Helen Fisher, PhD

Lost Love: The Nature of romantic rejection

Fisher, H (2006)
Cut Loose: (mostly) midlife and older women on the end of (mostly) long-term relaionships. Nan Bauer-Maglin (Ed.) New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.

“Parting is all we need to know of hell.”
—Emily Dickinson

“Fires run through my body—the pain of loving you. Pain runs through my body with the fires of my love for you. Sickness wanders my body with my love for you. Pain like a boil about to burst with my love for you. I remember what you said to me. I am thinking of your love for me. I am torn by your love for me. Pain and more pain. Where are you going with my love? I’m told you will go from here. I am told you will leave me here. My body is numb with grief. Remember what I said, my love. Goodbye, my love, goodbye.” This poem, recited by an anonymous Kwakuitl Indian of southern Alaska to a missionary in 1896, captures the excruciating pain of lost love.

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