Cupid's Comeuppance

Playful Cupid may have met his match in science. PT explores infatuation from neurochemicals to novelty.

By PT Staff, published on September 01, 2004 - last reviewed on July 06, 2006

SENSATIONALLY OUT OF STEP

Let's face it: We live in a fast-paced world. Gone is the serenity of Victorian idylls that still infuse our vision of romance, complete with slow-motion Sundays in the park and picnics by pristine lakes.

While the recesses of our brain reserved for romance marinate in some melange of fiction and hope, our nerve endings snap to attention against a shortage of time. Communication is often curt as couples juggle bills, office deadlines and babysitters who don't show.

This is the nature of life in the 21st century. Elegant and gracious it is not.

Against this backdrop, relationships struggle to survive once the exhilaration of courtship gives way to the routines of partnership. And couples struggle to achieve a congruence that is generally out of the reach of awareness—but that exerts a powerful centripetal pull nonetheless.

One factor that may prove unifying—or divisive—is the degree to which two nervous systems are naturally inclined to pursue novel and stimulating experiences. We are not talking about conjoint bungee-jumping, rather about the openness each person has toward change and his or her appreciation of variety and intensity of experience, as well as each one's strong positive emotional reactivity to new situations.

People normally differ in the degree to which they seek stimulation. But the most enduring couples, it turns out, are those whose natural levels of sensation seeking, whether high, low or in between, are very closely aligned.

People who strongly possess the capacity for sensation seeking are tuned in to an internal thrum and choose environments that augment internal sensations. They are usually very social, seeing others as a source of stimulation, although they answer more to their own needs than to social conventions. And the company they prefer is interesting, going on exotic.

The degree of sensation seeking is usually well-correlated between happily married partners. In studies at the University of Delaware, psychologist Marvin Zuckerman has found a large discrepancy in the sensation-seeking scores of husbands and wives undergoing marital therapy. Usually, he reports, it is the low-level sensation seeker who drags in the high-level sensation seeker for marital counseling.

The best combination is two people low in sensation seeking. "They're happy with each other and don't become habituated to each other," explains Zuckerman. "Two high [-level] sensation seekers are OK for a while, but even though their partner might be exciting, they are looking for variety everywhere." Still, the worst combination is high-low, because they just don't understand each other's interests.

A person's inherent need for sensation is not necessarily obvious in the early stages of a relationship, when love itself is a novelty and carries its own thrills. And you don't have to be a high-level sensation seeker to enjoy sex, says Zuckerman.

"It's when the sex becomes routine that problems occur. Initially there can be a great attraction between a high [-level] and a low [-level]. And only later may they realize how fundamentally different they are."

As with all behavior, there is some flexibility built into the system. Up to a point, some low-levels can learn to do things they might not ordinarily choose. And high-levels can modify their sensation needs. But even if they reach agreement on how to spend their time together, and what to do on vacation, the tempo is always going to be somewhat unrewarding for one of them. The activities that most satisfy, the kinds of people they like, their interest in socializing at all—the balance points between routine and spontaneity, between stability and variety—are bound to differ and can drive a wedge between them.

The high-sensation seekers and the lows also have different brain responses to activity. At the highest end of sensation seeking stand the risk takers of the world—people who are impelled to explore unknown territory, experiment with drugs or engage in dangerous activities. "High-sensation seekers don't need an explanation. Lows want an explanation about why people do such things," Zuckerman reports.

The highs know. They get an all-around rush, probably brought to them by a surge in the neurotransmitter dopamine. Among sensation seekers, Zuckerman has found, dopamine levels are low and very reactive to stimulation. He believes that high-sensation seekers have reduced dopamine levels because they have low levels of monoamine oxidase (MAO), a brain-active enzyme that regulates dopamine and other neurotransmitters. Serotonin levels are also low among sensation seekers. Low serotonin levels are associated with impulsive behavior. And so the combination of tendencies might be due to the balance between serotonin and dopamine in the brain.

In general, women have higher MAO levels than men, while sensation seeking tends to be greater among men than among women. Nevertheless, happy husbands and wives can be found—and by extension, ought to be looking for each other—at roughly the same spot on the sensation-seeking scale. "Most personality traits do not show what's called 'assortative mating,'" that is, they do not gravitate toward their own level in a partner. But sensation seeking does. And that, says Zuckerman, is a clear sign of its biological importance.

WHY LOVE MAKES SCENTS

Dripping candles, perfume-doused letters, red roses—so much of romance leads us by the nose. It turns out that one of the most subtle but important forces steering love is the body's own unadulterated scent. If a couple's odor-prints don't match, they won't make sense together.