The Second And Third Falling

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A friend of mine has fallen madly in love and we became curious: What comes after? What does the second and third falling look like?

To answer this question, I went looking in philosophy and cognitive science. They both arrive at the same place: The first falling is an (deeply euphoric) opening act.

For Plato, his love started at eros and continuously fall up a ladder of deeper love. Aristotle distinguished love into pleasure, utility, and character, with the last one taking the longest to develop and being the true love.

Similarly, the first love to Kierkegaard is aesthetic intoxication, with the next love happening through repeated choosing. A continous leap of faith. De Beauvoir and Sartre were adamant about not possessing each other, aiming instead at constant rediscovery.

But how correct are the philosophers? Is the initial fall indeed the start of a life of tumbling for another person? A door to real love?

In neuroscience, we find that the first falling is similar to taking drugs. Dopamine and norepinephrine flood the brain, creating intense focus and euphoria directed at one person1. Serotonin levels drop to OCD levels, generating compulsive tendencies. In this state, the reward circuits activated are the same as taking cocaine.

Now, you might think this stops when you enter a long-term relationship, but no! With 21-year couples who report being deeply in love, their dopamine reward systems showed the same activation2. The spark survives two decades of constant re-ignition.

This seems to show that the “repeated leap of faith” model is correct. That if you’re lucky to have found the one, you can have an eternal honeymoon phase.

However, it seems like the second falling is still fundamentally different.

Long-term love activates opioid and serotonin that are absent in early love. Oxytocin and vasopressin also become dominant, the same neurochemicals that drive parent-child bonding. The second love becomes more soothing than agitating, and creates a more self-sustaining depth of love3.

What should I tell my friend?

Despite the depth of his current emotions, there is indeed a second and third falling, often even an nth loving, that he will discover. These will both show in a continuous tumbling for his partner and through a feeling that will grow deeper over time.

He’s just walked through a door and on the other side is Eudaimonia.

  1. Men often fall in love faster than women (30% before a relationship starts with 20% for women). Men also activate visual areas of the brain more often while women activate memory areas, hypothetically because men create the spark and women are the sustained flame, deciding to commit through evaluating actions that lead to a long-term relationship. Women also experience love with greater intensity, spending 54% vs. 44% of their waking hours thinking about their partner with commitments patterns differing, too. ↩

  2. You can also hack the secretion of this drug through deep eye contact. An example is to spend 5-10 minutes per night just looking into each other’s eyes and it’ll be like taking some of the best drugs you can imagine. ↩

  3. Importantly, the characteristics of love don’t simply emerge from the neurochemicals in the partners, but from the social structures they’ve grown up around. More gender-equal countries showed lower intensity of love, less obsessive thinking, and potentially less commitment. It is also for this reason that I am supportive of high divorce rates, because it indicates gender equality and an ability to make a decision on your relationship without material dependency on your partner. ↩

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