amanda mcarthur

may 22, 2020

Few things feel worse than getting dumped.

Whether it’s out of the blue or it’s been a long time coming, the end of a relationship can be a painful thing—particularly when you didn’t have any say in its conclusion. But why exactly is that pain so severe, and why can it linger for so long? We were curious, so we asked Dr. Helen Fisher, biological anthropologist and expert on all things that happen in the brain when you’re in love.

Related: What Happens When We Try to Tango

Sweety High: What parts of the brain are most active after someone’s been dumped?

Helen Fisher: My colleagues and I put 15 people who had just been dumped into a brain scanner, and many brain regions are active when you’ve just been dumped or broken-up with.

We found activity in brain regions related to intense romantic love, as well as regions related to deep attachment. Just because somebody dumped you doesn’t mean you’ve fallen out of love with them. You’ve remained in love with them for at least a while and you’re very attached to them. We also found activity in three brain regions related to craving and addiction, including a brain factory associated with both substance addictions and behavioral addictions, like gambling.

Last but not least, we found brain activity in a brain region linked with physical pain—not just the trauma that goes along with physical pain, but the pain itself. It’s the same brain region becomes active when you have a really bad toothache.

Oddly enough, we also see activity in a brain region linked with figuring out your gains and your losses. When somebody has dumped you, you might say, “Well I really liked his mother. Will she still talk to me? We went out with those friends. Are they still my friends? Who gets the dog? What have I gained? I’ve gained my freedom. I’ve no longer with a man who was cheating on me. I can get on with my life.” You lie in bed trying to figure out what you’ve gained, and what you’ve lost.

SH: With those brain regions active, what feelings or actions might manifest?

HF: There are three basic phases of being dumped. The first is shock, followed by protest and resignation. You can hardly believe it, and then you begin to fight it. Women will try to bargain and win their guy back, and try to compromise and talk it out. Both sexes will try to make you jealous by showing up with somebody else or confront the abandoning partner as well as any new person that partner is with. Then after a while, they give up. They can fall into lethargy, and a sense of hopelessness and despair. It can overtake you. And then, after a while, you begin to recover. You slowly return to normal and then you start to look for love again.

SH: What steps can we then take to heal after being dumped? 

HF: I often wonder why evolution made it so hard to get out of these ways of thinking. The one thing we’ve been able to prove is that time heals. Among our 15 people dumped, we compared those who were farther away from the experience. The longer it’s been since you’ve been dumped, the less activity we saw in the brain regions linked to attachment. You slowly begin to feel less attached and less in love with this person. Still, it certainly helps if you treat it as an addiction and you don’t meet up with them, don’t text them, don’t save their letters. It really speeds up that process.

      So many times I have begun reminiscing with a boyfriend about a holiday we shared, a movie we saw, or a trip we took—only to discover how little he remembered of the event.  While I could recall what I wore, what we discussed, where we went, even what we ate, it was all a blur to him.  And these were highly intelligent and kind men; in no way duds.   I enjoy this trait: remembering.   But I must admit, there are things I would prefer to forget.   While I remain plagued by things I did or said years ago, many men seem to live in the here and now.  And it’s not hard to blame a region of the brain: the hippocampus.  This primary part of the memory system is packed with receptors for estrogen—the largely female hormone.    So women remember.   Alas, we can also hold a grudge.  And we’re not alone.   I know of a female chimpanzee that held a grudge for over 20 years.   While strolling with her infant one jungle morning, a deranged neighbor seized her child to slaughter it, as she had done to others.   The seasoned mother rescued her wailing offspring.   But she was hostile to the thief all her life.   Like female chimpanzees, ancestral women had to remember even far smaller transgressions for years, as they struggled to rear their helpless young. 

