Is Love Just a Chemical Reaction We Overromanticize?

We fight for love, write about it, and even die for it, but what if it’s just biology?

Fez – Love makes people do crazy things. It makes them cross oceans, write poems, and wait for years. It makes them believe in fate, soulmates, and “the one.” But what if love is nothing more than a bunch of chemicals firing in our brains? What if it’s just biology tricking us into staying together?

Science says love is a mix of dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin. Dopamine gives us the rush, the excitement, the butterflies. Oxytocin creates a bond and a feeling of safety. Serotonin keeps us obsessed, thinking about that person all the time.

It’s a perfect chemical storm, designed to make us attach to someone and, ultimately, to reproduce. In other words, love is nature’s way of keeping the human race alive.

But if that’s true, why does love feel so deep? So painful? So real? Why does heartbreak feel like physical pain if it’s just chemicals? Why do people spend their lives searching for it, writing about it, dying for it?

Maybe we overromanticize love because we need to. Maybe if we saw it for what it really is, a biological trick, we wouldn’t fight for it so hard. Maybe we need the stories, the songs, the grand gestures, because without them, love would feel… ordinary.

But here’s the thing: even if love is just chemicals, does that make it any less real? Water is just hydrogen and oxygen. Music is just vibrations in the air. Does knowing that make them any less powerful? We don’t love because it makes sense. We love because it makes life worth it.

Think about it, love is the one thing that makes people take risks. It makes them put someone else first. It makes them hope, even when everything says they shouldn’t. And that? That’s not just chemicals. That’s something bigger.

Yes, science explains love. But it doesn’t explain why one person’s touch can feel different from everyone else’s. It doesn’t explain why we wait for certain people and not others. It doesn’t explain why love, even when it’s messy and painful, is still the one thing we all want.

So maybe love is a chemical reaction. Maybe it’s just neurons and hormones doing their job. But that doesn’t make it any less magical. Because at the end of the day, we don’t just want to survive, we want to feel. And love, no matter what it is, makes us feel everything. And isn’t that the whole point?