by Mayim Bialik
Let’s Get Even Closer: The Science of Romance
I’m sure you’ve had a crush on someone or know someone who has, right? I remember having crushes when I was a kid and teenager, and I still have crushes—it’s a part of being human, no matter how old you are. With a crush, there’s an excitement you feel in your stomach and a nervousness you have when you’re around the person you are crushing on. Crushes are a way that our brains and bodies start getting us used to the idea of liking someone enough to think we might be interested in getting closer to them. Crushes can start because we think someone is cute or funny or just really super cool, and crushes are the earliest stages of romantic intimacy, which is what happens if a crush develops into dating and all of the stuff that comes along with dating.
A lot of what you experience when you are feeling love toward someone has a basis in the brain and the body. The brain releases chemicals to our bodies when we have these kinds of very powerful feelings. If you’re experiencing them for the first time, they can also be kind of scary!
When you feel romantically interested in someone, you might feel nervous around them. These are some of the things that might happen when you’re nervous:
Sweating, especially the palms of the hands and underarms
Dry mouth
A flushed face and lips that may feel kind of warm and may look pink or red (basically blushing!)
An increased heart rate, sometimes to the point that it feels like your heart is going to beat right out of your chest
Having difficulty finding words . . . stuttering, stammering and sometimes sort of babbling
Feeling disoriented, as if you don’t know what is going on or who else is around besides the person you are focusing on
All of these things are normal responses to being attracted to someone. The nervous system is sending information to the body to indicate that there is excitement going on. When that happens, adrenaline (a hormone) is sent out from glands above your kidneys to increase heart rate and blood flow—that’s responsible for the blushing and rapidly beating heart and also the sweating. The “out of it” feeling is caused by a sort of overload that the brain experiences when there is a lot of exciting input happening at once. If we’re focusing on someone’s beautiful clear blue eyes or their adorable freckles, our brain sometimes has a hard time also managing to multiply fractions or remember which kind of ancient Roman columns have floral decoration on top (Corinthian!). It can feel really disorienting to have our brain so taken over by feelings, but that’s just the way it is—and it’s how Mother Nature designed it.
When we really like someone or find someone really attractive, our brains produce a group of special hormones that make our bodies feel good. It’s those feel-good hormones that make us want to spend more time with that person so that we can experience more of that feeling good more of the time. This is the basis for wanting to be around someone when we like them!
Serotonin is the hormone that is responsible for making us feel super good, and the feeling of “walking on air” when we are with someone we like is due in part to this hormone. If you’ve ever felt totally crazy about someone, you know what I’m talking about. Oxytocin is the hormone that makes your stomach feel like it’s turning upside down when you see someone you like. Oxytocin is also responsible for acting on parts of the body that are involved in the biological process of romantic relationships. So feeling a sensation of “heat” in your chest and in your genital region is often a part of being attracted to someone. It doesn’t always happen, but it’s pretty normal if it does.
Dopamine is a powerful hormone that is released when people have a strong need to be with someone and they get the opportunity to do that. It’s known as a “reward” hormone, because it’s the body’s way of rewarding us with good feelings for doing something we have been working hard to do. This hormone is special because it has an addictive quality; we want to feel a rush of dopamine over and over again once we’ve gotten a taste of it. This hormone is what makes us seek out our crush over and over again!
THAT’S WHAT HE SAID . . .
“I remember my first crush when I was around 7. I remember she was so pretty—she looked similar to the wives of sports heroes I looked up to. That was attractive to me at the time. Just getting to touch this girl’s shoulder when we were in line at school was so significant to me. There was another boy who also had a crush on her and he would also try to get close to her, and it made me feel so competitive. I wanted to be the one to touch her shoulder!”
Magnetic Feelings: Attraction
So we know we can feel close to people, and we know those feelings can cause changes in our bodies. But how do we know who we will find attractive? How can we prepare for that? Or can we?!
Have you ever thought about what makes someone attractive? What do you find attractive?
When I was in middle school, most girls I knew liked guys who were athletic and tall and muscle-y (or as muscle-y as 14-year-old guys can be . . .). Blond hair for guys was “in,” and a lot of girls were interested in tan guys who took good care of their hair and clothes, and wore cologne. The first time I ever had serious romantic feelings for someone was in the 8th grade. He was a scrawny, pale-skinned 13-year-old with half-shaved messy black hair, who possibly didn’t even look in the mirror every day and didn’t ever wear cologne. His name was Mischa, and he liked punk rock and wore a leather jacket. I composed poems for him, picked flowers for him and sat 15 feet away from him in the hallways at recess and lunch for years—even through high school—hoping he’d notice me. He never really did.
Even though Mischa looked and acted so differently from what most other girls I knew thought was attractive, it was very clear to me why I thought the sun rose and set on his green eyes and wacky shaggy hair: he was very smart, he was really funny, and he had a way of doing his own thing and not caring if other people didn’t like it, which I thought was spectacular.
