Rita Watson/ Please see Oxytocin, the love hormone of touch and trust on Page C3 of Monday, February 04, 2013 issue of Providence Journal
February is often called the month of love. Although poets and authors have tried to describe love, in the world of neuroscience, researchers have found that the naturally occurring hormone oxytocin and love are intimately related. Often called the love drug, oxytocin plays a role in bonding, maternal instinct, enduring friendship, marriage, and orgasms. Despite Internet claims of Love Portion No. 9 to enhance attraction through chemical oxytocin and pheromones, Loretta Graziano Breuning says that oxytocin is a mingling of trust and physical touch, as well as love-making. A professor emerita at California State University, Breuning is a docent at the Oakland Zoo, where she gives tours on mammalian social behavior. In her newest book, “Meet Your Happy Chemicals,” and in a recent interview, she explained the interconnection between love and trust.
“Trust is the authentic feeling you have in the presence of a person whom your body senses is safe. That is a good feeling that stimulates oxytocin. When trust is not authentic, your body might give you a message to be careful around that person.
“The expression, ‘got your back’ is overused but it rightly describes a person with whom you can relax your guard because they treat you well or help protect you from a third party,” she said. In describing physical touch and trust, Breuning offered the images of animals grooming each other. She said, “With chimpanzees you will see them grooming one another and there is reciprocal trust. If they don’t feel trust, or if a rival or intruder comes too close, that chimpanzee risks having fingers or toes bitten off — even noses or ears.”
Sometimes, however, grooming is a matter of trust and protection in which the animal appears to be thinking, “If I groom a bigger, stronger monkey, even though it may not be reciprocal, if I’m attacked by a lion, the bigger monkey will protect me.”
Does the protection aspect sound familiar? In relationships, the good girl-bad boy syndrome results in many broken hearts. Women are often attracted to the bad boys because the primal instinct is very strong. They feel that bad boys protect them.
Breuning says, “A guy with confidence seems powerful. He has that self-important look that women find attractive.”
Another way that oxytocin is stimulated is through love-making, but herein lies a bit of deception. “The oxytocin released through orgasm creates a lot of trust, but only for a short period of time,” she said. “In nature most animals are bachelors, so in the act of love-making they generate an opportunity for trust.
“As with animals, humans enjoy the reward that comes from feeling good after sex. In nature — and sometimes in the world of humans — after receiving their ‘feel good dose’ the males go back to being themselves,” she said, adding, “The female view is very different with this oxytocin release.”
Here is what happens with women. After making love a woman might mistake the oxytocin release for feelings that tell her, “This is your perfect partner.” As Breuning notes, “Despite those initial feelings, it does not necessarily mean that the person is trustworthy. The perception you have at the moment is an illusion you create about the person that may or may not fit what happens next.”
We learned from recent research at the University of Bonn in Germany that oxytocin is so powerful that even a synthetic nasal squirt can enhance trust and might even keep philanderers from straying into the arms of another woman. Therein may be the illusion.
Copyright 2013 Rita Watson/ All Rights Reserved
Rita Watson, MPH, ( www.ritawatson.com ) is a regular contributor to The Providence Journal and a relationship columnist for our “All About You” section.