Can we fall out of love whenever we want? Part of science says yes

In May 2020, Omar Ruiz was heartbroken. “My wife told me she wasn’t in love with me anymore.” Shortly after, the two, who had been married for 11 years, separated.

He said not only was he devastated, but as a couples and family therapist, “this whole process challenged my professional identity,” said Ruiz, who is 36 and lives in Boston. “How can I help couples when my own marriage is falling apart?”

So he decided he needed to fall out of love.

“People say heartbreak is normal, so we shouldn’t try to fix it,” said Sandra Langeslag, an associate professor of psychological science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, who studied the effects of separations on the brain. But she reminds us that there are many common and even serious illnesses that we try to cure, so “why shouldn’t we try to help people with a broken heart try to move forward?”

Heartbreak has inspired music, poetry, visual arts, ice cream listening sessions with friends, and even a new hotel. And regardless of the reason — be it death, cognitive impairment, divorce or otherwise — most of those who experience it hope to recover and maybe even fall in love again with someone else.

But what if we really had some control over the process? Can one deliberately fall out of love? Part of the science says yes.

“You can work this out,” said Helen E. Fisher, a biological anthropologist and senior researcher at the Kinsey Institute in New York. She studies the anatomy of love and, in 2005, analyzed brain scans of 100 people using MRI scans to identify the circuitry of romantic love.

Fisher said he found that the same area of ​​the brain associated with hunger and thirst — known as the ventral tegmental area, or ATV — is activated when you’re in love, making it “an impulse, not an emotion.” This biological function makes falling out of love as difficult as trying not to feel thirsty. In other words, it’s not easy.

Kisha Mays, 40, who runs a business consultancy in Houston, continued to love her ex-boyfriend even while he was in prison. They were in an intermittent relationship for years, she said, and got back together two years before he was released in October 2021. Two months later, he broke up with her, Mays said.

“Now it’s just healing and rebuilding and learning to trust again,” she said, noting that reiki and spiritual healing — as well as throwing away all of his belongings — helped.

Fisher would agree with Mays’s technique: she suggests treating the recovery process as if it were an addiction and throwing away the person’s cards, letters, and memories. Don’t keep in touch or ask mutual friends how this person is doing. “You’re just feeding a ghost,” she said.

Fisher, who put 17 people who were just discarded into brain scanners, found activity in the ATV and brain functions linked to attachment and physical pain. “Not anxiety linked to physical pain, but physical pain,” she said.

Langeslag also said there is hope for the disillusioned. She did two studies to see if people could try to feel less passionate. The strategies that worked? First, it helps to have negative thoughts about the person you are trying to fall out of love with. The downside? “Thinking negatively makes you feel less in love, but not better,” Langeslag said. “Worse, actually.”

What then? Distraction. Think of things that make you happy other than the person you’re trying to fall out of love with. It made people happier, but not less in love. The solution? The “double punch,” as Langeslag described it, or: negative thoughts about the person followed by a dose of distraction.

His research found that people were able to deliberately diminish their love, but not completely banish it. The average amount of time to heal hurt feelings, according to data collected among their respondents, who gave personal accounts, was six months, although the healing time depended on several factors, including how long the relationship lasted.

Rachelle Ramirez, a writer and editor in Portland, Oregon, still remembers a time when negative associations worked for her. When she was 15, she felt what seemed like an incurable crush on a classmate who was far less interested in her.

“When I say his disinterest was excruciating, it’s often seen as teenage melodrama,” said Ramirez, who is now 47. “That assumption doesn’t even come close to capturing the pain” she felt at the thought of him.

So how did Ramirez nullify it? “I imagined him covered in vomit and holding dead kittens,” she said. “I know it was radical and I wouldn’t suggest that everyone try it, but it worked for me.”

Some do not believe in the idea, whether supported by science or not, that it is possible to voluntarily stop loving.

Bethany Cook, a Chicago-based clinical psychologist specializing in neuropsychological assessment, is suspicious of the idea of ​​a person being able to control detachment from love.

“Love and affection are basic human needs. We can’t deliberately deny ourselves that. It would be like saying we can consciously choose to stop breathing,” Cook said. “We don’t have that power, and pretending we do is a way for the psyche to fool itself into thinking it has control, it’s an unhealthy coping mechanism.”

“Humans can stop loving someone, but not deliberately,” he added. “To suggest that humans deliberately act in a way that depletes a basic need is contrary to the basic nature of what makes us human and what science tells us about our species.”

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves