Are you in the depths of a relationship break-up? Now there is a new reason to smile and tuck into the Ben and Jerry’s! There have been plenty of studies about heartbreak – how long it will take us to get over that special someone, how it affects our health etc, but now there is some ace news – research that has shown that we have evolved to overcome heartbreak and find new love.
Experts have said that getting over someone is similar to getting over a cocaine addiction (yikes!) and while we may initially pursue our former partner to win them back, ultimately our brains are hardwired to recover and move on. Hurray!
The study looked at the process of falling out of love and splitting up from someone, something they call ‘primary mate ejection’ (sounds pretty harsh to us), and then moving onto a new romance, which they labelled ‘secondary mate ejection’.
Dr Brian Boutwell, of Saint Louis University, who conducted the study explained: ‘Our review of the literature suggests we have a mechanism in our brains designed by natural selection to pull us through a very tumultuous time in our lives. It suggests people will recover; the pain will go away with time. There will be a light at the end of the tunnel.’
The study also revealed that men and women break up with each other for different reasons. Men, for example, are likely to call time on a relationship if the woman had been sexually unfaithful because they wired to try and avoid raising children that aren’t genetically their own. Women on the other hand are more likely to reject a man who is emotionally unfaithful because they have evolved to value the resources their partners provide and emotional fidelity might suggest that these resources are going to be taken away.
Dr. Boutwell said: ‘Men are particularly sensitive to sexual infidelity between their partner and someone else. That’s not to say women don’t get jealous, they certainly do, but it’s especially acute for men regarding sexual infidelity.’
The study also took images of men and women who said they were deeply in love – and they showed that the activity in the parts of the pleasure areas were similar to those people who used cocaine.
‘To sever that bond and move on is a huge ask of a person,’ Boutwell added. ‘Ultimately, trying to move on from a former mate may be similar in some ways to an attempt at breaking a drug habit.’
He concluded that the brains of former cocaine addicts might resemble those who have split with their partners – and argued that once the addiction was severed the brain helped the person move on and find a new partner.
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