      But why do men forget?  Testosterone may play a role.  Transsexuals report that after three months of testosterone injections to transform from female to male, they begin to live more and more in the here and now; they remember less of the past.   High testosterone men also focus on the here and now.   And like women’s acute memory for offenses of any kind, men’s lack of memory for transgressions is adaptive.   For millions of years men had to put aside their differences to hunt together.   Surely they remembered serious betrayals (as modern men do too); but it was expedient to overlook, indeed even forget, minor squabbles in order to do their job.   These ancestral differences play out in business.  After a vicious office battle, all the men will go out together for a beer, while all the women head home alone, often remaining hostile or wary for days or weeks.        So the next time he can’t remember the details of your wonderful vacation together, just remind him.   He’ll be relieved you didn’t haze him for forgetting; and you can regale him with the juicy tidbits of these precious times.

I am not entirely sure why men hate it when women ask “what are you thinking.”   I used to do that quite a bit, actually, and I never really got anyone to answer.   But my twin sister and I have asked one another this question since we were small children.   We used to have a game called “now.”  And when I said “now,” she would have to answer; and vice versa.  We liked the game because we often found that when we were asked, we discovered that we were really thinking of about 5 things at once!   It was fun.  

But I think men feel invaded.   Men are, by and large, more “emotionally contained” than women are.  As testosterone floods the brain in teenage, they begin to use “joke-speak,” masking their real emotions with humor.   I have long thought that men’s emotional containment (which is found in many cultures) evolved millions of years ago on the grasslands of Africa, where men were obliged to do a lot of aggressive tasks.  It’s not really adaptive to feel empathy while slitting the throat of a baby gazelle, for example, or while raiding an enemy camp for food or territory.   So men evolved the ability to contain their feelings, sometimes even from themselves!  

So they are not as comfortable sharing their intimate world because they feel their words might backfire on them.   Men also suffer more from “emotional flooding.”  When they get angry or sad they are more likely to lose control and go beyond what they regard as appropriate.  So I don’t think men (on average) are as comfortable delving into their emotions, or women’s emotions; and when asked what they are thinking, they feel they are on unsteady turf, where they may lose our respect or love.   I suspect they have no idea how much we love them!

The holiday season can be very difficult for those in new relationships. You can become embarrassed at how your partner acts around your relatives. Or you show up at his/her family event and everyone ignores you — even your partner.  Some partners even vanish into their family world, forgetting you entirely.  So it’s not surprising that some 76% of singles we have polled at Match.com have broken up with someone over the holidays.  Moreover, 30% say it was their partner’s family that turned them off.  During these mid winter festivities, people show new sides to themselves, catering to acquaintances and accommodating to family — not always to you.   But come January, the peak season for dating, men and women get back to basics: finding The One.  Match.com sees a 25-30% increase in new members–with more than 2 million users logging in more than 30 million times during the first week of the new year.  As obligations recede, the drive to love — and to be loved — return.

 

An acute sense of justice and fairness are traits linked with the testosterone system in the brain.  So Superman’s affiliation with the “Justice League of America” is an immediate tipoff to his personality type:  a high testosterone male, what I call the Director.  He also looks like a Director.  Testosterone builds muscle—one of Superman’s outstanding traits.  His angular jaw, high cheekbones, thin lips and heavy brow ridges are also carved by testosterone. Oddly, these physical traits also signal his invulnerability—at least his imperviousness to disease.  Testosterone is a caustic substance that jeopardizes the immune system; only men with a very strong immune system can tolerate high levels of this male hormone. Superman is among them.  Most important, this “Man of Steel” saves people he doesn’t know.  Known as ‘heroic altruism,’ this willingness to confront severe danger to save a stranger is linked with elevated levels of testosterone. Directors want to be needed, to help, to “fix” the problems of the world.  Superman personifies this primordial male role: the protector.  Superman is the high testosterone Savior writ large. 

Wonder Woman exudes qualities built by estrogen, what I call the  Negotiator. This type is compassionate and nurturing; they seek peace and harmony, as Wonder Woman does. And I’m not surprised that she can talk to the animals.  Estrogen is linked with verbal skills, with intuition, and with the ability to read faces, postures, gestures and tone of voice.  All evolved to enable women to communicate with pre-verbal infants, even animals.  Wonder Woman has these elevated estrogen qualities in spades.  Yet Wonder Woman is no doormat. She is highly independent, like many women.  Moreover, with her social skills, she can be cunning. And she will fight.  Indeed, when protecting their young, women can become far more dangerous than just about any man.  Wonder Woman seems to regard all good humans as her children.  It is this genuine warrior spirit within a beautiful, tender-hearted woman that makes her the embodiment of all high estrogen women–and a mythic creature to most men.

