The Deepest Love Respects What Others Feel
Why real love isn't about grand gestures — it's about honouring the sensitivity of those around us
Love begins in the brain.
Not in the heart, not in a box of chocolates, and certainly not in a greeting card aisle. I know — that sounds cold for a Valentine's Day post. But stay with me. Because once you understand what happens inside your skull when you fall for someone, you'll realise that the most romantic thing in the world is also the most scientific: paying attention to another person's feelings.
What Cupid's Arrows Are Really Made Of
Let me simplify the neuroscience for you — I'm an astronomy and physics graduate, not a neurosurgeon, so I'll keep this accessible.
When you're struck by attraction, your hypothalamus — a tiny region buried deep in the brain — sends a signal that floods your bloodstream with adrenaline . Your heart races. Your palms sweat. You breathe faster. It's the same fight-or-flight response you'd get from a near-miss on the motorway, except this time you're staring at someone across a crowded room.
Then comes dopamine, the so-called feel-good hormone. Anthropologist Helen Fisher's landmark research showed that when we look at someone we love romantically — not just someone we find attractive — the brain's reward centres light up like a city at night . Dopamine creates pleasure and helps form lasting memories, which is why you can still recall the exact shade of light in the room when you first locked eyes with someone who mattered.
That's not all. Serotonina steps in to regulate mood and keep you thinking about your beloved, while oxytocin — the bonding hormone — arrives later to form deeper emotional ties . As Alex Baker, a chemistry professor at the University of Warwick, put it: "The way these chemicals fluctuate really affects the emotions you feel: so is it love, or just chemistry?"
The honest answer? It's both.
Seven Seconds to Fall
Here's a number that will stop you mid-sip of your morning coffee: less than seven seconds.
That's how long it takes the human brain to form an impression of another person, according to Wendi Gardner, a social psychologist at Northwestern University. We process physical cues — symmetry, smile, eye contact, the way someone carries themselves — at astonishing speed. We don't even need to hear them speak. Our brains are running calculations we're not consciously aware of, assembling a verdict before we've finished saying hello.
But here's where it gets interesting. Love at first sight isn't reserved for the conventionally beautiful. There's a psychological concept called "I-sharing" — that fleeting conviction that you and a stranger are experiencing the same subjective reality at the same moment. You're in a café, something absurd happens, you glance up with a half-smile, and a stranger across the room is doing exactly the same thing. Your eyes meet. That's enough.
That tiny shared moment dissolves loneliness. It builds trust. And research published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships confirms that these moments are linked to greater romantic satisfaction .
So love doesn't always arrive with fireworks. Sometimes it arrives with a quiet glance and the smell of espresso.
The Part Nobody Talks About
Now, I need to be honest with you — and this is where my own story enters.
I was born in Albania in 1986. By the time I was five, my family emigrated to Italy so I could receive medical treatment for dystonia, a movement disorder that's been my companion ever since. I've lived my life in a wheelchair. I've had surgeries — including a deep brain stimulation implant in 2011 and its removal in 2018. I've studied astronomy at the University of Bologna and earned a Master's in Physics from the University of Milan. I did an Erasmus semester at Sabancı University in Istanbul. I founded FreeAstroScience, a science communication platform with tens of thousands of followers.
I tell you this not for sympathy. I tell you because love, for someone like me, has always been inseparable from sensitivity.
When your body doesn't move the way the world expects, you learn very quickly who truly sees you. You learn the difference between someone who looks at your wheelchair and someone who looks at your eyes. You learn that the deepest form of love — romantic, platonic, familial — is the kind that respects, welcomes, and cares for the sensitivity of others.
That's not a Hallmark sentiment. That's survival wisdom.
Love Is a 2021 Review Paper (No, Really)
A fascinating 2021 review published in Frontiers in Psychology traced nearly 60 years of scientific, philosophical, and anthropological thinking about romantic love. The researchers used four questions originally posed by behavioural biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen in 1963: What mechanisms cause romantic love? How does it develop across a lifetime? What are its physical functions? And what is its evolutionary history?
I'm simplifying here, but the review examined brain imaging studies (fMRI), hormonal data, cultural patterns, and psychological research to map everything from euphoria and joy to stress, dependency, and even the obsessive, borderline-pathological edges of love. The conclusion? Love is a vast, tangled phenomenon — cognitive, emotional, behavioural, social, genetic, neural, and endocrine all at once .
In other words, love is the most complex thing your body does. And it happens at every stage of life, from birth to old age.
