The Question That Started Everything
I've been exploring where love and fear show up in our world, especially in the lives of men. And I realized something. If I'm going to understand what it means to be pulled by love instead of controlled by fear, I should probably have a decent understanding of what love actually is.
So, I looked it up. Merriam-Webster says love is "strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties."
That's it? Really?
For me, that definition is like trying to describe an ocean by looking at a single drop of water. It completely misses how love changes over time. It ignores the different types of relationships we experience. It says nothing about forgiveness, acceptance, or the way love can persist even through pain. And it definitely doesn't touch the spiritual and biological dimensions that make love so powerful.
The more I dug into this question, the more I realized we're dealing with something far more complex and beautiful than any dictionary could capture. So, I decided to dive deeper into what love is from a variety of angles including biological, cultural, spiritual, and psychological. This is what I discovered.
What's Actually Happening in Your Brain When You Love
In my research, I came across Helen Fisher. She was an anthropologist who spent her life studying love. Right before she died in August 2024, she completed research that changed how we understand what happens in our brains when we fall in love.
Love isn't just a feeling. It's actually a drive, like hunger or thirst. Fisher discovered that when you're in love, a specific part of your brain lights up called the ventral tegmental area, or VTA for short.1 Think of the VTA as love's command center. It floods your brain with dopamine, that same chemical that makes you feel good when you eat chocolate or win a game.2
And here's where it gets really interesting. Love actually turns off your fear centers. The amygdala, that part of your brain that's always looking for threats? Love quiets it down.3 It's like your brain literally chooses connection over protection.
This explains something I've been noticing in my own life. When I'm operating from love, whether it's love for my partner, my work, or even just feeling connected to the world around me, fear seems to fade into the background. Now I understand why.
These aren't just competing emotions. They're competing brain systems. And it goes back to my belief that the opposite of love is fear.
What Ancient Cultures Knew That We're Just Now Proving
The Greeks had the complexity of love figured out thousands of years ago. They didn't have brain scanners, but they understood that love comes in different flavors. They had eight different words for love.
There's eros, the passionate romantic love that makes you feel like you are flying. There's agape, the unconditional love that expects nothing in return. Philia is the deep friendship kind of love. Storge is that comfortable family love. And they had four more.
What's wild is that modern neuroscience is proving the Greeks were right. Each type of love actually activates slightly different parts of your brain.3 Passionate eros lights up your reward centers. Unconditional agape activates the parts of your brain involved in compassion and caregiving.4
The Sanskrit traditions went even deeper. They saw love as a journey. You start with kama, which is desire and appreciation of beauty. Then you move through prema, which is pure devotion. Eventually, if you're lucky, you reach atma-prema. This is universal love, where you recognize that we're all connected.
Buddhist psychology gives us something called the four brahmaviharas. It just means "divine abodes" or places where your mind can dwell. They are loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity. The cool part? Scientists have studied Buddhist monks who practice these, and their brains literally change. The areas responsible for empathy and emotional regulation actually grow.16
And then there's Ubuntu from southern Africa. "I am because we are." This isn't just philosophy. It's neuroscience. Our brains are wired to be social. We literally need each other to be fully human.
How Your First Experiences of Love Shape Your Brain Forever
The way you were loved as a baby actually creates a template in your brain for all future relationships. Scientists call this attachment theory.
If you had parents or caregivers who were consistently there for you, who responded when you cried, who made you feel safe, your brain developed what's called secure attachment.10 Your brain literally has better connections between the parts that process emotions and the parts that help you think clearly.12 You trust more easily. You recover from stress faster.
But if love was inconsistent or scary when you were little, your brain adapted differently. Some people develop anxious attachment. Their amygdala, the fear center, stays on high alert in relationships.11 They're always scanning for signs that love might disappear.
Others develop avoidant attachment. Their brains learned to suppress emotional needs.12 They have stronger activation in the parts of the brain that regulate emotions, almost like they're constantly holding feelings at arm's length.
Here's the hopeful part though. Your brain can change. We call it neuroplasticity.13 New relationships, therapy, even meditation can literally rewire these old patterns.
The Nature Connection Nobody Talks About
Nature is where things get really interesting, at least for me, because I am certainly a nature boy. Remember how I said love lights up certain parts of your brain? Guess what else lights up those exact same parts?
Being in nature.
Researchers in Italy studied people before and after they spent time in the forests of Tuscany. They measured everything. Stress hormones, heart rate, brain activity. After just a few hours in the forest, people's cortisol (that's your main stress hormone) dropped by almost half.5 Their heart rate variability improved, which means their nervous system was more balanced.6 And here's the kicker. The brain regions that changed were the same ones involved in romantic love and bonding.7
You've likely heard of forest bathing, or shinrin-yoku in Japanese. It isn't just about fresh air. It's literally triggering your brain's love circuits. The same dopamine. The same oxytocin. The same serotonin.6
Think about it. Have you ever stood at the edge of the ocean or on top of a mountain and felt something that's hard to describe? That sense of awe? That feeling of being part of something bigger? That's your brain responding the same way it does when you fall in love.8
There's even something called the biophilia hypothesis. It basically says humans are hardwired to love nature.15 We evolved in natural environments for millions of years. Our brains expect to see fractals (those repeating patterns in trees and clouds), hear birdsong, feel the sun. When we don't get enough nature, our brains suffer.
Studies on teenagers found that those with "nature deficit" had way more anxiety and depression.14 Their brains showed the same patterns as people with attachment problems. Being disconnected from nature creates the same neurological issues as being disconnected from people.
What Indigenous Peoples Have Always Known
Indigenous cultures have understood the connection between love, land, and healing for thousands of years. Western science is just now catching up.
There's a Mi'kmaq concept called "Two-Eyed Seeing." It means looking at the world through both Indigenous wisdom and Western science.19 When researchers started doing this with neuroscience, something very interesting happened. They found that Indigenous practices of connecting with land as a relative, not a resource, create measurable changes in the brain.20
Andrea Gomez at UC Berkeley is studying how Indigenous knowledge about plant medicines reveals truths about neuroplasticity.17 These are practices that have existed for millennia, and they're showing us how the brain can heal and change.
When Indigenous peoples say, "the land is a healer," they're not being metaphorical. Land-based healing programs show actual changes in stress hormones, immune function, and neurotransmitter levels.18 The same changes we see in secure, loving relationships.
One Indigenous practitioner described it this way: healing happens through connection to land, culture, spirituality, and ancestry all at once.18 You can't separate them. Western medicine is starting to get this. You can't just treat the brain without treating the person's connections.
Love and Fear Can't Coexist in Your Brain
Here's something that changed how I think about everything. Love and fear operate through completely opposite brain systems. And they literally can't both be fully active at the same time.
When you're afraid, your amygdala takes over. It floods your body with stress hormones. Your vision literally narrows. Your brain shuts down creative thinking and focuses only on survival.21 Everything becomes about protection and defense.
But when you're experiencing love, whether it's for a person, a place, or even a moment of beauty, something else happens. Oxytocin (sometimes called the love hormone) actually turns down your amygdala.22 Your prefrontal cortex, the part that helps you think clearly and creatively, comes online. Your heart rate slows. Your breathing deepens.22
This is why you can't be truly afraid and truly loving at the same moment. Your brain has to choose.
Think about people who are operating from fear. They're in survival mode. Their brains are literally less capable of connection, creativity, and compassion. Not because they're bad people, but because fear hijacks the brain's ability to come from a place of love.
The good news? Love is stronger than fear in the long run. Repeated experiences of love and connection actually shrink the fear responses in your brain.23 This is how therapy works. This is how healing happens. You literally love the fear away.
What Happens When We Lose Connection
Here is what I think is happening to a lot of people, especially men, right now. They're disconnected from nature. They're struggling with relationships. They're operating from fear more than love. And their brains are suffering.
Researchers studied almost 700 teenagers and found that those with "nature deficit disorder" had brains that looked almost identical to those with depression and anxiety disorders.14 Same overactive amygdala. Same underactive prefrontal cortex. Same disrupted stress response systems.
But it's not just about nature. It's about connection in general. When people don't have secure relationships, when they don't spend time in nature, when they're not part of a community, their brains get stuck in threat detection mode.24
The default mode network, that's the part of your brain that's active when you're not focused on anything specific, goes haywire. Instead of daydreaming or processing experiences, it gets stuck in loops of self-criticism and worry.9
The Science of Healing Through Connection
Here's where everything comes together. Love isn't just one thing. It's a whole system in your brain designed to help you connect and thrive. Whether that connection is to another person, to nature, or to something greater than yourself, it all uses the same neural pathways.
