Überlagerung

“What connects us is not what we see in others, but what we recognize within ourselves.”

Introductory Note – YourLoveCode

The article “Überlagerung” is part of the broader YourLoveCode series dedicated to the mechanisms of partner selection, relational synchronization, and relationship stability. Earlier texts (Articles 1–8) gradually introduced the key concepts of similarity, resonance, information, and biological and cognitive synchronization, presenting them as elements of a single, coherent relational mechanism. This article offers a synthetic integration of these threads in the context of image, media, and algorithmic stimulus-selection systems, which increasingly overlay the original relational mechanism—without replacing it, but by obscuring it.

Introduction

Human relationships do not emerge in a vacuum. They arise within a specific biological, cultural, and informational environment. For thousands of years, this environment changed slowly, leaving the mechanism of partner selection largely intact. In recent centuries—and especially in recent decades—the pace of change has accelerated dramatically. YourLoveCode assumes that the relational mechanism has not been replaced, but has come under an ever-thickening layer of overlapping stimuli: image, narrative, collective resonance, and finally algorithmic personalization. We refer to this process as Überlagerung. This is not a text against media, technology, or sexuality. It is an attempt to explain why stimuli exert such powerful effects today, while at the same time why relationship stability continues to obey the same biological and systemic principles.

I. The Relational Mechanism as a Point of Reference

Before mass narratives, images, and electronic transmissions emerged, relationships developed under conditions of direct contact. Partnership was a long-term process based on observation, repetition, shared rhythm, and gradual mutual regulation. YourLoveCode describes this mechanism as the 5× Similarity Rule—five levels at which alignment supports relational stability:

• biological (DNA, MHC, physiology),
• cognitive (information-processing style),
• emotional (affect regulation),
• energetic (rhythm, tempo, resonance),
• structural (lifestyle, organization of daily life).

This mechanism is not a cultural choice. It is an evolutionarily established system for stabilizing relationships and reproduction.

II. Text and Image – The Beginning of Überlagerung

The spread of print initiated the first stage of informational overlay on relationships. Text began to function as a carrier of shared representations, reaching many people simultaneously. For systems lacking a stable reference point, narrative was not interpreted—it was adopted as a framework of reality. Printed images intensified this process by standardizing:

• appearance,
• proportions,
• aesthetic ideals.

An image:

• does not respond,
• does not synchronize,
• does not undergo feedback regulation,

yet it triggers biological reactions. This marked the beginning of visual Überlagerung—the overlay of imagined representations onto lived relational experience.

III. From Print to Cinema, Television, and Mass Resonance

Cinema and television introduced movement, sound, and time. The image ceased to be static and became a process guiding the viewer’s perception. Shared viewing:

• synchronized emotions,
• generated collective resonance,
• activated real neurobiological responses.

Sport became a secular ritual of mass synchronization. The resonance was intense but short-lived. Once the stimulus ended, the system returned to its local rhythm. This was not a new mechanism. It was an intensification of an existing phenomenon.

IV. Stimulus-Selection Systems – Algorithmic Personalization

The contemporary phase of Überlagerung is based on stimulus-selection systems—electronic transmissions that filter and personalize information. Today, these systems are embodied in algorithms. Algorithms:

• do not create relationships,
• do not alter biology,
• do not introduce new mechanisms.

They optimize attention, reaction, and exposure time. Instead of a single image, millions of streams emerge. Überlagerung becomes a continuous, individualized calibration of perception.

V. The Physics of Information – Why Images Act Without Contact

Twentieth-century physics demonstrated that information is not merely a description of matter. A system’s state can be updated through information without classical local contact. The EPR phenomenon does not explain love. It delineates the limits of classical thinking about interaction. This helps us understand why:

• image,
• sound,
• movement,
• narrative

can activate biological system responses before any real relationship occurs.

VI. Dopamine – Driving Force and Source of Disorientation

Dopamine is not a “happiness hormone.” It is a system of motivation for action. As emphasized by Dr. Andrew Huberman, dopamine:

• initiates action,
• sustains effort,
• enables long-term projects—including relationships and parenting.

The problem is not dopamine itself, but how it is triggered. Algorithmic environments:

• stimulate dopamine without effort,
• in short cycles,
• through novelty and image.

Stable relationships:

• engage dopamine through effort, time, and synchronization,
• and then recruit other neurotransmitters: oxytocin, serotonin, vasopressin.

Dopamine does not disappear in stable relationships. Its function changes.

VII. Sexuality and Procreation – The Biological Engine of Development

Relationships and sexuality are not additions to evolution—they are its engine. Procreation required a mechanism that:

• guides organisms toward compatible partners,
• maintains engagement despite costs,
• supports offspring stability.

The animal world reveals this mechanism in purer form. The example of salmon returning to their birthplace (homing) shows that:

• orientation,
• effort,
• total energy expenditure

are subordinated to a single biological goal. In humans the mechanism is more complex, but the principle remains: sexuality and partner selection serve system stability, not stimulus maximization.

VIII. DNA and the Limits of Image

Changes in appearance:

• alter visual signals,
• increase dopaminergic attention,

but do not change DNA or resonance patterns. This is why visual transformations often lead to divergence:

• image ≠ system,
• intensity ≠ stability.

This is not a matter of blame or morality, but of systemic mismatch.

IX. Real Benefits of YourLoveCode Knowledge

For the individual:

• less choice chaos,
• fewer comparisons,
• greater relationship stability.

For the family:

• departure from attractiveness-ranking myths,
• more stable models for children.

For society:

• less compensation behavior,
• less image escalation,
• more realistic couples.

These are systemic benefits, not promises.

Überlagerung – What Does It Actually Mean?

Überlagerung refers to the overlaying of stimulus layers onto a single, unchanged biological mechanism. Just as in physics the concept of superposition does not remove the base state but masks it, image, narrative, and algorithm do not eliminate the relational mechanism—they merely obscure it. Thought directs energy not in a magical sense, but in a systemic one: attention, exposure, and repetition reinforce specific responses. Research on similarity (including twin analyses showing approximately 19% shared DNA), the observations of Carreras, data from Colorado, and Freud’s intuition (“we are connected by what we share”) all point in the same direction: the relational mechanism is based on similarity, not on image.

Conclusion

Image can amplify everything. Algorithms can accelerate everything. But only similarity, synchronization, and regulation can sustain anything.

Theoretical Frameworks and Inspirations

• Evolutionary biology and partner selection Relationship stabilization and reproduction as adaptive systems independent of cultural narratives and images.
• Biological similarity research Twin and non-related similarity studies indicating significant shared DNA (~19%) and convergence of phenotypic and cognitive traits.
• J. Carreras – the doppelgänger phenomenon Observations of structural similarity and resonance between genetically unrelated individuals.
• Neurobiology of motivation Dopamine as a motivational system (A. Huberman) and its functional transformation in stable relationships.
• Depth psychology Lines of thought describing relationships as processes of recognizing shared inner structures rather than maintaining projected images.
• Physics of information and limits of locality EPR phenomena as indicators that information can update system states without classical contact—not as explanations of relationships, but as boundaries of classical interaction models.
• Media and algorithmic systems Stimulus personalization as a mechanism of attention selection, not as a new relational mechanism.

Orienting Concepts (for the reader)

biological similarity · resonance · synchronization · image · narrative · algorithms · dopamine · relationship stability · Überlagerung · information