STAGE I – Without this stage, love cannot progress at all. And it involves something that never fails to raise eyebrows – lust. It’s only natural, because when you meet someone and like them, you obviously don’t know them and are hence drawn by lust. This stage of love is driven by the sex hormones – testosterone and oestrogen – in both males and females. These are the chemicals that give us the initial rush in love.

STAGE II – The second stage of love is attraction. This is the time when all you do is think of your partner and are unable to concentrate on anything else. But lo and behold, these feelings are also the work of those neurotransmitters (hormones secreted by neurons i.e. brain cells) that make one totally smitten by their partner. The following are the neurotransmitters at work in this particular stage:

Dopamine – Helen Fisher conducted tests on love struck couples and found that all of them recorded high levels of the neurotransmitter ‘dopamine’. This chemical stimulates ‘desire and reward’ by triggering an intense rush of pleasure. Studies reveal that it has the same effect on the brain as taking cocaine!

Serotonin – The other important chemical involved in this stage is serotonin. This is the reason why when in love, your lover keeps popping up in your mind and there’s nothing you can do about it!

That apart, Dr Donatella Marazziti, a psychiatrist at the University of Pisa, advertised for 20 couples who'd been madly in love for less than six months. She wanted to conduct a study to find a correlation between OCD or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and couples who had just fallen in love, to find out if that was the reason why one always thinks about their lover during this stage. Dr. Marazziti discovered that serotonin levels of new lovers were equivalent to the low serotonin levels of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder patients. Now that’s a first!

STAGE III – The last stage is that of attachment. This is the stage that helps couples maintain a long-term relationship. This is also the stage that keeps them together long enough to have offspring. According to scientists, there are two major hormones involved in this feeling of attachment – oxytocin and vasopressin.

Oxytocin – Commonly known as the cuddle hormone, it is a powerful hormone released by men and women during orgasm. This hormone cements attachment in couples, and this is the reason why they cuddle up with one another after they have had sex. This theory also proposes that the more sex a couple has, the deeper their bond becomes.

Oxytocin also helps to build a strong bond between a mother and her baby, and is released during childbirth. This hormone is also responsible for a mum’s breasts automatically releasing milk at the mere sight or sound of her young baby.

Vasopressin – It is another important hormone in the long-term commitment stage, and is released after sex. Its importance in long-term relationships was discovered when scientists observed the prairie vole, who, like human beings, indulge more in sex than required for the purposes of reproduction and form pairs and maintain long relationships. When male prairie voles were given a drug that suppressed the effect of vasopressin, their bond with their partner reduced drastically, and they lost their commitment to their partners to such an extent, that they even refused to protect their partners from other males interested in them.

Now that we know this, maybe we should consider stocking up some vasopressin in our closets and give our guys a good dose of it!