Love and Heartbreak in the Brain

By Lucian Simon Ionesco

Love is not a physiological process that starts in the heart, it is an event that is built and sometimes destroyed in the brain. There is nothing like feeling in love and having the motivation to see, talk and kiss the loved one again. That set of feelings that makes us feel butterflies in the abdomen, tachycardia and sweaty hands, accompanied by nervous smiles is the neurochemical response of happiness associated with positive emotions. But sometimes the same person who makes us fall in love becomes the worst judge of our decisions, the victimizer, executioner and destroyer of our dreams or, worse still, a couple who for years destroys our self-esteem and humiliates our most cared for values.

 

This book looks at how most love relationships begin in the brain like a movie-worthy story: meeting, liking, and getting excited. Everything seems to point to the fact that the person with whom we fall in love is the one to love, the person to accompany us throughout our lives. Each kiss and caress usually indicates that we are facing the perfect person. At that moment, the brain releases and acts on it a set of substances that excite us, excite us and make us addicted: endorphins, enkephalins, adrenaline, dopamine and oxytocin. But this also takes away our objectivity, it transforms reality; we see only what we want to see.

 

In a short time –it can be weeks or months, but on average less than four years– the real personality of the couple appears: the compulsive ones, the abandoners, the violent ones, the manipulative ones, the unfaithful ones, the jealous ones, the compulsive liars, the immature, violent bottoms, addicted to difficult relationships. An endless list that sometimes goes from anecdote to laughter, to reflection, to tears. To dance a tango two are needed; to understand a relationship, too. 

This book looks at what goes on in the brains of both couples in a relationship in our common social context. Different stories, different actors, with dissimilar endings and unique experiences, in all of them one learns, discusses and tries to reflect. 

 

75% of everything that happens in our day is a brain interpretation; what we analyze today may change tomorrow or lead us to another conclusion. That is to say, only a quarter of the time of our daily life must remain with deep attention and must summon our intelligence and memory. Choosing, loving and breaking up a relationship should take up more of our time and consequently make us more aware of what we do. About 80% of the people we meet will walk out of our lives in less than five years in some way; Reflecting on this will help us understand that not all people will stay by our side forever, even if we love them, even if they are necessary.

If in a relationship both people are in love, why does one love more than the other? Love grows when it is shared, it should get stronger over the years, but indifference gains ground after getting what you want.

 

Why is a brain unfaithful? Is a lie really forgiven? Why do men tend to cling to relationships that are difficult? Why commonly does a woman usually put the end point of a relationship where the man left an ellipsis? What happens in the brain when someone loves in such a way that they do not see the damage caused by a manipulative and violent couple?

 

When you are done reading this book, you will have gained a lifetime of experience in just a few short hours.

The stories are interesting to follow, and the challenging concepts have been made easy to understand. So get ready to broaden your horizons and adjust your expectations because you are in for one hell of a ride!

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Editorial Atelerix Creative Quill
• Release date: Sep 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215778210

Lucian Simon Ionesco

I'm 51-year-old; I have a degree in psychology, specializing in motivation and mental disorders.I'm a Brazilian Christian, and I define myself as straight, and I'm a vegetarian. I grew up in an upper-class neighborhood. I was raised by my father and my mother, having left when I was young. I'm currently single. My most recent romance was with an artist called Ophelia Dana Phillips, who was 12 years older than me. We broke up because Ophelia felt Lucian was too busy for the relationship. My best friend is a chorus actor called Keira Morales. We get on well most of the time. I also hang around with Glenn Rees and Arran Davis. We enjoy worship together. I have decided to start my work writing since currently, due to the pandemic, I require an additional income. With the support of the Atelerix publishing house, I want to start giving my general knowledge about everything I have studied in my city to swim all this time. I hope that you fully recognize my writing and support me, especially if you have a loved one you can support with my knowledge; I will be more than happy to support me with a review of my book.

Book preview

FOREWORD

Love is not a physiological process that starts in the heart, it is an event that is built and sometimes destroyed in the brain. There is nothing like feeling in love and having the motivation to see, talk and kiss the loved one again. That set of feelings that makes us feel butterflies in the abdomen, tachycardia and sweaty hands, accompanied by nervous smiles is the neurochemical response of happiness associated with positive emotions. But sometimes the same person who makes us fall in love becomes the worst judge of our decisions, the victimizer, executioner and destroyer of our dreams or, worse still, a couple who for years destroys our self-esteem and humiliates our most cared for values.

This book looks at how most love relationships begin in the brain like a movie-worthy story: meeting, liking, and getting excited. Everything seems to point to the fact that the person with whom we fall in love is the one to love, the person to accompany us throughout our lives. Each kiss and caress usually indicates that we are facing the perfect person. At that moment, the brain releases and acts on it a set of substances that excite us, excite us and make us addicted: endorphins, enkephalins, adrenaline, dopamine and oxytocin. But this also takes away our objectivity, it transforms reality; we see only what we want to see.

