Photo Credit Mubariz Mehdizadeh
2. We Often Mistake Anxiety for Chemistry
That intense “spark” you feel in the beginning? A lot of the time, it’s actually your nervous system getting activated—not necessarily deep compatibility. When things are uncertain, your brain starts working overtime. Unpredictability boosts dopamine, and that hot-and-cold dynamic can make someone feel even more compelling because your mind starts treating them like a reward you’re trying to “figure out.”
Research by biological anthropologist Helen Fisher shows that romantic attraction lights up dopamine-driven reward circuits in the brain—the same systems tied to motivation and addictive patterns. So it makes sense that early attraction can feel a little obsessive or consuming. That’s also why:
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But there’s an important distinction here: anxiety creates intensity, not stability. Calm doesn’t spike dopamine the same way unpredictability does—but calm is what actually makes relationships last.