The Paradox of Love and Happiness: Chemistry, Effort, and Attention

Mehmet Ömür

Happiness has always occupied my mind. Lately, “love” and relationships have entered the same equation—perhaps because the calendar is quietly pointing at February 14. I am a physician, not a psychologist. I’m writing these lines from observation, reading, and a small need to unburden myself. My aim is simple: to understand, and if possible, to be a little happier. I am not like Sait Faik—I wouldn’t go mad if I didn’t write—but when I do write, I feel relief. I become lighter.

Today I want to look at life through two lenses. The first is our general pursuit of happiness. The second is romantic love and what makes it last. What surprises me is this: the foundations of happiness and the sustainability of love seem to grow from the same roots.

The Allure of Dopamine—and What Comes After

As a physician, I can’t help but see the biological layer beneath our emotions. In broad terms, happiness and motivation are closely tied to the brain’s reward circuitry—often discussed through dopamine. When we talk about the biology of early love, the story arrives at a similar place. The feeling of “priority,” that inner electricity, the sudden sharpening of attention—these are strongly linked to the reward system.

And yet, here is the paradox: the very chemistry that ignites both happiness and love can also mislead us.

Short-term dopamine-driven pleasure—entertainment, novelty, gifts, the quick high—does not last. In love, the first stage can feel like a bright announcement. The heart races; noradrenaline speaks loudly. Everything becomes vivid. But that volume is not the whole song. It is an opening—powerful, necessary, and often beautiful—yet it cannot be the entire architecture.

The spark is not the house.

No Joy Without Labor: The Quiet Discipline of Being Happy

Bookstore shelves often sell happiness as a butterfly: “Stand still and it will land on you.” I don’t believe that. Happiness is not passive. It is work. It is a learnable skill, a discipline—sometimes even a craft.

The same principle applies to love.

Romance is not the red hearts in shop windows. Romance is closer to “building a home” and doing its daily maintenance. It resembles watering a plant: if you neglect it, it may not die immediately, but it will slowly fade. The people who preach “do good and gratitude will follow” and the idea that “small negligences add up and end love” are, in fact, knocking on the same door:

Effort.

Not grand gestures—daily effort.

The Most Expensive Currency: Attention—and the “Now”

Modern life has a silent thief that steals both happiness and love: our inability to focus.

To be happier, many paths point toward the same practice: learning to stay in the present moment, to breathe, to soften the anxieties of past and future. In relationships, the equivalent word is attention. Attention has become the most expensive currency of our era.

Romance is not an expensive gift. Romance is noticing: being able to read the small shifts in your loved one’s face amid screens, fatigue, speed, and noise.

And sometimes romance is as simple—and as rare—as this sentence:

“I see you.”

It may be more romantic than a bouquet, because it belongs to the sum of days, not just one day.

The Unity of Opposites: Vahdet-i Tezat

Life is neither purely black nor purely white. In the search for happiness, our opposing needs often collide: freedom (individuality) and approval (belonging), solitude and connection, ambition and peace. The solution is rarely found by choosing one side forever; it often emerges from synthesis—the unity of opposites.

Vahdet-i Tezat.

Love carries the same tension. It begins as a storm and evolves into gravity. The storm is excitement: novelty, intensity, obsession. Gravity is trust: calm, continuity, attachment.

This is not a loss. It is a transformation.

If early love is a flare, lasting love becomes a steady light. If the beginning is chemistry as fire, the continuation is chemistry as reaction—changing form without disappearing. Oxytocin and vasopressin do not erase passion; they reshape its meaning. The energy becomes quieter, but also deeper.

Conclusion: To See, To Connect, To Live Unmasked

Freud famously points to work and love as two pillars of a meaningful life. Solitude has its wisdom, but most of us do not shine alone. Happiness may begin inside, yet it becomes visible through connection—through friends, shared meals, shared silence, shared burdens, shared laughter.

Whether you are pursuing happiness in general or trying to sustain love, the most essential move is the same: learning to live unmasked. The strongest frame of love is not the posed moment, but the moment the mask falls. As Mevlana suggests—if we “appear as we are, or be as we appear”—something in us relaxes. And when we relax, we become more capable of happiness.

So perhaps what we need on February 14—or on any ordinary day—is not the noise of red hearts, but the courage of a simple truth. To make the person we love feel, unmistakably:

“I see you.”

Because a human being often reaches real happiness not by chasing pleasure, but by witnessing another life—and being witnessed in return.

Stay with love and health.