Falling in love with someone, and I firmly believe this, can be blamed on science. My Time magazine subscription couldn't have come at a better time. For in it was a detailed and more importantly scientific explanation as to why we feel like a tray full of merde after we seperate from someone. It's a relatively simple hormonal formula, only made imperfect by the hormone itself. Genius!

The article also bears testament to my caution with pursuing a long-term relationship with someone. Some of you might even find this sensible, even if I do fanny around on the apocalypsal border of sex-without-strings.

When your heart has been chiselled in half, the heart-rendering, painful succumbtion to hell, can mostly be blamed on a hormone called oxytocin.

When we feel good — and this can take on several parallels — that feeling after exercise, a promotion at work... we start secreting oxytocin. These activities make us feel terribly satisfied with ourselves.

Happy hormones...

Day to day, we have tolerant levels of oxytocin in our systems, and hence, we can generally describe ourselves as happy individuals.

When we start falling in love with someone, the sluice gates open, and oxytocin is only but being dumped into our systems by the plateful. It just keeps coming, and hence the 'walking on air', 'thinking about that person all day long' feeling. We're on a high, and frankly, we become drug addicts.

As lovely as oxytocin is, it doesn't come without its basic evolutionary flaws. Trust me. Everything's good until you don't get a fix.

Firstly, our bodies start becoming tolerant to the hormone, which means after 18 months, the effects wears off, and you wonder whether you're actually still in love. Try as you may to hold onto this feeling, you're going to lose.

The second flaw is more maleficent, because it's going to screw you over. If the object that has been systematically feeding you oxytocin suddenly disappears/breaks up with/cheats on you, you're going to feel it bad. It's going to hurt like a bed of nails... except with just one nail. In your business end.

For example. You find someone, you fall in love, you write his name on you doodle pad without even thinking, things are just grand — you're shagging like you're in first year, he's taking you out for dinners. Hell, he's even writing you poetry. You have 'a song,' you've introduced him to your eccentric parents, and you smooch in public areas. The more you touch each other — because physical affection just exacerbates the problem (sex especially) — you become more and more hooked on the feeling. Then say, after a few months, she happens to dump your sorry ass.

And you're going to be sorry.

Going cold turkey

Unluckily oxytocin only associates itself with the thing that has given it to you. This is where it all goes wrong. It explains why rebounds can never replace what you're looking for. In the same vein, it also partially explains why we have rebounds in the first place. We're desperately trying to feel 'normal' again. You can try to find another dealer, but sadly your body has latched onto only that person, which is why straight after a break-up, you feel like Pete Doherty after five days of no crack.

You're not getting your daily fix, your dealer has left the building. Suddenly, you have negative doses, and you're literally going cold turkey. That crushing feeling, the not being able to eat or sleep, the tears, the pining? Blame it all on creation. Once your body acclimatises again (two or so months, because the oxytocin has started to level out normally), you come out feeling more objective about the situation.

To make matters worse, during the la-la phase of 'love', your body is also churning out great big dollops of dopamine. Another feel-good hormone. When your dealer starts handing the drug to his company secretary, you'll feel the sudden lack of both 'high as a kite' products. Harsh.

Another drawback (yes, there's more) is that women, having oestrogen in their systems, and men having testosterone, brings in some cataclysmic side affects. Girl meets boy at a bar. Girl has three cocktails, a shooter and then a double whisky on the rocks. Boy has a beer, then a glass of water, a three-course meal, and then maybe another beer. That's exactly the affect oxytocin has on men and women.

Girls hang from the ceiling, because they, frankly, can't help it. Oestrogen mixes with oxytocin to unwittingly create an internal bodily combustion of lust. It's the most unfair evolutionary make-up I have heard of, followed closely by male domination in the workplace.

Testosterone actually waters down the effects of oxytocin, so yes, 'tis true: men don't become attached as quickly or even as intensely, as women do. Back to the caveman hunter/gatherer scenario. It's an injustice that simply can't be helped, and thus, the oxytocin diet is a dangerous one. Even if it does feel like you want to scream his name in joy from the rooftops.

Of course, there are always exceptions. The fella that just can't get over his philandering ex-girlfriend, or the dude who hoists a boom box above his shoulders to play Bryan Adams' 'Please Forgive Me' over her lawn. Pitiful, and unlikely, but not to say it hasn't happened before.

The only course of action one can take is just to be acutely aware of these basic, carnal developments. You may be feeling the lust, and it might be good, but just be aware that often it is drug driven. Which is partly to blame for why it hurts so much when it disappears overnight. And on the flipside, it feels so good when after those trial 18 months, it's still going strong. If you've made it passed that time frame, you can rest assured that your relationship is more than just oxytocin. I'm just saying...