Have you ever paused to consider how painful it sounds when we describe relationships? You have a crush on someone. He makes you weak in the knees. You love her to death. And when the relationship is over, you break up; you're left heart-broken, heartsick, and shattered over the loss.The reason why love sounds so unpleasant is because it is. In fact, love and the loss of love can quite literally hurt.
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Why Is Love So Painful?
"I don't think anyone is going to confuse a stubbed toe with going through a breakup," Naomi Eisenberger, a co-author on the study, told The Atlantic. "But emotional pain has been a kind of second-class citizen. I think we take physical pain a bit more seriously. Our work suggests that we should think seriously about the impact of emotional pain, too."Read more: Am I Going to Die Alone? I Asked a Bunch of Psychics to Find Out
Love Can Hurt Just As Much As Physical Pain
Emotions are not some mysterious ghost-like thing. Emotions are a physical phenomenon.
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From an evolutionary perspective, he explains, it makes sense that relationships might provoke reactions from the same areas involved with physical pain. "If an animal has a new survival challenge, the most efficient way to adapt that is to use some kind of physiological system that's already there in that animal." Eventually, when it became important for humans to be connected to others, these pain systems were co-opted to make us feel bad when things aren't going well socially. "Imagine trying to survive by yourself on the African savanna," he says. "That's literally a life or death situation." That's why social inclusion became so important, he says. "Some mechanism needed to kick in and say, 'Look, I'm going to make you hurt. You need to do something about this.'"And, MacDonald argues, that pain is probably a healthy response, especially early on in a relationship when people are susceptible to becoming obsessive about their partners. Feeling some physical agony—such as chest pains or queasiness—may help a person adjust their expectations of their relationship, motivate them to talk to their partner about their needs or make them reassess how valuable the relationship is, he says.The question is, how concerned should we be when we experience physical discomfort we think is related to love? "In severe cases, it's certainly something to be mindful of," MacDonald says, especially when you "recognize your body is reacting as if a threat to a relationship is a threat to your life.""Emotions are not some mysterious ghost-like thing. Emotions are a physical phenomenon," he says. "[They] are just your body taking in information about what's going on in the world and preparing you to react appropriately."
Is It Emotionally Normal To Love Someone So Much It Hurts?
One of the bigger takeaways, MacDonald continues, is that these love-induced pains are functional. "We do ourselves a disservice when we try to ignore them or make them go away rather than sitting and listening to them. These negative emotions are part of an adaptive response and healing process," he says. "If you love someone so much it hurts, take time to sit with that. Try to understand why the need is so great. There's something going on here that's bigger than this particular relationship."In honor of Valentine's Day, we're spending the week debunking myths and lies about romance. Read the rest of our "Love is a Hoax" coverage here.