THEIR RELATIONSHIP 

Superman and Wonder Woman are a classic match, the very high testosterone male and the very high estrogen female.  And they have many cultural and biological traits that will fuel their romance.  People tend to fall in love with those of the same background.  Although Superman comes from a different planet, while Wonder Woman harks from a isolated island, both are aliens to our modern world.  Both also have super human powers so each will understand the another’s strengths–including their mutual ability to fly.  More important, Superman and Wonder Woman share the same values and goals–essentials to a good relationship.  They are both dedicated to truth and justice; both dislike wasting time on irrelevant, trivial or boring matters; and both fight evil to save the good—traits shared by both the high testosterone and high estrogen type.  Moreover, both value personal autonomy.  Each will find someone who is just as independent as themselves.  

But they will have their problems.   She is a warrior, ready to kill her foes; he has killed and resolved never to kill again.  Neither is likely to understand this fundamental difference in values.   Nevertheless, this is a natural complementary match.  Directors such as Superman want a mate who has the strength of character to stand up to their formidable personality.  In Wonder Woman, the charming warrior, he has found his match. And in Superman, Wonder Woman will find a truly “good man.”

THEIR FIRST KISS.

A kiss is just a kiss?  No way!  A great first kiss can be thrilling—and trigger feelings of intense romantic love, due to the way the brain responds to novelty.  Any kind of unique situation triggers the dopamine system. And dopamine is associated with feelings of romance.  So if their first kiss is novel and exciting, it might push Superman and Wonder Woman over the threshold toward falling in love.

The first kiss could also trigger sexual desire.  Saliva has traces of testosterone, and men regularly like sloppier kisses, perhaps to transfer some of this male hormone and heighten the woman’s sexual response.  Moreover, a woman’s breath and saliva change across her menstrual cycle, so with his sloppier kisses, a man may also be unconsciously trying to pick up this subtle hint of her fertility.   Is Superman a sloppy kisser?  Perhaps we’ll find out.

In fact, the first kiss can be dangerous. In a study of 58 men and 122 women, 59% of men and 66% of women said that they had ended a romance after the first kiss.  It was the kiss of death.  Because as you kiss, you can see your partner clearly, as well as smell, taste, hear and feel them.  Instantly these messages from your senses are picked up by five of your twelve cranial nerves and escorted directly to the brain.  Here they detonate, providing vivid data about the person’s health, their eating, drinking and smoking habits, and their state of mind–whether they are rough and impatient or tender and calm. 

But if Superman and Wonder Woman like their first kiss, and turn into lovers, their kisses may trigger even deeper feelings for one another. Kissing among long-term partners raises oxytocin activity in the brain, producing feelings of trust and attachment.  Kissing a familiar partner also reduces the stress hormone, cortisol, contributing to this brain bath of pleasure, connection and relaxation. 

So kissing can trigger any one of three basic brain systems that humanity has evolved for mating and reproduction: romantic love, the sex drive, and/or feelings of deep attachment. And as Superman and Wonder Woman have their first kiss, they embark on one of Nature’s oldest—and most exciting–journeys. A kiss is far more than just a kiss, it’s nature’s way to start a partnership.

Adventure!  Some 85% of Match singles are drawn to a date who likes to explore.   And 76% say they want to try something new this summer.  Why is adventure such an aphrodisiac?  Because novelty triggers the dopamine system in the brain to make you feel alert, focused, energetic, optimistic…and often romantic too.  So when you find an adventurous partner, you are likely to have a companion who will keep you lively, healthy and romantic too. 

An anthropologist once asked a Kung Bushman living in a hunter/gatherer band in the grasslands of Botswana if he would marry a woman who was smarter than he was.  He replied, “Yes, because she’d make me smart too.”  Today 80% of singles say they “must have” or find it “very important” to have someone of the same level of intelligence.  And 89% would make a commitment to someone who is “considerably” better educated and/or more intellectual than themselves.

Why do we want a smart partner?  

Because intelligence comes with a host of perks.  It is correlated with having a higher income and a keener sense of humor, as well as with creativity, social savvy, motor coordination and skill at solving problems.  “Smart” anchors a relationship.  And a host of data I have collected with Match.com on a representative sample of Americans now illustrates that we are naturally drawn to someone with our level of intelligence.  

Other factors play a role in mate choice.  Timing is important.  If you’re not ready, you won’t notice the smartest person in the room, even if he or she is sitting on your lap.  We tend to fall for someone of the same socio-economic background, degree of good looks, same religious and social values and the same reproductive goals.   

Oddly, basic body chemistry also plays a role. People often say, “we have chemistry.”  To find out what they mean, I collected data on any brain system linked with any personality trait.  Indeed, we humans have evolved four broad styles of thinking and behaving, associated with four major chemical systems in the brain: the dopamine, serotonin, testosterone and estrogen systems. 

If, for example, you are highly expressive of the dopamine system, what I call an Explorer, you tend to be risk-taking and novelty seeking, as well as spontaneous, energetic, curious and creative.  And after studying the dating choices of over 50,000 members of Chemistry.com (a subsidiary of Match.com), I found that Explorers gravitate to other Explorers.  Be they backpackers who explore the world or urbanites interested in symphony or poetry, Explorersare drawn to individuals who join them in their physical or intellectual adventures. 

Builders, men and women who are highly expressive of the traits linked with the serotonin system also seek a partner like themselves.  These men and women are cautious and traditional. They respect authority, follow the rules, enjoy schedules and tend to be orderly and conscientious.  And they seek a partner equally eager to build family, home and community.  

But the last two biological types, the Director and Negotiator, seek their opposite: one another.  Directors, who are particularly expressive of testosterone, tend to be analytical, direct, decisive, tough minded and good at things such as math, engineering, mechanics, computers and/or music.  However, they are particularly attracted to the high estrogen type, Negotiators, those who see the big picture, and are imaginative, intuitive, compassionate and verbally and socially skilled. 

Each of us is a complex combination of all these brain systems and their associated styles of thought and action. But we do have distinct personalities—based, in part, on our biology.   Nevertheless, you can walk into a room filled with people of your type–and you don’t fall in love with all of them.  Here’s where intelligence comes in.  Among that array of potential partners, you will still seek those similar to you in intellect. 

So a recommendation for Valentine’s Day.  Intelligence comes in many varieties. And when you first meet someone, you tend to over-weigh the few things you know about him or her, then evaluate them on these morsels of information.  Give a potential partner a chance to show their brilliance.  The more you get to know someone, the more you like them and the more you think they are similar to yourself. 

You might even trigger your brain circuitry for intense romantic passion.  “Smart” is an aphrodisiac for love.

Is “smart” sexy?  Singles think so.  Today some 80% of singles say they “must have” or find it “very important” to have someone of the same level of intelligence.   And 89% would make a commitment to someone who is “considerably” better educated or more intellectual than themselves.  Why do we want a smart partner?  

Because intelligence comes with a host of perks.  It is statistically correlated with having a higher income and a keener sense of humor, as well as with creativity, social savvy, better motor coordination and skill at solving problems.  

These are sexy traits.  “Money” can buy an exciting weekend get-away.  “Humor” and “creativity” boost dopamine activity, which, in turn, can trigger testosterone and sexual craving.  “Good people skills” can translate into better communication between the sheets.  A “well-coordinated” partner is exciting to watch in the sack.  And those who are “skilled at solving problems” are likely to be better at resolving bedroom crises.  

An anthropologist once asked a Kung Bushman living as a hunter in the grasslands of Botswana if he would marry a woman who was smarter than he was.  He replied, “Yes, because she’d make me smart too.”  A smart partner might even make you smarter.   

Ignorance is bliss?  No way.  Smart is the new sexy.

