These Are The Signs You’re In Love, Even If You Are Not Aware

Sometimes what we feel is clear as day to us, but others we either refuse to see the signs leading us to a certain conclusion, or we are so confused we can’t distinguish one feeling from another. However, scientists have now determined the signs you’re in love.

These are the signs you're in love
How well can you read the signs you’re in love?

Scientists Pinpoint The Telltale Signs You’re In Love

According to studies led by a biological anthropologist, Dr Helen Fisher of Rutgers University, the brain of a person who’s in love looks different to the brain of someone who’s not, even from someone who’s in a long-term relationship. The researchers claim that being in love is a stage like no other, and one that has specific characteristics.

Sign #1: You only have eyes for her. When we’re in love, our mind tends to exclude all other people of the opposite gender in the belief it’s found The One and needs to look no further. Dr Fisher’s team attributes this “voluntary blindness” to elevated levels of dopamine – the chemical regulating focus in our brains.

Sign #2: She is always on your mind. As Elvis Presley very aptly put it, when you’re in love all your mind seems capable of thinking is your girl. In fact, it has been reported that those in love spend around 85% of their time thinking of their object of desire. Science has an answer for this obsessive behavior, which is called “Intrusive thinking”, too. Dr.Fischer and her team put it down to decreased levels of central serotonin in the brain, a condition largely associated with obsessive behavior.

Sign #3: You become dependent on her, like a drug addict. If you wish you could spend every waking moment with her and nothing and no one else can fill that void, this is a clear sign you’re in love. The scientists conducted an experiment where they showed participants photos of a rejected loved one, or someone they were still in love with after being rejected by them, and found through an fMRI scan that several brain areas, including areas like the cingulate gyrus that play a significant role in cocaine cravings, were activated.  Simply put, being in love is like being on drugs, and the moments you spend away from your loved one feel like a century.

Sign #4: You keep thinking of ways to get closer. Another one of the signs of being in love is constantly looking for ways to get intimate with your other half. In fact, neuroscientist, Dr Lucy Brown, of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, likens the need to be with your loved one to the vital needs for water and food. “Functional MRI studies show that primitive neural systems underlying drive, reward recognition, and euphoria are active in almost everyone when they look at the face of their beloved and think loving thoughts. This puts romantic love in the company of survival systems, like those that make us hungry or thirsty”, Dr Brown told Live Science a few years ago.

If you are experiencing these clear signs you’re in love, consider yourself lucky, appreciate this exciting feeling and embrace its intensity, as it will pass soon. Scientists have actually determined the impermanence of being in love as another of its main attributes.

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