Whenever a lover is rejected or if we put that in contemporary terms ‘dumped’ there are mainly four types of psychological responses. Protest Response is the phase in which the deserted lover attempts to regain the love of his abandoning partner. This response according to academics such as Helen Fisher may have evolved in human beings to push them to seek the lost love.
Second response is ‘despair’ which is a signal to your loved ones and family that the rejected lover needs help. Despair leads to depression which especially in case of mild depression pushes the rejected lover to take a break, contemplate and eventually grow to become a romantically evolved being from being a hopeless romantic.
As I discussed last year, pre-frontal cortex is linked with cognitive capabilities related to human uniqueness: purposeful actions towards higher goals, complex social information processing, introspection and language. During the early stages of love scientists have observed that this recently evolved part of brain shuts down where the oldest evolutionary part of brain associated with drive, craving, obsession and motivation becomes rather hyperactive hence wrecking the balance.
So the transformation from being a hopeless romantic to an evolved one is basically the transfer of brain activity to pre-frontal cortex from the portion of brain linked with obsession, drive, craving and all.
Rejected lovers in order to make this period of transformation bearable usually turn to anti-depressants, religion and even drinking.
Anyway, it is argued that Abandonment Rage which is another psychological response may have evolved to push the rejected lover to look for someone else. All these psychological human responses that have evolved over millions of years eventually serve the reproductive goals of human race.
Abandonment rage is usually perceived by either or at times both partners as treachery. So ability to psychologically deconstruct this response which stems from at first understanding it is necessary in situations where objective is mending fences. Again going back to Labour of Love – I where I referred to the Theory of Quantum Entanglement in Quantum Physics which suggests a concept of fundamental wholeness in a sense that particles once entangled are still deeply connected even if they are placed at two opposite ends of Universe defying concepts of locality and causality.
Keeping in mind the aforementioned theory and the analogy I drew with romantic partners it is highly likely that a relapse may happen even years after break up so it can be argued that recovery as in cases of addiction or depression is not a permanent phenomenon and also recovery is also not a linear phenomenon.
Some academics suggest that love is an addiction. Dr Lucy Brown calls it Natural Addiction an altered state of human mind and like any other addiction humans go through has withdrawal symptoms which may involve obsessive thinking, crying spells, lethargy, severe anxiety, loss of appetite or binge eating, sleep disturbances, irritability and chronic loneliness.
Neuroscientists Andreas Bartels and Semir Zakir compared brain scans of people happily in love with drug addicts who were recently injected with cocaine or opioids. Surprisingly, in many cases brain scans showed activity in the same parts of the brain.
Here it is necessary to discuss the nature of first love which usually goes unreciprocated owing to its innate nature to violate the Law of Conservation of Energy. It has so much energy and passion at one side of the equation that the other side fails to reciprocate.
Down the road it is that first love and the pain attached with it that opens avenues of understanding of the matter. As Rumi once said, “The wound is the place where the light enters you.”
Wound is the impact the first love leaves and the light is the understanding that follows afterwards.
As I discussed last year,
pre-frontal cortex is linked with cognitive capabilities related to human uniqueness: purposeful actions towards higher goals, complex social information processing, introspection and language
Though love is a unique experience, but in most cases, the rejected lover evolves sooner or later after a heartbreak and one may see two greatly different human being if we make a third-party judgment. But evolution after a heartbreak involves lack of showcasing of vulnerability which in turn leads to lack of intimacy consequently either ruining or reducing charm of upcoming romantic involvements.
Even if the rejected lover in the later years displays vulnerability, he or she as a defence mechanism adds impurity in it. A rejected lover can now be called an evolved romantic where this addition of impurity in emotions is at times deliberate and at times unconscious activity aimed at protecting us from further disappointments as the idea of making an emotional investment on a single human being frightens every fibre of our being.
It is highly advisable that ‘evolved romantics’ who have a better control over their emotions and psychological responses owing to their past love experiences to be extra careful while indulging romantically with amateurs in love as they are more capable of hurting the other partner than the other way around. You may end up destroying life of another human being while in the short run may not feel a thing and stay emotionally insulated. Karma in the long run acts in mysterious ways.
No matter how passionate one is, the abandoned lover eventually gives up and resigns making up for last psychological response to rejection until relapse happens and the cycle repeats.
With the following verses of Saifuddin Saif I conclude,
Teri ruswaiyon say dartahun
Jab tere sheher say guzarta
Woh zamana teri muhabbat ka
Aik bhuli hui kahani hai
Kis tamanna say tujh ko chaha
Kis muhabbat say haar maani hai
I fear your disrepute
When I pass through your city
That time devoted to your love
Is a forgotten tale
With what passion I adored you!
With what love I have accepted defeat!
(Translation of these verses was done at my request by my mentor and Author of ‘Fractured Wholes’ and ‘Possible-worlds of Absurdist Texts’ Ma’am Saba Ajmal)
Happy Valentine’s Day!
The writer is an activist and a research analyst based in Lahore. He can be reached at [email protected] and Tweets at @beingkamil
Published in Daily Times, February 14th 2019.