How the love hormone Oxytocin works

[mktsgm]

TL;DR Summary

Oxytocin is called the love hormone. Does it decide with whom one falls in love?

Oxytocin is called the love hormone. It regulates and influences one's emotion such that the person (with oxytocin) may fall in love.

But there are some unanswered questions.

1. Does the partner with whom one is falling in love, also should have oxytocin secreted?
2. If there are many people in a group that have oxytocin secreted in their bodies, what exactly decides who loves who? The point is, does oxytocin residing in one person, should have an exact and opposite counterpart with the one, with whom one is going to fall in love? Are their oxytocins are related, somehow, spookily?
3. How exactly oxytocin influences one falling over in love, physiologically?

 

[phinds]

You are SERIOUSLY attributing way too much influence to one hormone.

 

[newjerseyrunner]

Yeah, it's just a chemical that controls the way your brain thinks. It's related to feelings of love, but it's just a warm happy feeling, similar to dopamine and serotonin and all the other chemicals that make up the soup that you call "love." The affect on the brain is pretty much the same as heroine.

There is nothing spooky about it, it's just the way we evolved. At some point in the past, a genetic mutation caused the creation of these chemicals, which happened to increase out bonds between each other. This was a benefit, so those who had this gene survived and those who didn't died out.

Humans aren't even the only creatures to use this chemical to strengthen bonds. Dogs brains also release oxytocin when they're around those they love.

 

[jim mcnamara]

https://americanpregnancy.org/labor-and-birth/inducing-labor/Oxytocin (IV) is widely used to induce labor, for example. It also has other functions. I agree that the statements about love hormone in the original post are bit over the top. And could be misleading.

 

[Laroxe]

Oxytocin became a fashionable hormone when it became labelled as the love hormone, but you might have noticed that already, attention in it is falling. The main functions of oxytocin are physiological, it prepares the body for reproduction and childbirth, there are two specific conditions that stimulate its production. The first is in the initial stages of a relationship where affectionate physical contact increases production, in both sexes its effects on smooth muscle facilitate and support sex and fertility. The second most important stimulus condition is during pregnancy and soon after childbirth, it prepares the woman's body for childbirth.
It does seem to influence the way in which people relate to one another, the link with sex seems to increase feelings of affection and it seems important in the bonding of a baby to its parents. In this sense it does seem to reinforce feelings of affection and a similar if weaker effect occurs in group bonding. Unfortunately, this may, depending on the circumstances, increase the sense of threat from people outside of their specific group. It may make people much more aware of their own in-groups and out-groups to which they have no allegiance, in times of uncertainty this can increase the risk of conflict and overt prejudice.
As others have already said this is only one potential influence on a Brain that sits in a complex neurochemical bath, none of these neuro-chemicals can really be considered in isolation, this isn't how they work. Human sex and reproduction is a complex affair with a huge number of potential influences physiological, personal and cultural which are highly interdependent, there are no generalisable single causes.

 

[mktsgm]

Thanks for your all replies.