The research is clear. You can heal fear-based patterns through multiple doorways. Therapy and secure relationships can rewire old attachment wounds.13 Time in nature can calm your nervous system and restore your capacity for awe.25 Meditation and spiritual practices can build new neural pathways for compassion.16 Indigenous land-based healing can address trauma in ways Western medicine is just beginning to understand.18
They all work because they all activate your brain's love systems. They all quiet fear. They all build connection.
This understanding completely changes how we might approach healing, especially for men. Instead of seeing mental health as fixing what's broken, what if we saw it as activating what's already there? Those love circuits. Those connection pathways. They're waiting to be strengthened.
So, What Is Love, Really?
After all this research, here's how I view it. Love is not just an emotion. It's not just a feeling. It's our brain's core system for connection and thriving.
Love is what happens when your brain chooses connection over protection. When it quiets fear to make room for something else. When it recognizes another person, place, or moment as part of yourself.
The dictionary definition doesn't do love justice. Love isn't just strong affection based on kinship or personal ties. Love is the neurobiological capacity that makes us human. It's what allows us to bond with our children, connect with partners, find God or spirit, and feel at home in nature. It's all the same system.
And here's what gives me hope. This system is always there, waiting. No matter how much fear we've experienced, no matter how disconnected we've become, those love circuits can be reactivated. Through relationships. Through nature. Through spiritual practice. Through community.
What Does It Mean to Be Pulled by Love?
If love is our brain's core system for connection and thriving, what does it actually look like when someone is operating from that system? How do you know when you're being pulled by love versus controlled by fear?
Over the course of my early exploration into love and fear, I'm starting to see patterns in how they show up in real life. When people operate from fear, they isolate themselves. They judge others harshly. They avoid difficult conversations. They quit when things get tough. But when they're pulled by love, something shifts.
Being pulled by love means choosing connection even when isolation feels safer. It means approaching differences with curiosity instead of judgment. It means having the courage to face what scares you rather than avoiding it. It means enduring through difficulty because something matters more than your comfort.
Love shows up as resilience instead of fragility. As inner strength instead of inner weakness. As integrity instead of self-betrayal. When you're pulled by love, you seek purpose rather than status. You commit rather than escape. You stay present rather than distracted.
There's a playfulness that comes with love, a genuine quality that replaces pretending. You develop grit to work through discomfort instead of collapsing at the first sign of difficulty. Joy becomes possible even in hard times, replacing bitterness. Faith emerges where cynicism once lived.
Being pulled by love doesn't mean everything becomes easy. It means you find the discipline to do what needs doing, even when you don't feel like it. You seek wisdom rather than remaining ignorant. You work for justice rather than accepting corruption. And perhaps most importantly, you respond with compassion where you once might have responded with hate.
This isn't about being soft or weak. Being pulled by love includes strength, but it's strength in service of connection rather than domination. It's power used to protect and nurture rather than control. It's leadership that lifts others up rather than holding them down.
When people are pulled by love, they become capable of things they never thought possible. They can sit with another person's pain without trying to fix it. They can admit when they're wrong without feeling destroyed. They can ask for help without feeling weak. They can celebrate others' success without feeling diminished.
Questions to Test Whether I'm Coming from Love or Fear
Something hit me on a recent trail run. I was thinking about doing hard things, and a distinction started forming. What if fear is avoiding hard things because they're hard, and love is embracing hard things because they are hard?
This got me thinking about practical ways to check in with myself. Here are some questions I'm going to start asking myself to test whether I'm being pulled by love or controlled by fear.
Am I moving toward connection or away from it?
Am I acting out of curiosity or out of judgment?
Am I choosing courage or comfort?
Am I aligned with my purpose or getting distracted from it?
Am I working toward contribution or chasing recognition?
The larger pattern I'm noticing is this. Love often asks us to do the harder thing. Not harder for the sake of suffering, but harder because it requires us to stretch beyond our fear-based reflexes. Love asks us to stay open when we want to close. To connect when we want to withdraw. To serve when we want to protect.
What would change in your life if you saw love not as something you fall into or out of, but as a capacity you can strengthen?
What would change in our world if more of us were operating from love instead of fear?
These don’t feel philosophical questions anymore. They're feel like scientific questions. And the answers might just be a doorway to healing ourselves and our world. This has me even more excited for the Heart-Strong Adventure I am embarking on.
References
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Really well done synopsis of a tricky to articulate concept.