“I don’t like money actually.  But it quiets my nerves,” said heavyweight boxer, Joe Louis.  We all like money, for many reasons.  But Singles today aren’t waiting for a fat wallet to win romance.  Indeed, when the 2012 Martch.com survey asked over 5,000 Singles in America, “In what ways has the current economic situation affected your dating habits,” 60% checked the box: “My dating habits haven’t been affected by the economy.”  Moreover, when asked whether the down economy had made them more interested in finding someone to share their life with, only 5.7% “strongly agreed” and 13.2% “agreed somewhat;” the rest disagreed or had no opinion.  For Singles, it’s business as usual.   They seem to understand the old refrain, “money can’t buy love.”

I’m not surprised that the economic downturn hasn’t seriously affected Singles’ dating habits.   I study personality.  And our attitudes about money—and the ways we spend our cash—have a genetic basis. I’ve seen some really stingy rich people.   And I’ve known some poor and middle class folk who were super generous.  Sure, many are now going to cheaper restaurants, buying fewer clothes and toys, and traveling to less exotic places.  But their economic woes haven’t changed their ancient drive to seek a mate, nor made them less picky about this partner—these habits are too deeply woven into the human brain to be squashed by an economic blip.

What blew my mind, however, was how Singles responded to a different query about money: “When, if ever, would you date someone who is unemployed?”  Some 36% checked the  box: “If I was interested in the person, unemployment wouldn’t matter.”  Money, that god of yesteryear, is losing its romantic value.   Singles are now seeking different traits in a partner:  Over 90% “must have” a mate whom they can trust and confide in, as well as someone who respects them.  Over 80% “must have” a partner who has a sense of humor and is comfortable communicating his or her wants and needs.  And 73% of both sexes want a partner who is physically attractive to them.  For at least 5,000 years both men and women were obliged to choose someone of their own religious, ethnic and economic background.  No more. Singles are turning inward, shedding these traditions to seek deep intimacy with another.     Times don’t change fast, of course.  Some 36% of women (and 13% of men) in this Singles in America study report that they “must have” a partner who makes as much money as they do.   And 45% of men are turned off by a woman who “doesn’t care about her career.”   But today many strive for more ancient goals: companionship and love.

William and Kate have chemistry!  They are perfect for one another–from the biological perspective. They both appear to be Explorers — novelty seeking, curious, creative people naturally expressive of the dopamine system in the brain.  As William summed up their mutual outlook on life:  “I like space and freedom.”  Brother Harry agrees,  recently saying, “He’s a wild thing.” 

From my studies on Chemistry.com, I have found that two Explorers are naturally drawn to one another.  And they make an exiting and effective team.  Explorers love to learn; they have many interests; and they are high energy, flexible, adventurous; and interested in sex.   He likes to fly helicopters.  She is a daring skier.  Both have found a partner who will work and play just as hard and creatively as they had always dreamed. 

But William and Kate also appear to have some differences in biology that will enhance their love for one another.  As well as being primarily an Explorer, William is naturally expressive of the estrogen system in the brain—what I call a Negotiator.  Indications of this are what he calls his guiding principles: “honesty,” “authenticity,” “thoughtfulness” and “caring.”  These are the ideals of a Negotiator.  Moreover, he once slept on the street in London to call attention to the homeless; and he is already involved in over 21 charitable organizations.  Diana wanted William to be a “people’s king.”  He’s built for it.

Kate is different. Like many female world leaders, she expressed more of the testosterone system—what I call a Director. She was a tomboy as a child, as well as a star athlete; and she still plays tennis and other competitive, action-oriented sports—indications of testosterone priming in the womb. She is also an amateur photographer, an interest that requires the spatial skills of the high testosterone type.  She goes to the gym every day—boosting levels of testosterone. And she is highly disciplined with what she eats (beans, salads, salmon and barbeque). Self discipline is another outstanding trait of the Director. Prince Charles has remarked of Kate, “She’s not like other girls; she never complains about bad weather.”  Indeed, Kate has also been called “formidable” and “self assured,” more traits of this biological type. The Director and Negotiator are also particularly drawn to one another, as well as nicely matched.  In this case, Kate will be a bold, inventive, analytical, fair and loyal voice on the pillow of her future king.  And with his compassion, imagination and romantic traits, William will be a supportive and charming teammate to this beautiful, dynamic forthcoming queen.