The Science of When to Get Married

Part of why “thinking without thinking” is dangerous when it comes to romantic decision-making is because there are potent brain chemicals at work that can overwhelm you, the most intoxicating of which is dopamine, a neurotransmitter brain cells use to communicate with each another. Dopamine does a number on our heartstrings—it’s a feel-good chemical. David Goldman, a neuroscientist with the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, aptly described dopamine in a Psychology Today article as a chemical that “brightens and highlights our connection with the world around us,” which makes it fun but also a little like being drunk. And because it can produce the “infatuation” sensation smitten lovers experience, being on a dopamine drip is not the ideal time to make a decision about the long-term potential of a relationship. The potency—and danger—of dopamine is that it can obfuscate meaning and make us see significant trends where none exist.

The more reliable brain chemical for romantic decision-making is oxytocin, which increases trust and is part of the circuitry of attachment. Women get a surge of it when they give birth. A study found that humans who are administered oxytocin looked toward the eyes of people in photographs more often and for longer than subjects given a placebo. It’s the chemical of devotion.

If dopamine is the compound that breeds butterflies in our stomachs and causes people to impulsively leave their spouses, oxytocin elicits a feeling of intense compatibility, the kind that makes you think, “I could sit next to this person for the next thirty years.” In matters of the heart, oxytocin provides more clarity in decision-making because it allows you to see your crush with more depth, and with an eye toward the future rather than just the current, fleeting moment.

With practice, could we learn to utilize this knowledge of our own brains to be certain – or at least close to certain – about who and when we choose to marry?

Dr. Robert Burton, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and the author of On Being Certain: Believing You are Right Even When You’re Not, says certainty is an illusion that arises out of involuntary brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independent of reason.

Romantic decisions, like any decisions, says Burton, are based on a wide variety of factors, including sexual attraction and financial security—preferences that are rooted in a subjective iconography and idiosyncrasies, and which amount to little more than a random pastiche of past experiences and pattern recognition. In other words, it’s not that you can never find The One, it’s just that you can’t be sure it’s them, even if you find them. Burton’s advice is, “Start acclimating to uncertainty as a way of life.”

For instance, hours after they had done the math and tied the knot, Burton and his wife were driving to their honeymoon destination when he turned to her and said, “What have I done?” Reflecting on that moment, Burton believes it’s a universal reaction. “I think that’s what every person says after they get married.” Dr. and Mrs. Burton just celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary.

If you buy into Burton’s model that your thoughts originate out of both prior experience and biology, romantic decision-making takes on a much different hue. “You start to live in a place where you evaluate your thoughts more carefully because we know the brain creates feelings and ideas that aren’t really logical and are based upon personality and biology.”

This is what Lehrer calls meta-cognition—the process of thinking about thinking—and it’s his touchstone for decision-making. “Since the brain is a category buster—it doesn’t think in either/or terms—and could have a black belt in rationalizing, it needs this extra step of cognition to know what parts to silence and what parts to listen to.”

Meta-cognition is also a response to the reality that it’s hard work to understand your emotions. Is it love you are feeling? Or do you just want to stave off loneliness? The brain can get distorted, a point vividly illustrated in a study where a group of undergraduate males were asked to walk across a long, narrow suspension bridge made of wooden boards and wire cables in North Vancouver. A young woman approached the men and asked if he would mind completing a survey, and after he did so the woman gave the men her number and offered to explain the survey in detail if he called. The hitch was that she approached some of the men as they were crossing and some after they had made it to the other side of the treacherous bridge. The men she approached as they were crossing were much likely to call her in the coming days. Why? “The scientists attributed it to the misidentification of those bodily symptoms of fear,” says Lehrer. “They thought they were aroused and attracted, but they were only scared.”

Hannah Seligson is a journalist and the author of New Girl on the Job: Advice from the Trenches. Her second book, A Little Bit Married, will be published by De Capo this spring. Her website is www.hannahseligson.com