end, depending on how many brain chemicals you have," says Dr Fred Nour, a California neurologist and author of the recently released True Love: How to Use Science to Understand Love. "Romance is caused by at least four chemicals, and you eventually either run out of the chemicals or the brain stops responding to them. That part, we haven't determined for sure.

"If you understand something, you achieve it," he says. "If you don't, you try things that don't give results. You're not able to achieve because you don't understand it. 

"If you understand love, you're less disappointed."

 "If we understand falling out of love, that would reduce the number of divorces. Everybody falls out of love." Yeah, that's right. Romance novels and movies mess up our understanding and expectation of love. Love can last a lifetime but romance won't. "Romance is just a phase in love," says Dr. Nour. "It's the most exciting phase, but it's only a phase. The main problem is that people believe that. They believe romance is fun and exciting and will last for a lifetime. If not, they blame their mate. They divorce and keep repeating the cycle without knowing that true love will follow later on."

Nonetheless, it doesn't follow for everyone. "It depends on the genes of the person," he says. "How much you love somebody does not depend on that somebody; it depends on you — your genes and brain chemicals and how much you have of them." According to Dr. Nour, some people have less of an ability to love than others, and some "have no ability to love at all. It's all genetic."

Dr Nour has broken down love into four phases: 1. choosing a mate, 2. falling in love, 3. falling out of love and 4. true love.

Stage one - Choosing a mate 

This is mostly an unconscious process, and you are guided by instinct. The journey of choosing a mate begins in childhood, when we gather bits of the kind of person our "dream man" or "dream woman" should be. On a biological plane, you're attracted to a person because your body somehow senses that a mixture of both pools of genes would produce healthy offspring. We unconsciously choose mates with the best matching genes for improved offspring.

Stage Two - Romance and falling in love

The movies and romance novels are all about this phase. "This is the phase that everybody talks about, all the movies, all the romance novels, because it’s fun, exciting and thrilling," Nour says Dr. Nour. "In this phase, we don’t see reality — love is blind. We see people as we want them to be, not as they are." Chemically speaking, this stage involves the monoamines, a.k.a. the "reward chemicals," he writes. Monoamines include dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine and serotonin. This "heady rush of feeling makes our pulse race and our minds refuse to allow us to fall asleep even though it's way past bedtime." This could last for two to three years.

Stage three - Falling out of love

This is the most essential phase of all four, as it is the bridge that links us to true, lasting love. The following excerpt from a Q&A session between Dr. Nour and Balanced Babe sums stage three. "Falling in love is caused by the excess effects of monoamine chemicals on the brain. This chemical effect returns to its normal level after about two years. We lose all the thrill of falling in love. Without these chemicals we feel that we lost the loving feeling. This happens to everybody and with every love. It has its benefits for us but we fail to see that, at the time. We all fall in True love after this phase of falling out of love." This stage typically lasts a year. Don't be in a rush to break up once you hit stage three. “Nature made (this phase) for a reason: when you lose the chemicals that give you the euphoria, you start to see reality,” says Dr. Nour. “This is a re-evaluation phase. If you feel that, overall, you made a pretty good choice… hang in there.”

Stage Four - True Love

This is a much more enjoyable stage of love, which can last for a lifetime. Nonapeptides (mainly oxytocin and vasopressin) are released in this stage. Naonapeptides foster true love by increasing feelings of bonding, monogamy and idealization of one’s partner. Laughter and intimacy are two ways to promote release of those chemicals, Dr. Nour tells his readers.