Science responds to a form of love that can affect us differently, love for a partner or a pet, are feelings that finally have an explanation. The first pets we had in our life surely had a huge impact on us. That animal that grew up with us and there comes a time when we have to say goodbye to it, it is something that happens more constantly than we imagine. Their life expectancy is limited, so we have to say goodbye to them with immense pain.
It is such a type of love that pets send us that it will be difficult for us to say goodbye to a being that has become another member of our family. Without a doubt, we will be faced with a type of pet that will end up being guilty of feelings that can be especially complicated. The time will come to start thinking about a question that science answers, namely whether we love our partner or our pet more, so we must start preparing ourselves to live changes that can be fundamental.
Scientific answers
Experts have proposed a series of answers who ended up being the ones who made the difference in every way. There are several forms of love that must be taken into account and that perhaps until now we had not been able to classify. That moment will have arrived to bet clearly on a series of feelings that will accompany us throughout our lives.
We will remember that first pet, whose departure broke our hearts, but we will also remain attentive to that first love that almost drove us to madness. Love for a person leads us to stop receiving that love for a pet and to throw ourselves directly towards a being who can end up being what makes an important difference.
Without a doubt, the time has come to start thinking about everything that awaits us and a new way of loving. They say that loves are never forgotten and that it is impossible to compare them. But perhaps science has found an answer that could interest us.
Finally, we will know if we love the animal or the partner more, although it is a strange question, because, logically, people cannot compare themselves to pets. The feeling for a person and the contribution they make has nothing to do with other elements.
We will know if you love the animal or the partner more.
THE the couple is a person we will not forgetwith her we will have interacted on a different level than with an animal. But that does not mean that we should not be aware of a series of elements that we might never have imagined.
It is time to know what science tells us about how to love, a pet or a partner, maybe we should not consider this more or less, but the way we love. They are different forms of love with perhaps different intensities at different times.
This recent article in the journal Cerebral Cortex tells us that: “Romantic feelings are among the most significant human phenomena. Love influences the formation and maintenance of pair bonds, attachments of parents and offspring, and influences relationships with others and even with nature. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms of love beyond romantic and maternal types. Here, we characterize the brain areas involved in love for six different objects: romantic partner, children, friends, strangers, pets, and nature. We use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity, while we induce feelings of love using stories. Our results show that neural activity during a romantic feeling depends on its object.” Interpersonal love recruited significantly more social cognition brain areas in the temporoparietal junction and midline structures than did love for pets or nature. In pet owners, love for pets activated these same regions significantly more than in participants without pets. Love in the closest affiliative bonds was associated with significantly stronger and more widespread brain reward activation than love for strangers, pets, or nature. “We suggest that the experience of love is shaped by biological and cultural factors, stemming from fundamental neurobiological mechanisms of attachment.”
So these are different types of love, that of a partner, a pet or a family member that perhaps need to be separated first and organized in very different ways.
