Why can’t I stop thinking about my ex? 4 keys to understanding it

When a partner leaves us, we may be unable to get them out of our minds.

The lovesickness is one of the most painful phenomena that human beings can suffer and that we have all had to live through..

Surely at this moment there are many people who are having a bad time and who still think about that person they have loved and with whom they cannot be with.

What happens when our romantic partner leaves us?

Unfortunately, socially it is not well seen that an individual suffers for another person, because many associate it with a weak personality. In reality, forgetting about that special someone, that someone you loved, is a process that has its phases and that you have to overcome with time. However, falling out of love is not linear, as we can relapse and suffer at different times in our lives. With time, however, everything gets better or at least hurts less. Believe it or not, most people carry it inside.

Love is like a drug

Understanding heartbreak and stopping thinking about your ex may not always be easy. And to understand that it is not a linear phenomenon and that there can be relapses we must take into account that love, like drugs, uses the same neural circuits. It is clear that we cannot explain this phenomenon only with Biological factors, since cultural factors have a determining influence.

But that love is like a drug I am not saying it myself, but a study by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, which sought to learn more about falling out of love, concluded that when love is broken, just like what happens to a drug addict**, the separation from the loved one has serious consequences on our behavior**, such as depressive and obsessive behaviors.

Now, love and heartbreak are such complex subjects that there is no great consensus among scientists, but over the years, conclusions have been drawn from different research studies that have helped to better understand these phenomena.

Lovesickness hurts just like physical pain

But what exactly happens in the brain when we fall out of love? Some experts affirm that culture has a great influence on our tastes, for example, that we like a person who practices surfing or who is sapiosexual. But experts also warn that there are inexplicable things and that, as you will have seen throughout your life, you fall in love and that's it.. Sometimes you don't have to look for an explanation.

But when we fall in love, the brain undergoes a neurochemical cascade in which different neurotransmitters and hormones are involved.The most important factors that cause us to change our perception of life are: serotonin, norepinephrine (noradrenaline), dopamine, oxytocin, among others. When we are in love we are euphoric, we think continuously about the other person, we sleep less, etc.

• If you want to know exactly what happens when we fall in love, you can read our article: "The chemistry of love: a very powerful drug".

And of course, when love is broken, the neurochemical mismatch causes a behavioral change that takes time to stabilize.. Research has concluded that the same part of the brain that functions as a processor of physical pain is also tasked with processing emotional pain.

Psychologists recommend losing contact with the other person to overcome the breakup. In other words, in this situation the "all or nothing" must be applied so that the brain pathways related to heartbreak (and drug addiction) are weakened.

Remembering the partner in those moments....

In addition to the obsessive and depressive behavior characteristic of the first few months of heartbreak, it is common to remember one's partner at certain times of the year, it is common to remember one's partner at certain times after some time has passed.. Those programs you used to watch together, a car just like your ex's, those places you used to go together, those songs... can bring back memories of the person who was once your partner.

To understand this, you only have to think about the associative learning of classical conditioning, which can remind us of the partner months later and can make us relapse and cause us pain when we thought we had overcome it. Something that also happens in drug addicts. In the case of drug addiction, this phenomenon is known as conditioned abstinence syndrome.

Open wounds and their acceptance

But does it take a long time to forget the person you loved? Well, that depends on the situation of each person and the intensity of their feelings. But what is clear is that if we do not accept the breakup, the pain remains. Our beliefs are to blame for the fact that we keep clinging to the person who is no longer part of our lives. If we have been dumped, the decision the other person has made should be to respect it even though we may not like it.

The breakup may have been traumatic and we may need more time to get over the person. We may need to work on ourselves and our self-esteem before meeting another special person. But the first step to forgetting your ex is to accept that it's over. After your ex, life goes on. It is in your hands to get your life back on track, distancing yourself emotionally from the person who is no longer there, and grounding your happiness in yourself, in your own choices and possibilities.