In May 2020,
Omar Ruiz found himself with a broken heart. “My wife told me she was no longer in love with me,” and shortly thereafter, the couple, who had been married 11 years, separated.
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Not only was he crushed, he said, but as a marriage
and family therapist, “this entire process challenged my professional
identity,” said Ruiz, who is 36 and lives in Boston. “How could I help couples
when my own marriage is falling apart?”
So he determined that he needed to fall out of love.
“People say heartbreak is normal, so we shouldn’t
try to fix it,” said Sandra Langeslag, an associate professor of psychological
sciences at the
University of Missouri-St. Louis who has studied the effects of
breakups on the brain. But she points out that there are plenty of common, and
even serious, diseases that we try to cure, so “why shouldn’t we try to help
people with heartbreak and try to move on?”
Heartbreak has inspired
music, poetry, visual art,
ice-cream-filled listening sessions with friends, and even a new hotel. And
regardless of the reason — whether death, cognitive impairment, divorce, or otherwise
— most who experience it hope to recover and maybe even fall in love again with
someone new.
What if we actually had some control over the
process? Can one deliberately fall out of love? Some of the science says yes.
“You can work on it,” said Helen E. Fisher, a
biological anthropologist and senior research fellow at the
Kinsey Institute in
New York. She studies the anatomy of love, and in 2005 studied the brain
imaging of 100 people using MRIs to pinpoint the circuitry of romantic love.
Fisher said she discovered that the same area of the
brain associated with hunger and thirst — what is known as the ventral
tegmental area, or VTA — becomes activated when you are in love, making it “a
drive, not an emotion.” This biological function makes falling out of love
about as hard as trying not to feel thirsty. In other words, it is not easy.
Kisha Mays, 40, who runs a business consultancy in
Houston, continued to love her former boyfriend even while he was in prison.
They were on and off for years, she said, and got back together for two years
before he was released in October 2021. Then two months later, she said, he
broke up with her.
“Now it is just healing, rebuilding, and learning to
trust again,” Mays said, noting that reiki and spiritual healing — along with
throwing out all of his belongings — have helped.
Fisher would agree with Mays’ technique: She
suggests treating the recovery process as you would an addiction, and
encourages you to throw out the cards, letters, and keepsakes that remind you
of the person. Do not maintain contact or ask mutual friends how that person is
doing. “You’re just raising the ghost,” she said.
Fisher, who put 17 people who had just been dumped
through brain scanners, found activity in the VTA and in brain functions linked
to attachment and physical pain. “Not the anxiety linked to physical pain, but
physical pain,” she said.
Langeslag also said there is hope for the
heartbroken. She ran two studies to see if people could try to make themselves
feel less in love. The strategies that worked? First, it helps to think
negative thoughts about the person you are trying to fall out of love with. The
downside? “Thinking negatively makes you feel less in love but doesn’t make you
feel any better,” Langeslag said. “Worse, actually.”
What then? Distraction. Think of things that make
you happy other than the person you are trying to fall out of love with. This
made people happier but no less in love.
The solution? The “one-two punch,” as Langeslag
described it, or: negative thoughts about the person followed by a dose of
distraction.
Her research found that people were able to
deliberately decrease their love, but not completely banish it. The average
amount of time for healed hurt feelings, according to survey data collected
from her subjects, who self-reported, was six months, although the healing time
depended on several factors, including how long the relationship lasted.
Rachelle Ramirez, a writer and editor in Portland,
Oregon, can still recall a time when negative associations did the trick for
her. When she was 15, she had what felt like an incurable crush on a classmate
who was far less interested in her.
“When I say his disinterest was excruciating, it’s
often seen as teen melodrama,” said Ramirez, who is now 47. “This assumption doesn’t
come close to capturing the pain” she felt when thinking of him.
So how did Ramirez quash it? “I imagined him covered
in vomit and holding dead kittens,” she said. “I know it was extreme, and I
wouldn’t suggest everyone try this, but it worked for me.”
Some do not buy into the notion, whether backed by
science or not, that willing oneself to fall out of love is possible.
Bethany Cook, a clinical psychologist in
Chicago who
specializes in neuropsychological assessment, is wary about the notion of being
able to control falling out of love.
“Love and
affection are basic human needs. We can’t deliberately deny ourselves of it.
That would be like saying we could consciously choose to stop breathing,” Cook
said. “We don’t have that power, and to pretend we do is a way for the psyche
to trick itself into thinking it has control, and is an unhealthy coping
mechanism.
“Humans can fall out of love with someone, just not
deliberately,” she added. “To suggest that humans deliberately act in a way
that depletes a basic need runs contrary to the basic nature of what makes us
human and what science tells us about our species.”
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