A Recipe for Overcoming Heartbreak

For much of our evolutionary history, humans lived in tribes consisting of the same ~150 people. Historically, we only ever felt the emotion of grief when someone died. We can no longer talk to them, and so we grieve their loss in our lives.

But in modern life, a previous romantic partner may not be dead, and instead just lives a few miles down the road. This is unnatural, evolutionarily speaking, but so are many things in modern life: we just have to adapt.

According to the science of attachment theory (a scientifically grounded framework within psychology which helps explain interpersonal bonding), there are good and bad ways to process heartbreak.

From Dr. Amir Levine & Rachel S.F. Heller's book Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find--and Keep--Love:

What proved through evolution to have a strong survival advantage is a human couple becoming one physiological unit. They are a part of me, and I will do anything to save them; having such a vested interest in the well-being of another person translates into a very important survival advantage for both parties.Our partner regulates our blood pressure, our heart rate, our breathing, and the levels of hormones in our blood. We are no longer separate entities.[One study] found that if you have a mild form of high blood pressure, being in a satisfying marriage is good for you; spending time in the presence of your partner actually benefits you by lowering your blood pressure to healthier levels.

What proved through evolution to have a strong survival advantage is a human couple becoming one physiological unit. They are a part of me, and I will do anything to save them; having such a vested interest in the well-being of another person translates into a very important survival advantage for both parties.

Our partner regulates our blood pressure, our heart rate, our breathing, and the levels of hormones in our blood. We are no longer separate entities.

[One study] found that if you have a mild form of high blood pressure, being in a satisfying marriage is good for you; spending time in the presence of your partner actually benefits you by lowering your blood pressure to healthier levels.

[This is what] heartbreak is all about—the longing for someone who is no longer available to us when our biological and emotional makeup is programmed to try to win them back. Even if your rational mind knows [that you’re no longer] with this person, your attachment system doesn’t always comply. The process of attachment follows its own course and its own schedule. This means you will continue to think about the other person and will be unable to push them out of your mind for a very long time.

[This is what] heartbreak is all about—the longing for someone who is no longer available to us when our biological and emotional makeup is programmed to try to win them back. Even if your rational mind knows [that you’re no longer] with this person, your attachment system doesn’t always comply. The process of attachment follows its own course and its own schedule. This means you will continue to think about the other person and will be unable to push them out of your mind for a very long time.

Humans have been using grieving rituals for thousands of years. But as I said previously, usually they’re reserved for our loved ones that have died, and not for romantic partners that are still alive. Because those partners are still living, we can accidentally make things worse, by fighting back against the loss, with another concept from attachment theory called protest behaviors.

Protest behaviors: an unconscious action or communication used to get a reaction, regain attention, or reestablish connection when you feel emotionally unsafe, insecure, or disconnected from a relationship.

After a recent breakup, every time you engage in protest behavior, you’re inadvertently reactivating your attachment system and making the pain worse. Here’s a toxic four-step cycle that can repeat itself if you let it.

You feel separation anxiety, longing, emotional distress, or uncertainty whether the relationship is truly over.

You perform a protest behavior to feel closer to them.E.g., checking their social media for clues.

E.g., checking their social media for clues.

You feel temporary hope that maybe things aren’t totally over, and your attachment system gets reactivated.

But nothing changes, you experience the loss all over again, and the grief intensifies.

With a dead relative, we can’t perform any protest behaviors to regain their attention, so we’re able to simply grieve the loss. So the key to overcoming heartbreak, in my opinion, is to treat your former romantic partner as if they’re dead. And the research supports this:

The research paper “Staying Connected When Coming Apart: The Psychological Correlates of Contact and Sex With an Ex-Partner” suggests that continued contact with an ex, when either partner still has significant feelings for the other, increases psychological distress.

This other research paper “Facebook Surveillance of Former Romantic Partners: Associations With Postbreakup Recovery and Personal Growth” explains that monitoring your ex’s behavior online (which is a form of protest behavior to stay close to them), reengages the attachment system and also produces psychological distress.

In both of these papers, the participants were not accepting the loss and moving on (as if their former partner was dead), and were instead performing actions to protest the loss. To make things clearer, I’ll give some definitions to juxtapose what’s healthy (ie: processing the loss) versus what’s unhealthy (ie: protesting the loss):

Processing the loss: feeling sadness, missing your ex-partner, reflecting on the relationship, and gradually accepting the separation.

Protesting the loss: trying to reverse the separation in small (or large) ways, regaining their attention, and seeking evidence that the relationship isn’t really over.

Because I didn’t know any of this research, I did everything the wrong way. I tried to stay friends with my ex, but my attachment system got dysregulated every time I saw her, resulting in insomnia and a loss of appetite. When I finally decided to break off contact and delete her number, I kept asking mutual friends what she was up to, which kept my attachment system activated.

Only after I decided to stop seeing her in person, and asking my mutual friends to stop talking about her, did my attachment system finally calm down and heal.