Seneca said it best, two thousand years ago: "If you want to be loved, love."
Valentine's Day Isn't Just for Couples
Let's clear something up. Valentine's Day, for all its commercial noise — U.S. consumers spent over $25 billion on it in 2023 alone — isn't exclusively about romance.
In Finland and Estonia, February 14th is called Ystävänpäivä, or "Friend's Day," and it celebrates platonic relationships with equal weight . In South Korea, there's even a Black Day on April 14th, where singles eat black bean noodles together if they haven't found love . In the Philippines, local governments sponsor mass weddings in public parks .
And here's what I find most beautiful: for many people, Valentine's Day used to feel like a reminder of what they didn't have. Today, it's increasingly reclaimed as a day of self-respect and emotional care .
That shift matters. It tells us something about where we're heading as a species.
The Love That Doesn't Make Headlines
Not everyone who loves you will write you a poem. Some will sit with you in a hospital waiting room at 3 a.m., the fluorescent lights humming overhead, saying nothing because nothing needs to be said. Some will learn the name of your condition and research it on their own, not because you asked, but because they wanted to understand your world.
I've experienced that kind of love. From family. From friends across borders — Albania, Italy, Turkey. From strangers on the internet who follow FreeAstroScience and send messages that say, "Your story made me not give up today."
That is the love I'm writing about.
Not the dopamine rush — though that's wonderful. Not the oxytocin bond — though that's essential. I'm talking about the love that notices when someone is struggling and doesn't look away. The love that adjusts its pace so you can keep up. The love that doesn't need you to be whole to consider you worthy.
What Neuroscience Can't Measure
Science tells us that the brain's reward system activates through acts of self-care and self-compassion, not only through the presence of a romantic partner . That's a liberating finding. It means you don't need someone else to complete you — your own brain is wired to reward you for treating yourself with kindness.
But there's something neuroscience can't fully capture. It can map dopamine pathways and measure serotonin levels. It can show you which brain regions light up when you see a loved one's face. What it can't quantify is the warmth you feel when someone remembers the small things — your favourite tea, the song that makes you cry, the fact that you need a ramp, not stairs.
That warmth isn't a chemical. It's a choice.
A Valentine's Reflection from a Wheelchair in Tirana
I'm writing this from Tirana, Albania — the country I was born in, the country I left as a child, the country that still feels like a heartbeat I carry with me. Outside my window, the February air is sharp and clean. The city hums with its own kind of energy — motorbikes, voices, the distant clatter of construction.
Today is Valentine's Day, and I don't have a grand romantic gesture to share. What I have is this: a life shaped by the kindness of others, and a stubborn refusal to stop believing in it.
Every surgery, every university exam taken from a wheelchair, every late night building FreeAstroScience — none of it happened because I'm extraordinary. It happened because people loved me in ways that respected my sensitivity. They didn't pretend my challenges weren't real. They didn't minimise them. They sat with the discomfort and chose to stay.
So What Is the Deepest Love?
It's not the love that sweeps you off your feet in seven seconds, though that's a fine place to start. It's not the dopamine hit or the adrenaline surge, though your body will give you those gifts freely.
The deepest love is the one that sees your vulnerability and doesn't flinch.
It's the love that says, "I don't fully understand what you're going through, but I'm here." It's the love that makes space — physical space, emotional space, the kind of space where someone can be exactly who they are without apology.
Paul Eastwick, a psychologist at UC Davis, reminds us that initial attraction alone has no predictive value for a lasting relationship. "It's a nice experience to fall for someone right away," he says, "but it's neither a bad sign nor a good sign for the future of that relationship" . What matters is what comes after — the conversations, the patience, the willingness to let your impressions change as you truly get to know someone.
Love, like science, requires curiosity. It requires the humility to say, "I don't know everything about this person yet, and that's okay" .
Never Give Up on Love
I've built my life around a simple philosophy: never give up. It applies to physics exams, to medical recoveries, to building a science community from scratch. And it applies to love.
Not the fairy-tale version. The real version. The version where you show up for people even when it's inconvenient. The version where you respect someone's boundaries because you understand that boundaries aren't walls — they're invitations to love more carefully.
This Valentine's Day, whether you're with a partner, surrounded by friends, or sitting alone with a cup of tea and the quiet hum of your own thoughts — remember this: the most powerful love you can offer is the love that honours what others feel.
It doesn't cost a thing. And it changes everything.
Happy Valentine's Day, from Tirana, with love.
— Gerd Dani, FreeAstroScience
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