I tell this story about my affection for Mischa to illustrate an important point: attraction is highly variable. Sure, there are certain things that are universally considered attractive, but there are also a lot of variations on attractiveness depending on what country you live in, what year it is, what religious tradition and cultural background you’re from and what images you see on TV and in the movies. Just like everyone has different favorite colors or favorite foods, we also have different things we find interesting or attractive in other people.
In addition, what’s considered attractive in America is not necessarily what’s considered attractive in Africa or China or South America or in Polynesia. In many parts of the world, men who are super hairy are considered attractive, while in the United States, more and more men are spending a lot of time and energy waxing, sculpting and shaving. And in some countries, men who are short are seen as just as attractive as tall men, whereas in the United States, tall men are generally ranked as more attractive partners, as are wealthy men. This stuff is all variable—and I know plenty of not-super-tall, not-super-rich men who are wonderful people, whom other people find attractive and who lead happy and fulfilled lives!
Here’s the thing: there are no rules about what attractive is. Some people find brains far more important than beauty, and sometimes we will find something attractive that, a year from now, we can’t even imagine feeling that way about at all! The notion of what makes someone attractive is not simply how they make our genitals feel; it’s about a lot more than that. Sometimes someone with a smart brain and a wicked sense of humor stirs something in our soul that makes us feel like we want to be around that person all of the time, no matter what they look like. And sometimes someone will be so physically attractive that they will make us feel drawn to them, but when we find out that they are mean or cruel or have no manners, they will all of a sudden seem really unattractive. Thank goodness there are no rules about any of this, because even t
hough no one else understood my affection for Mischa, it was a special time in my life to experience those things. I’m glad I didn’t let other people’s opinions govern my behavior.
Dating
Now that we understand a little bit better what attraction is and what it does to our bodies and brains, let’s talk about what happens after we’re attracted to someone. In most cultures, the next step after attraction is dating, which means different things to different people and also varies a lot depending on where you live or where your family is from.
Dating generally means spending concentrated time with someone we are attracted to, but for most of human history, romantic love or being attracted to someone was not a requirement for dating. I know that must sound strange, but parents used to set their kids up with a mate for life based on arrangements between the families. Sometimes you were set up to marry someone simply because your families’ wheat fields were next to one another or because one father was another father’s best friend. In many of these cases, marriages were basically business agreements between two fathers. Women were essentially treated as property, and they usually didn’t get a vote as to whom they would marry. There are many communities in the world where arranged marriage is still the way couples get together. In addition, for much of human history, men were allowed to have more than one wife, and there are places where this still happens, such as parts of the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Australia.
Most of us meet prospective romantic partners at school, through community activities, through extracurriculars and through hanging out with friends. I spent a lot of time in my middle school and high school years in malls, arcades and friends’ living rooms chatting with all of the boys I had crushes on. But dating has changed a lot since I was in school. Because of smartphones and social media, dating now involves texting and following, liking and commenting on the different things people post online. You can learn a lot about someone from online profiles in ways I never could when I was dating. There are some great things about that, but there are some challenges, too.
Even though your parents must seem like dinosaurs to you, they were your age around 30 years ago, and considering that Homo sapiens have been around for about 200,000 years, 30 years isn’t that long ago! But the thing that makes talking about dating so hard is how much it changes all of the time—there have been so many changes just in the years since your parents and I were your age. Here’s a rundown of what dating used to be like and what it’s like now, with a special emphasis on making the most of the good changes while learning to navigate the potentially problematic ones.
NICE TO MEET YOU
THEN: It used to be that you dated people from your social circles: people you knew from school or your family’s religious events or from sports teams or clubs you belonged to. Chances are, if you met someone, your parents already knew them, and if your parents didn’t, someone in your family or circle of friends did.
NOW: There are so many ways to meet people! Besides meeting people at school and at extracurricular activities, you can meet online. Social-media platforms and comments sections are virtual hangout spaces, an entire world of online communities where people now connect, and are a place to meet.
PRECAUTIONARY POINTERS: Meeting people online can be a neat way to expand the circle of people you know and can date, but keep in mind that the way people present themselves online is not always the way they actually are, and in some cases, people blatantly lie about who they are, how old they are and what they’re all about. Sometimes people make things up about themselves so they can get you interested in them. Because they only show us what they want us to see, the way people share about themselves online can make us feel like we know them, but in reality, we don’t. That’s just the nature of the online beast!
HOW TO BE SMART ABOUT IT: If you meet someone online, the best way to really get to know if that someone is potentially a good date, or even just a possible new friend, is to meet them in person in a public place—but only with your parents’ knowledge and consent. You should never go out with someone you met online without an adult knowing where you are. Anyone who asks you to keep a secret about meeting up should for sure be avoided. That’s what we call in my house a “prickly” person; prickly people ask you to keep secrets from those close to you, and they are not safe people to hang out with.
