love HYPOTHESIS

Heart pounding, brow furrowed with confusion, shaky breath, tears in eyes and fists clenched to restrain yourself from reaching out and seeing if this isn’t a nightmare. You’ve been dumped. The six best months of your life crumple away in a six minute conversation. Emotions fluctuate between anger, sadness, grief, confusion and love. Your mom comforts you in a warm embrace, but whispers in your ear, “He was just a stupid boy, and you were too young to be dating anyway, so let’s go find some ice cream.” Your friends respond with similar messages of: ‘boys suck,’ ‘you’ll get over this soon’ and other tones suggesting this wasn’t a real relationship. No one understands, which makes the heartbreak worse. Now you can’t help but wonder - what is love?

“Love is a drug.” This famous aphorism, often used to metaphorically explain what love feels like, may contain some truth. When you’re in love, your brain will release dopamine, the exact same happiness hormone that is released in excess when using drugs, meaning that love is truly a drug.

“Dopamine is powerful and that’s what we feel when in love,” psychotherapist Dr. Kelly Jameson, who spoke at last year’s fall Deep Dive, said. So, what is love? According to Rutgers University professor Helen Fisher, romantic love can be broken down into three categories: lust, attraction and attachment. All these pieces together create love, and all of the drug-like feelings involved with it.

Harvard University science and health reporter Katherine Wu defines romantic love as having three categories. Each can be characterized by its own set of hormones, which stem from the brain. Lust is controlled by hormones of estrogen and testosterone. Attraction is affected by dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin. Attachment is caused by oxytocin and vasopressin.

Lust and attraction do not go hand in hand in humans. We are capable of lusting after someone without being necessarily attracted to them or feeling the need to start a relationship. This is because estrogen and testosterone are released in different areas of the body than other hormones.

Lust itself is simple; it is the natural instinct that all living species feel to find companionship and reproduce, according to Wu.

Attraction is formed based on brain pathways that control ‘reward’ behavior, which is why the first few weeks of a relationship can feel so exhilarating and consuming.

Dopamine and a similar hormone, norepinephrine, are released during attraction. High levels of these hormones can cause us to feel giddy, energetic and euphoric, and even lead to a decreased appetite and insomnia.

Serotonin levels have been shown to decrease during attraction, and low levels of serotonin are associated with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, explaining the infatuation and obsession that comes with being in love.

The predominant factor that separates a casual romantic relationship from a long-term relationship is attachment. Wu states that oxytocin, also known as the cuddle hormone, has a stronger effect on women than men, and is the same hormone released during childbirth. Vasopressin, on the other hand, is more effective in men. This hormone creates the sense of being a protector and guarding one’s partner or territory.

With so many hormones in play when it comes to love, it is no wonder that when this bond is broken, the effects can feel catastrophic. Dopamine is in charge of the reward pathways in our brain, meaning both the good and bad. According to Frontiers in Psychology, the ‘high’ you feel when you’re in love is the same sensation that addicts feel.

This causes us to become emotionally dependent on our partners, and when we lose that connection, our bodies go through a withdrawal effect.

Symptoms of a drug withdrawal include: insomnia, irritability, changing moods, depression, anxiety, aches and pains, cravings and tiredness. Sound familiar? Healthline states that these symptoms are the same that people feel when experiencing heartbreak. The cause for both of these withdrawal symptoms stem from the termination of dopamine in our brain.

“The pain sensors in one’s brain light up when in heartbreak,” Jameson said. “Exactly the same as when the body experiences an injury. Emotional pain is real pain to the human body.”

High School Relationships

High school relationships are when many teenagers start exploring attraction, crushes, sexuality, heartbreak and relationship expectations.

Out of 100 Sion students polled, 54 answered ‘yes’ to having been in a romantic relationship.

High school relationships often differ from real world relationships due to the fact that teenagers are still maturing and adapting to increased independence.

“The stakes are higher. No one expects to marry their high school sweetheart,” Jameson said. “But once people are in later years of college, there is a small but distinct

“I think heartbreak is hard because it’s not something that we’re designed to prepare for. Unless you live your life guarded completely, you’re going to be hurt if someone betrays your trust or does something to hurt you.”

Senior Caroline Dold

“I think we often share a piece of ourselves with those we love, and when they leave, they take that piece of us with them. Then we’re left feeling empty and incomplete, hoping that next time things will turn out differently.”

Junior Lilly Sutherlin

“I think heartbreak is hard because you essentially lose someone you love. You still love that person but the person that once had a special, significant place in your heart, and the person you turned to with any emotion, is no longer there for you. So when you break up, the place in your heart where they once were is empty and aching.”

