The Science of Romantic Love: Stress Hormones Explained

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]We know that when people start to enter this period of intense romantic attraction, the HPA axis becomes very active and you start to produce large number of hormones that we also see during stress situations.

[00:00:12]And so this explains in some ways many of the effects we see during romantic love. So for instance, I mentioned earlier this idea of hypertension, hypervigilance. You only got eyes for one person. If you think about it, that's also the process that happens if you're sound asleep in the night and there's a sudden bang, you're immediately bolt upright in bed. You're hyperfocused, right? What was that noise? Was it a cat? Was it a burglar?

[00:00:35]Because your entire body is tuned to this one event. And so in some senses, the response we have to a romantic partner is like the response we have to an acute stressor.

[00:00:46]And similarly to that, we therefore also see that during early phase romantic love, we get a big increase in many of the hallmarks of stress.