Love can bring such elation and excitement to life. Love and romantic relationships affect not just our emotional well-being but also our physical well-being.

How do happy and unhappily maintained relationships affect us?

References

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Acevedo, B. P., Poulin, M. J., Collins, N. L., & Brown, L. L. (2020). After the Honeymoon: Neural and Genetic Correlates of Romantic Love in Newlywed Marriages. Frontiers in psychology, 11, 634. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00634

Ackerman, D. (2012). The brain on love. New York Times.

Eisenberger, N. I. (2011). Why rejection hurts: What social neuroscience has revealed about the brain’s response to social rejection. Brain, 3(1), 10-1093.

Fisher, H. E., Xu, X., Aron, A., & Brown, L. L. (2016). Intense, Passionate, Romantic Love: A Natural Addiction? How the Fields That Investigate Romance and Substance Abuse Can Inform Each Other. Frontiers in psychology, 7, 687. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00687

Grisel, J. E. (2019). Never Enough: the Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Johnson, S. M., Moser, M. B., Beckes, L., Smith, A., Dalgleish, T., Halchuk, R., & Coan, J. A. (2013). Soothing the threatened brain: Leveraging contact comfort with emotionally focused therapy. PLoS One, 8(11), e79314.

Kapusta, N. D., Jankowski, K. S., Wolf, V., Chéron-Le Guludec, M., Lopatka, M., Hammerer, C., Schnieder, A., Kealy, D., Ogrodniczuk, J. S., & Blüml, V. (2018). Measuring the Capacity to Love: Development of the CTL-Inventory. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 1115. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01115

Lebow, J. L., & Snyder, D. K. (Eds.). (2022). Clinical handbook of couple therapy, Sixth edition (6th ed.). Guilford Publications.