In a short time –it can be weeks or months, but on average less than four years– the real personality of the couple appears: the compulsive ones, the abandoners, the violent ones, the manipulative ones, the unfaithful ones, the jealous ones, the compulsive liars, the immature, violent bottoms, addicted to difficult relationships. An endless list that sometimes goes from anecdote to laughter, to reflection, to tears. To dance a tango two are needed; to understand a relationship, too.

This book looks at what goes on in the brains of both couples in a relationship in our common social context. Different stories, different actors, with dissimilar endings and unique experiences, in all of them one learns, discusses and tries to reflect.

75% of everything that happens in our day is a brain interpretation; what we analyze today may change tomorrow or lead us to another conclusion. That is to say, only a quarter of the time of our daily life must remain with deep attention and must summon our intelligence and memory. Choosing, loving and breaking up a relationship should take up more of our time and consequently make us more aware of what we do. About 80% of the people we meet will walk out of our lives in less than five years in some way; Reflecting on this will help us understand that not all people will stay by our side forever, even if we love them, even if they are necessary.

If in a relationship both people are in love, why does one love more than the other? Love grows when it is shared, it should get stronger over the years, but indifference gains ground after getting what you want.

Why is a brain unfaithful? Is a lie really forgiven? Why do men tend to cling to relationships that are difficult? Why commonly does a woman usually put the end point of a relationship where the man left an ellipsis? What happens in the brain when someone loves in such a way that they do not see the damage caused by a manipulative and violent couple? Why do we deduce out of love that we can bear pain and forgive everything that comes from someone who says he loves us?

A basic answer is that it is due to the dependency generated by brain dopamine, which leads to a decrease in intelligence, associated with increases in oxytocin that allow us to be empathetic and supportive, even with those who are our victimizers. Associating violence and happiness in a relationship becomes a roller coaster ride of emotions and physiological brain processes that get tiring. In some cases, one of the members of the couple usually gets off that journey that leads us to nowhere emotionally or socially.

This book is not a treatise on neuroscience, it is an approach to the brain physiology of love and heartbreak, trying to propose an immediate explanation for the various expressions of love and heartbreak. If from this reading someone is interested in studying more precisely what happens in neurons during love, the first objective has already been fulfilled.

The second objective is to try to provide an explanation for one of the most important emotions and motivations in our lives through the dissemination of science.

CHAPTER 1: LOVE TO THE LIMIT

Iker no longer knows what to do. Valeria, his girlfriend, broke the television again, threw the computer out the window, and hasn't stopped screaming for ten minutes. He is locked in the bathroom, prisoner inside his own apartment in a mixture of anger and sadness. He thinks it's time for parting. For a year Iker has loved Valeria like no one else in the world. He always cries in despair when she humiliates him, but he opens the door again for her to apologize. It is a repetitive cycle of generating aggression, violence and numbness, and then receiving various forms of apology and making love again in an incredible way. Iker knows that this perverse cycle is becoming more frequent and more painful.

Valeria is 22 years old, she is very attractive, competitive, shrewd and takes great care of her way of dressing. She studied biology at a public university and although she has not graduated she has one of the best averages of her generation. She works as a salesperson for medical products. Iker met her at university and from the first moment he saw her he fell in love with her. Through mutual friends he tried little by little to find out about her life and one day he made up his mind: he invited her out of it. 

They began to have sexual relations from the first time they were together. Her sexual life was incredibly pleasurable and full of creative resources, which is why Iker had an enormous constant desire for that woman. As he got to know Valeria better, Iker felt sure that she was a different woman from the ones he had known.

Five weeks into the relationship, Valeria and Iker made the decision to live together. She took her things to the small apartment, settled in and adapted to the conditions of the small bedrooms. Although everything seemed perfect, Iker actually felt that everything had been too fast. But her sex appeal was so great that he had convinced himself that his love for her was worth trying anything for.

Valeria has always been one of firm decisions, her way of speaking is accelerated and she frequently expresses feelings of urgency; everything must be immediate, she cannot wait. Her intolerance began to cause the first problems between them. When Iker dared to argue her anger and desperation, she began to cry hysterically and tell him that she couldn't expect anything less from a man.

Valeria offended him, told him that he was too stupid to understand her, that it was little to her, and even while she was crying several times he told her: Leave me alone, run me out of your house. Iker felt totally disarmed and in most of the discussions he was the one who had to accept the situation. Iker gradually became more and more tolerant, the fights were more and more frequent,

Little by little, Iker found out through the voice of his own lover about various details of his sexual life: she lost her virginity to a cousin at the age of eleven at the initiative of Valeria herself. He has seduced the vast majority of high school and college professors he has taken a liking to, many of them for the pleasure of seeing them humiliated and then denying his pleas. Her seduction strategy has always allowed her to take advantage of each of the relationships, whether it be with economic advantages, or through an increase in qualifications or obtaining better working conditions. She has worked for two medical product firms, both her immediate boss and some clients have been selected to be mistresses in turn and then be struck off the list. By decision of Valeria herself, none of them could last more than a month at her side.

