Explanation of why romantic love outside of a relationship feels worse than inside. Excerpt from Adam Bode:
[T]hroughout a period in which an individual is experiencing romantic love, the attraction, attachment, and obsessive thinking systems are active. All three systems appear to have been co-opted in romantic love. Dopamine-oxytocin interactions serve to instigate and promote attraction, attachment, and pair bonding (i.e., pair bond formation). In circumstances of reciprocated romantic love and well-functioning relationships (i.e., when regular interaction, proximity, physical touch, and verbal exchange are common), mechanisms of romantic love ramp up activity of the attachment system. In circumstances where such stimuli are not present (i.e., in some cases of unrequited love), this process is still occurring (possibly facilitated by obsessive thoughts), but does not progress to the formation of attachment, full activation of the attachment system, and transition to pair bond maintenance. This explains why, in circumstances of fast-arising romantic love (or in any type of romantic love), the adaptive nature of mate choice may give way to some of the maladaptive features of infatuation (i.e., physical instability, loss of appetite, targeted social anxiety, clammy hands, physical tension, sleep difficulties, shyness; see Langeslag S. et al., 2012). [...] These features of infatuation may be more common when the dopaminergic activity of mate choice mechanisms (i.e., attraction) are active without substantial calmative effect of the oxytocinergic attachment system (see Marazziti et al., 2021).
Also:
- Infatuation is stronger outside of a relationship than inside (Langeslag et al.).
- Changes to the oxytocin system might be why obsessive/addictive aspects of early-stage romantic love become inhibited inside a relationship (Zou et al.).
- Romantic love isn't an emotion, it's a motivation or drive which produces positive or negative emotions depending on the situation (Langeslag).
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