Take advantage of the evolutionary process of grieving by acting as if your former romantic partner is dead.Do not engage in protest behaviors: do not contact them, do not gather new information about them, do not review old text messages or photos. Just process your emotions, and then let them go. Heartbreak sucks. When it’s fresh, the despair you feel can be overwhelming. For me, it felt like I had cold poison coursing through my veins, and that I had to vomit all the time.It’s good to remember that progress isn’t linear: there will be good days and bad days. But over time you’ll start to feel better.

Do not engage in protest behaviors: do not contact them, do not gather new information about them, do not review old text messages or photos. Just process your emotions, and then let them go.

Heartbreak sucks. When it’s fresh, the despair you feel can be overwhelming. For me, it felt like I had cold poison coursing through my veins, and that I had to vomit all the time.It’s good to remember that progress isn’t linear: there will be good days and bad days. But over time you’ll start to feel better.

It’s good to remember that progress isn’t linear: there will be good days and bad days. But over time you’ll start to feel better.

Avoid ruminating and trying to endlessly solve what went wrong.More on this next.

More on this next.

People with OCD, such as myself, often get stuck ruminating on the same thought over and over. We’re trying to achieve absolute certainty that we won’t make the same mistakes again. But by entertaining ruminative thoughts, our brains keep trying to solve something that is unsolvable—which is to change the past. And thus, we’re not able to move on.

After my first heartbreak, it took me several months to emotionally process what happened (by doing extensive journaling, learning more about healthy relationships, going to therapy, and talking to friends and family). Eventually, there was nothing new left to process, but my OCD brain wasn’t quite satisfied. It began ruminating and trying to figure out how to solve the past. Ugh. That never works.

From what I learned by overcoming OCD, I used my metacognitive and emotional regulation skills (e.g., ACT, ERP, & MCT) and applied them to my thoughts and feelings regarding heartbreak. It took me three days to overcome my ruminative symptoms.

On the first day, I had the feeling of cold poison surging through my veins, trying to make me feel guilty about the past, and to get me to reengage my attachment to my ex. To fix that, I didn’t punish myself for having that feeling (by denigrating my strength of character), I simply acknowledged the feeling, labeled it as an OCD symptom, and moved on with my day. My body tried using that same feeling against me a few more times, but each time I ignored it, the feeling got weaker (ie: “surfed the urge”). Once my strong feelings went away, my OCD brought in the calvary: ruminative thoughts.

That first day I was plagued with 14 hours of rumination, mostly about what I would say to my ex if I ever ran into her again (which I quickly realized was protest behavior in the form of a thought). My brain was desperately trying to get me to engage with the subject matter. But I refused. Each time, as a form of negative reinforcement, I said out loud to myself, “ruminating”, and went on with my day (staying busy helps).

I endured 14 hours of rumination the first day, 10 hours the second day, and 1 hour the third day. After that, my OCD brain gave up trying.

This isn’t to say that nobody ever rekindles a friendship, or even a relationship, with an ex later on. Some people have kids with their ex, and are therefore much more involved in their ex’s life. But to fully grieve someone and detach from them emotionally, you have to let go.

There’s a mourning period to breaking up with someone, because not only are you losing them, you’re losing the version of you that was with them. We don’t have an identity that’s within our skin, our identity is dispersed: we’re different with different people, right? We’re different with our parents, than we are with our friends, than we are with our partners. And I bet you really liked who you were when you were with her. And that’s why it hurts so much: because you lost her, and you lost that little part of yourself. You’ve got to find that part of yourself again. And you’ll do that.[It’s good to remember that] you’re not a noun, you’re a verb, you’re a doing thing. You’ve got to find someone else to love. Go and love them.If [heartbreak] didn’t hurt, [then that relationship] wouldn’t have [meant] anything. It’s grief. People don’t really understand what grief is. The opposite of grief isn’t happiness, the opposite of grief is forgetting.

There’s a mourning period to breaking up with someone, because not only are you losing them, you’re losing the version of you that was with them. We don’t have an identity that’s within our skin, our identity is dispersed: we’re different with different people, right? We’re different with our parents, than we are with our friends, than we are with our partners. And I bet you really liked who you were when you were with her. And that’s why it hurts so much: because you lost her, and you lost that little part of yourself. You’ve got to find that part of yourself again. And you’ll do that.

[It’s good to remember that] you’re not a noun, you’re a verb, you’re a doing thing. You’ve got to find someone else to love. Go and love them.

If [heartbreak] didn’t hurt, [then that relationship] wouldn’t have [meant] anything. It’s grief. People don’t really understand what grief is. The opposite of grief isn’t happiness, the opposite of grief is forgetting.

You don’t have to forget that your former romantic partner ever existed, just like how you will never forget your loved ones that have died. Instead, celebrate that your partner was in your life for a brief time, accept the loss, and move on.