Something happens to the air when the seasons change around this time of year, and I’m not just talking about spring’s breezes shifting into summer’s sweltering heat. It’s like every moment is marked with an added sense of suspense and anticipation, as if a groundbreaking event could happen any second. That’s especially true when it comes to love. Falling for someone is always nice, but when it happens in the summer, it feels even more magical.
The desire for a seasonal romance is constantly fueled by pop culture, which teaches us through movies like Grease and Dirty Dancing that love blossoming under the summer sun can overcome almost anything—social inequalities, friends who don’t get along, even opposite personalities—except the season’s end. But where does the idea of summer love come from? Pop culture isn’t the source of our infatuation; it merely borrows from a theme that runs deep within us already. There are actual physical and social drives behind high-intensity flings during high temperatures.
More Sunlight Means More Hormones
I have a friend in the throes of a summer romance right now. She talks and thinks about the guy nonstop, and it drives her crazy when they’re apart during the workday. Their courtship was brief, sidestepping the usual “I’ll call you laters” and diving headfirst into a full-fledged relationship. That’s partly because of their electric compatibility and partly because, like all truly memorable summer loves, theirs has an expiration date. (He’s moving in a few months.) The end in sight makes their time together even more pressing—and even more painful when it can’t happen for whatever reason. “It’s like a drug,” she explained to me one day, lamenting the hours she had to spend without him. “It’s like that Nina Simone song that goes, ‘Waiting for you to come home and turn me on,’ like she’s almost dead without her man.”
That might sound extreme, but anyone who’s crushed hard knows the emotional crash of being away from that special someone. The feeling is exaggerated even more in the summer, thanks to our brains’ hormonal reaction to increased daylight hours. Mood, hunger, thirst, sexual desire, and many other emotional drives come from certain hormones, the release of which is controlled by an area of the brain called the hypothalamus. It’s activated by light hitting the eyes; when that happens, the hypothalamus sends out hormones that, among other things, make us feel more lovey-dovey than usual.
The hormone dopamine is responsible for the euphoric, intoxicated feeling we get when we like someone new. Daylight also triggers the hypothalamus to produce vasopressin and oxytocin, two hormones associated with attachment and cuddly affection. The combination of these three could explain why summer romances are a heady mix of the passion associated with flings and the emotional bond that comes with longer-term partnerships. The extra daylight in the summertime increases production of all of these hormones—so when fall for someone from June to August, we fall hard.