Sophomore Ava Lynn

expectation or hope that they might be ‘the one.’ This causes pressure to overthink the relationship.”

Out of 100 students polled, 88 view dating in high school to be different from dating in the “real world” or after high school.

Teenagers have little to no relationship experience when they start high school. Most use high school as an opportunity to explore what they might want in a partner and in a relationship.

It’s difficult to include and manage the complex thoughts and feelings of another person, especially if it’s their first relationship.

According to information from the book “Romantic Relationships in Adolescence,” steady romantic relationships in high school typically last six months for 16-year-olds and about one year for 17 and 18-year-olds. This is because relationships outside of high school that lead to marriage often involve complex issues and conversations of more adult topics, such as life plans or finances, conversations that many in high school aren’t considering or worried about.

“Most people don’t end up in a permanent relationship with the people they date in high school, so nobody really goes into their first high school relationship looking for something serious. It’s more like an experiment and a test to find out the kind of person you are and the kind of people you mix well with,” junior Gracie Orf said. “My mom told me that dating is like ice cream. You have to try a couple flavors before you find your favorite.”

High school relationships provide good experiences and valuable lessons through building interpersonal relationships to help young adults transition into college and beyond.

“Think of high school dating as training wheels on a bike,” Jameson said. “Necessary to learn how but eventually you’re going to ditch the training wheels.”

Research from The Journal of Research on Adolescence lists that some benefits of dating in high school include increased self-esteem, emotional support, companionship, learning to communicate with your partner, development of sexuality, increased social status and better understanding of what to look for in a partner in the future.

High school dating looks different attending an all-girls school like Sion, which can have an impact on students wanting a relationship. There is no stereotypical high school dating experience that co-ed schools have.

“I think it is a lot harder to meet new guys since we are an all girls school. We only really get to know guys from work, social media or maybe guys from our middle school,” junior Grace Lockett said.

A single-sex education requires a lot more effort from students who strongly desire a romantic relationship, or even a date to Winter Formal.

“I’m straight and I’m never around the male species, so therefore I have to try harder in order to socialize, which is a lot of work that I don’t have time for and therefore, I likely won’t start dating until college,” senior Kori Franklin said.

Media And Dating

Movies and TV shows have been successfully planting the seed of a desire of entering into a romantic relationship in high school for decades, but has since been replaced by social media. Our cell phones and all forms of social media and messaging play an important role in developing relationships.

Out of 100 students polled, 85 think social media plays a role in how they form a relationship.

Whether it’s “talking” on Snapchat or Instagram DMs, there are multitude of ways to communicate with people.

“Since we are not around others face-to-face everyday, I think most of us have to look for relationships through social media, which can be a lot different than finding a relationship in person,” senior Alea Fowler said.

Yet social media has its disadvantages. Having constant access to someone’s profile on social media and seeing what they post can lead to a false perception of a person,.

“It’s so much harder to meet guys, and it’s hard to be able to judge people based on social media,” sophomore Aubrey Nichols said.

Social media makes communicating simpler. You can be in communication with your significant other 24/7. It definitely can help long distance relationships, but it warps the process of falling in love.

The biggest component of love is the third category, ‘attachment.’ This is formed simply by spending time with another person.

Yet, with cell phones, you can now spend whole days, weeks and even months ‘talking’ to someone without dating them or clarifying the relationship.

By doing this, you have unintentionally formed an attachment to a person because they have now become part of your everyday routine. So when said person abruptly ends all forms of communication, your brain doesn’t have time to process the change in its routine, causing emotions of heartbreak.

“I have heard girls say, ‘I was talking to so and so and then I saw on their Instagram story that they were hanging out with somebody else and then did all of that stuff,’” school counselor Karen Phillips said. “You can now see stuff you couldn’t see when I was growing up, and I think that’s hard.”

Mental Health And Heartbreak

Heartbreak is a normal emotion, and all the physical and emotional pain one can feel is 100% real. Heartbreak could lead to or worsen depression, anxiety and the well-being of one’s mental health in general.

Acceptance is key to moving on and recovering from a break-up. Not just acceptance of what has happened, but understanding that heartbreak is as much of a physical process as an emotional one. Take the time to process your emotions, and everything you may feel is valid.

“When you are in love, and you get hurt, it’s like a cut. It will heal, but there will always be a scar,” freshman Maira EdwardsGonzalez said.

But if things get tough, and you can’t recover on your own, know you have people on your side cheering you on.

“Heartbreak is heartbreak because it hurts, and some of it you just have to feel and go through and know that you’ll come out on the other side,” Phillips said. “Leaning on your friends, leaning on your support systems, you gotta feel it and move forward.”