“How I Learned That I Don’t Feel Love” by johnswentworth

A few months ago, I learned that I probably can’t feel the emotions signalled by oxytocin, the "love hormone". This raises lots of interesting questions - what things I do and don’t feel, how the world looks different from an oxytocin-less perspective, how a lack of oxytocin changes one's values or goals, etc. But it would be putting the cart before the horse to dive into those questions without first walking through how I learned this about myself and the evidence, so that everybody has an appropriate level of confidence in the underlying assumption.

The Evidence Which Privileged The Hypothesis

It started with investigating a confusion. Lots of the supposedly-happy relationships around me looked pretty awful to my eye, so why the heck were people (apparently) happy with them? What on earth was making these relationships net positive, let alone good?

I wrote a few LessWrong pieces on that confusion, and eventually Caleb Biddulph responded with a hypothesis: perhaps I don’t actually feel much of the thing most commonly called “(companionate) love”, and have therefore been confusing it with something else which I do feel. Caleb also spelled out the physical sensations he experiences with love, and sure enough… [...]

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Outline:

(00:40) The Evidence Which Privileged The Hypothesis

(02:36) Background: Oxytocin

(03:51) The Genetic Evidence

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
November 12th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Hds7xkLgYtm6qDGPS/how-i-learned-that-i-don-t-feel-love

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.