The Science of Falling Out of Love - Romeo Vitelli Ph.D.

The heart was made to be broken -  Oscar Wilde

Romantic breakups are an inevitable part of living, no matter how painful they can be.

Along with eliciting a wide range of emotions, including anger, sadness, and shame, surviving a breakup can mean potential health problems as well. These can include insomnia, reduced immune functioning, depression, and even the temporary heart condition known as "broken heart syndrome." How severe these symptoms can be often depends on the strength of the romantic relationship and how traumatic the breakup itself was.    

According to the

triangular theory of love first proposed by psychologist Robert J. Sternberg, passion, intimacy, and commitment can interact in different ways to form a typology of different kinds of love experience. Of these different kinds of love, the most well known are infatuation (passionate love) and attachment (companionate love). Romantic couples can progress through different types of love over the course of a relationship (for example, passionate love is most commonly seen in the early stages in a relationship before settling into the more stable companionate form). This means that the feelings that result from infatuation (whether mutual or one-sided) can be very different from what people in a long-term relationship may experience. It also means that the emotional pain after a breakup can be very different as well.    

Which brings us to the painful process of working through heartache. Though dealing with a romantic breakup can take considerable time and effort, research studies looking at romantic relationships and breakups have identified specific strategies people use to overcome heartache, some of which seem to be more effective than others. And a new study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General tests three of  these coping strategies from a neuroscience perspective to see how well they actually work.  

For the purpose of their study, Sandra J. E. Langeslag and Michelle E. Sanchez of the University of Missouri - St. Louis focused on three coping strategies commonly used to deal with romantic breakups. These strategies are:

• Negative reappraisal of the relationship -  by focusing on the negative qualities of ex-partners ("too clingy", "too cheap," "too old", etc.), it is often possible to reduce love feelings and feel better after the breakup.  Alternatively, it can also help to think about the negative features of the relationship itself  ("it wasn't going anywhere", "I'm not ready to get serious", etc). Unfortunately, this involves dwelling on negative thoughts that can often make people feel worse, at least in the short run.  In the long run however, negative reappraisal can still be an effective coping strategy.
• Reappraising the emotion itself -  another way of coping with a breakup is by learning to accept the emotions that come with it.   This can include recognizing that "post-breakup blues" are an inevitable part of a breakup. It can also mean admitting that you still have feelings towards your ex-partner and learning to accept these feelings without passing judgment on yourself.   
• Distraction - for many people, the simplest and easiest way to deal with a breakup is by throwing themselves into some activity that fills their time.   Whether by working harder and longer than usual, starting a new hobby, or binge-watching old movies, distraction can help people curb rumination and brooding, at least in the short run. While distraction is more of a short-term coping strategy, it can still help control the blues long enough to start moving on with life.  

To test these three strategies, the researchers recruited twenty-four participants ranging in age from 20 to 37 (20 women and four men) who had recently experienced a romantic breakup and were still reporting emotional distress as a result. Each participant provided the researchers with 28 digital pictures of their ex-partners. They also answered interview questions about their relationship including how long it had lasted, the quality of the relationship, as well as the amount of love they still felt for the ex-partner on a nine-point scale ranging from 1 (not in love at all) to 9 (very much in love). The participants then completed a questionnaire measuring how much control they felt they had over their love feelings.

For the next part of the study, each participant had their brain waves measured using an electroencephalograph under four separate conditions: 1. negative appraisal of the ex-partner, 2. reappraisal of love feelings; 3 distraction, and 4. a control condition. During each trial, participants were briefly presented with a question or statement to stimulate one of the coping strategies being studied. 

For the negative reappraisal condition, they were presented with the questions about negative qualities in their ex-partner such as "What is an annoying habit of your ex", "What is something disrespectful your ex did", or "What is something mean your ex said." With the reappraisal of love feelings condition, prompts included statements such as "Many people still love their ex", "It's ok to love someone you're no longer with", or "Loving someone is normal." The distraction condition included questions such as "What is your favourite song?  Why" or "Who is your best friend?  Why?" (participants were told to answer these questions mentally). For the control condition, there was no regulation strategy used. All conditions were given in a random order to avoid order effects.  

After initial EEG readings were taken, participants were then shown a picture of the ex-partner with EEG results measuring level of arousal. They also used a specialized slider to indicate how strong their love feelings were and valence of affect (how positive or negative they were feeling at the time). After the love regulation task was done, all participants completed a questionnaire measuring their likelihood of using each strategy when dealing with heartbreak.

As expected, results showed a strong correlation between amount of love participants felt for their ex-partner and how upset they were by the breakup. In weighing the individual strategies, negative reappraisal appeared to be especially useful in decreasing love feelings though it also tended to make people feel worse, at least in the short run. Despite this disadvantage, it was still the strategy participants reported being most likely to use after a breakup.

As for the other techniques, they didn't seem to work as well. Not only did love reappraisal fail to change love feelings, but participants remained skeptical about its value in dealing with heartache. As for distraction, it did seem to help participants deal with emotional pain but it did little to actually reduce love feelings. More importantly, it wasn't an effective long-term strategy since it really deals more with avoiding negative feelings rather than learning to overcome them.    

When looking at EEG findings, all three strategies appeared to decrease ERP (event-related potential) amplitude when participants saw pictures of their ex-partners. Since ERP amplitude measures motivated attention, this suggests that love regulation strategies work by desensitizing people to stimuli that can trigger strong emotions (such as a picture). This kind of desensitization also makes recovery from heartbreak easier by making people better able to handle situations in which they are reminded of their ex-partners. Still, since the study only focused on relatively short-term effects, it wasn't clear whether the three strategies were equally effective in reducing love feelings over a longer time period.

Based on their findings, Langeslag and Sanchez concluded that negative reappraisal and distraction were the strategies people were most likely to use after a breakup. They also suggested that anyone trying to use these different strategies should be aware that they may not work that well together. Negative reappraisal seems to work best in decreasing unwanted love feelings and can be useful in a range of different ways. Not only can it help in a breakup but it can also help people deal with unwanted infatuations such as a one-sided crush or the attraction a married person could experience for a non-spouse. On the other hand, reappraising the emotion may also be used to increase love feelings in a fading relationship people may want to preserve.  

Overall, being able to deal with romantic feelings, whether unwanted or not, is a skill like any other which can be learned. Along with dealing with the inevitable breakups and new relationships that occur across the lifespan, this kind of learning can be a vital part of staying emotionally healthy.

 Langeslag, S. J. E., & Sanchez, M. E. (2017, August 31). Down-Regulation of Love Feelings After a Romantic Break-Up: Self-Report and Electrophysiological Data. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication.