Wired for Love Quotes

“G-R-A-C-E, GRACE, is an acronym for how an individual can take care of their social body, even during periods of isolation, when the love network is powered down and we are particularly susceptible to the dangers of loneliness. GRACE stands for gratitude, reciprocity, altruism, choice, and enjoyment.”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist's Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection

“Sometimes we just have to remember to look up.”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist's Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection

“Love—in the expansive way I now conceive of the term, based on my research and my experience—is the opposite of loneliness.”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist's Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection

“social connections enabled the brain to evolve into the most powerful organ in the universe.”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist's Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection

“Feelings like love and loneliness are universal—they cut across all categories, they include everyone.”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist's Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection

“Building healthy relationships also builds a healthier brain”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist's Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection

“The more we love without expecting any rewards in return, the more we will increase our chance of happiness”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist's Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection

“Your mind can be the loneliest place on earth if you let it be.”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist's Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection

“I tried to wear my solitude less like a burden than like a badge of honor.”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist's Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection

“Neuroplasticity is one of the true wonders of the mind.”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist's Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection

“We need to love others to survive.”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist's Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection

“Humans evolved because of love.”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist's Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection

“A healthy love life is as necessary to a person’s well-being as nutritious food, exercise, or clean water.”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist's Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection

“The power of love helps us realize our innate human potential.”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist's Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection

“Love is a biological necessity”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist's Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection

“they found no association between loneliness and the quality of a physical connection in a relationship. But they found a strong association between loneliness and a lack of self-disclosure. This means that couples who don’t reveal their “true selves” may be setting themselves up for long-term suffering.”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired For Love: A Neuroscientist’s Journey Through Romance, Loss and the Essence of Human Connection

“The trick to remaining satisfied and happily in love is to never forget that you and your beloved are always evolving, and so you always have to be engaged in the process of “getting to know” your partner, even if you have been together for a half century or more.”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired For Love: A Neuroscientist’s Journey Through Romance, Loss and the Essence of Human Connection

“While the reasons why people break up are, of course, complicated, they usually boil down to two main problems: a lack of intimacy or connection with our partner (what we term social reward) or feeling rejected or unwanted by our partner (social threat). Of these two main breakup forces, psychologists believe that the lack of social reward is more decisive when it comes to a relationship’s survival.”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired For Love: A Neuroscientist’s Journey Through Romance, Loss and the Essence of Human Connection

“Earlier in life, people perceive their future as “expansive and open-ended,” and they are able to push thoughts of mortality to the margins. Thinking they have time to spare, people go into “collection mode,” trying to accumulate things— money, status, knowledge— with an eye toward future use. Yet once people age or have a health scare, the internal calculus changes. Now they seek “emotional balance,” they focus more on important and satisfying relationships and experiences, and become more interested in the present than the future, more interested in quality than quantity. The collector is replaced by the experiencer.”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired For Love: A Neuroscientist’s Journey Through Romance, Loss and the Essence of Human Connection

“First, romantic love triggered both the brain’s pleasure centers and the cortical regions that manage our sense of self, like the angular gyrus, much more intensely than friendship. Maternal love was quite similar to companionate love, except it activated the subcortical periaqueductal gray matter (PAG), a brain area that is concentrated with receptors for hormones called oxytocin and vasopressin, which are important in bonding, among other functions. These receptors are also associated with compassion and, interestingly, with pain suppression. This could suggest that, on top of the abundant joy that comes with loving a child, there is something uniquely painful about the experience that requires a natural pain reliever, so that mothers are able to better feel and even absorb the pain of their children. This might ring true to any mother who has night-weaned her baby or sent a kid off to college.”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired For Love: A Neuroscientist’s Journey Through Romance, Loss and the Essence of Human Connection

“Can love exist without desire?”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist's Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection

“By surprising me, John had instantly found a way of making our wedding special and unique, however it turned out. Such a spontaneous ceremony wouldn't work for everyone, of course. But it's worth considering the role that unpredictable events might play in love and whether we can benefit by making more room for improvisation in our relationships.

So much of our social experience, especially when it comes to romance, has to do with expectations. Maybe we have an image of the person we will marry long before we've met them. Usually, we call this a type, an ideal. Or maybe we have in our mind's eye the perfect first date—a walk by the lake, a hike in the woods, a romantic restaurant.

When it comes to the wedding—an opportunity not only to proclaim our love but also to show off our good taste and social network—we probably know how it should look. Perhaps more importantly, we know how it should not look. If these expectations set us on a course toward genuine happiness, then they are all well and good. But I would argue that in many cases, such plans can become a kind of mind trap, forcing us to pursue a preconceived kind of happiness that we may never reach or that, once reached, may never make us happy.”
― Stephanie Cacioppo, Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist's Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection