I'm Looking for Love
Responding to anonymous blogger Unstory's claim that love is a fake story and does not exist, I argue that love is a real, measurable, and physical fact of human connection. On fMRI studies of spouses, Harvard's 87-year Study of Adult Development, oxytocin and Queer chosen family, and the courage it takes to keep looking for love anyway.
esterday, I posted [a couple](https://social.lol/@brennan/117141420526104806) [toots](https://social.lol/@brennan/117142243698491730) sharing some rather heated exchanges I had with anonymous blogger [Unstory](https://unstory.eu), who I previously [failed to interview properly](https://brennan.day/suspect-happiness-in-pursuit-an-anti-interview-with-unstory/).
But don't worry, this was just a mere lover's spat you see, and I—
Hey, wait a minute. What did Unstory write to me in his most recent email?
"There is nothing better than what is it. You can't change anything. It has no meaning. Love is nonsense, it does not exist in a way that people romanticizing it. It's fake story. It's romanticized story about the business, necessity, needs. There is not one cell in your body that loves you. Water does not love you. You don't love anyone and nobody loves you. It's fairy tale like gods, heaven and seven-headed dragon."
Oh, this really explained everything for me.
On one hand, I really hope Unstory has just been fucking with me the entire time at this point, and is simply just playing the role of maximum cynic nihilist to get underneath my skin, and that I'm naïvely taking the bait (as I typically do).
Otherwise, if this is real, then it is heartbreaking. And I really mean that. I cannot imagine someone who views love this way.
We all ought to be born into a loving world, with a loving family. I know for many people, that is not reality, but there are usually still people in our life that give us love no matter what, right?
Even the pedantic, overzealous materialist who smugly explains that love is actually mere electrochemical reactions and biological hormones which have a primary purpose of reproduction is someone who still recognizes that love exists—that people have a connection to one another regardless of how or why that connection takes place. And that connection shows up in the body.
Researchers put [spouses in an fMRI machine, threatened them with electric shocks](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01832.x), and watched their brains light up with fear until their partner took their hand. The threat response measurably dropped, and the happier the marriage, the bigger the drop. [Harvard's 87-year Study of Adult Development](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/05/things-money-cant-buy-like-happiness-and-better-health), the longest-running study of human life ever conducted, has tracked hundreds of men and their families since 1938 and keeps arriving at the same stubborn answer. The people who fared best were the ones who leaned into their relationships, and loneliness carries a health risk on par with smoking. [Oxytocin](https://www.kinship.com/dog-lifestyle/oxytocin-chemistry-between-people-and-dogs-rea
Did you enjoy this article?
Recommend it — Standard Reader surfaces well-loved writing to more readers across the network.