COURTSHIP: WHAT’S THAT?!
THEN: Courtship is the old-fashioned word for the way two people who are dating get to know each other. The super old-school version of this sounds like a TV show from the 1950s: a young man comes to a girl’s house with flowers and sits and chats with her dad while she finishes getting ready. The idea is that the guy is supposed to impress the girl and her family, and their dating is an elaborate way for him to show he has good intentions and wants to spend more time with her, eventually landing him the chance to ask her father for permission to marry her.
While the idea that a guy needs a girl’s dad’s approval to date her and marry her sounds so out of date and kind of absurd, what is kind of sweet about the notion of courtship is this: it takes time to get to know someone. It takes time to see what it’s like to be together if you’re interested in a more serious relationship. It takes time to build up trust in order to let someone see more of you and to eventually engage in an intimate or romantic relationship that at some point may involve hand holding, kissing and—yes, eventually many people choose to be sexually intimate! And this kind of courtship shows that it is important for your family to know the person you’re dating and for them to spend time together at some point.
NOW: This is an area of dating that is completely different in almost every way compared to how it used to be! While there are still places in the world where a guy comes to the door to pick a girl up for a date and chats with her dad before he can take her out, a lot of courtship does not look anything like that anymore. Courtship now sometimes means rarely actually talking; texting and sending each other pictures may be a large part of the courtship process. Many people think that dating doesn’t need to be a stepping-stone to a serious relationship but should just be for fun.
PRECAUTIONARY POINTERS: What’s potentially problematic about the loss of a notion of courtship is that we basically think we can and should trust people before we even know much about them. People may say things we want to hear, but we have no idea if they plan to follow through with promises, since they haven’t necessarily had to put time and effort in to show that they are reliable or faithful or honest. It can be confusing and hard to know who to trust sometimes.
Also, an aspect of the courtship process that never existed before now is sending someone you like “sexy” pictures of yourself or asking others to send “sexy” pictures for you to see. I totally get why this is commonplace, especially since we see so many celebrities posting pictures of themselves on their social media accounts in lingerie, skimpy bathing suits and sometimes even naked! It’s no wonder it’s become something expected or assumed to be part of getting to know someone and flirting.
The problem with sending sexy pictures or sexting with someone (talking about sexy stuff in texts) is that the pictures live forever on someone’s phone, and pictures sent to one particular person might end up being shared with a bunch of people—we’ve all shared or known someone who shared a picture they probably were not supposed to share with us. You can do your part as a brave, bold and brilliant person by not engaging in this kind of photo sharing as much as possible. Avoid the pressure to turn sexy pictures of girls and women into an activity. Putting that kind of energy into ogling women sets you—and them—up to see relationships as a display of sexuality. I know it seems like I am overreacting, but I hope you can start to consider that this is not just paranoia; it’s based on years and years of experience and reading a ton of research on the impact of these kinds of interactions.
HOW TO BE SMART ABOUT IT: The more time you spend with someone in person—and not just texting�
��the better you can see if you like actually being with them. Having a friendship or relationship that involves sharing pictures and flirting is fun, but you want to make sure that there is a good amount of time spent in person, seeing how you feel when the two of you are together. In addition, some of that old-fashioned courtship stuff is nice; it can show that you think the other person is worthy of your time and respect. That’s a very important aspect of dating for both people involved. The kinds of relationships you want to have will be with people you like spending time with and people you can trust with your feelings; it’s best to see who wants to put that effort in early on!
LET’S TALK ABOUT S-E-X
In Chapter One, we talked about the mechanics of the body and how sperm is produced in the testes all of the time. We also talked about how girls’ and women’s bodies produce an egg every month or so that travels from their ovaries through the fallopian tubes and waits in the uterus to potentially develop into a baby.
How the act of sex actually happens is that the penis fills up with blood because of a state of excitement called “arousal,” which we discussed earlier in this chapter; this is an erection. When a female is aroused, her nipples sometimes stand up a little bit, and blood flows into her vagina, particularly into the clitoris, which is the most sensitive part of a woman’s genital region. Sex is when an erect penis moves back and forth inside of the vagina. After a while, the penis releases sperm in an act called ejaculation. Ejaculation produces millions of sperm (they are very tiny, so they take up about one teaspoon), and they actually exist in a fluid called semen, which allows the sperm to survive. Ejaculation releases semen (and therefore sperm) into the highest part of the vagina near where the vagina meets the uterus at a location called the cervix. The goal of sperm is to find an egg to fertilize. Each sperm has a head that contains all of its genetic information, and it has a tail that moves back and forth really fast and propels it through the woman’s vagina in search of an egg.