Therefore, Iker represented in the last six months a rupture of this line, which at times made Iker feel very good, but at other times he felt that the relationship was not mature enough and that it could end at any moment. The common denominator of the men in her life is that they needed her so much that it was not possible to maintain that relationship any longer.

The common denominator of the men in her life is that they needed her so much that it was not possible to maintain that relationship any longer. At the end of each of the relationships, she blamed her lovers for the end of the story; she was not to blame but they for her lack of interest or for her excessive attention, but in others, feeling that the relationship was not mature enough and that at any moment it could end.

Valeria was the daughter of an average middle-class couple, she had a brother ten years older, so at times she could be considered an only child. She was the spoiled daughter of her father; however, she does not fail to recognize her father's tyrannical and violent attitudes when he disagrees with her. Since adolescence, Valeria has not been able to stand being alone, she always needs friends or a couple to feel good. In her university, her jovial and passionate character has allowed her to meet the vast majority of the classmates of her generation.

The parties organized in her house gradually undermined the tolerance of her parents to the point of diminishing her help and attention, it was precisely at that time when she met Iker. It was more to invest her time than due to economic needs that Valeria looked for a job. Iker didn't have enough time or words to understand all the complexity that Valeria sometimes explained to him. She was a whirlwind, she came and went and at times she didn't come home, there were even nights when he didn't know where she was. Sometimes he would burst into jealousy without crying, bearing in mind the background of his beloved, the nights were hell for thinking that she could be with someone else.

The vast majority of the time it happened, she came back crying asking for forgiveness and at the same time promising that that would never happen again. However, Valeria's infidelities were more and more frequent, with different men, all of them accepted and put on a discussion table in which Iker did nothing more than feign her anger, cry her sadness and eat his own. her words. He did not understand how he could love a person who did not love him and who did not give him respect. All the discussions also ended with a I promise you, my love, it won't happen again, I'm going to change... but don't leave me Iker, please don't leave me.

Iker was barely three months older than Valeria, he was an average man in every sense of the word, in his way of seeing life and in his physique. He wasn't attractive, but he wasn't unnoticed by the vast majority of women either. His parents had divorced when he was eleven years old. Originally from the State of Mexico, he had a hard time getting to university, so he had to go to work to pay the rent in a modest apartment five minutes from the University.

The relationship with women was quite complicated for him. He had had two girlfriends, of which only the last one left him with the experience of knowing how to behave with a girlfriend socially, ask permission and return to the hours that they had to fulfill socially in her house. He had barely learned how to be a serious boyfriend when his ex-girlfriend decided not to be with him anymore and broke up with him. Iker already understood the process of falling in love, the lack of love and the illusion of reconnecting with another person. Almost two years after this he met Valeria.

It was a hurricane of emotions and contrasts that he could not fully understand or explain, but it fascinated him, made him feel like another person, he even wanted to return to each of his cycles, something that sometimes terrified him and sometimes gave him satisfaction.

Valeria and Iker have had two crises prior to today's. The first when she did not return to the apartment to attend a party in which she met an occasional lover. Iker couldn't believe it, he had given her loyalty, support and trust. She played for the first time to tell him: If you don't like it, then leave me! The next day, Valeria apologized and promised not to do it again.

The second crisis happened three weeks ago: Iker dared to check his cell phone and there he found photos and videos of some meetings Valeria had had with men he didn't know. Iker exploded in anger and jealousy, he also shouted and became violent. Seeing herself discovered, Valeria began to cry, she knelt down to ask him how it was possible that he was capable of daring to search her things.

The crisis was such that Valeria broke the television with the cup of coffee that she had in her hands. She seemed possessed, she knocked over the bookshelf, took out her most important documents and started to pack her clothes. Iker convinced her that they should both calm down and think about things better.

Two days later, Valeria told him that she would definitely seek psychological help but not to leave her, and for the first time she told him that if he was able to leave her she would kill herself. Iker couldn't bear the idea that Valeria could die, much more because of a decision he made.

Iker realized that Valeria was not the person he thought she was. Over the last few months he has taken the whole situation and each one of the events that he has learned about with great pain. It is evident that he feels uncomfortable, it is clear that sometimes he does not want to return home so as not to argue with her again. He feels scared and overwhelmed; however, he is still in love with his wife and her magic, which at any moment explodes in anger and fury. Arriving home, Iker hears Valeria's laughter from afar.

She is on the phone and doesn't notice that Iker is standing in the doorway. She is lying on her stomach talking - surely with a man - with words of passion and desire. He insists on seeing her again and tells her that he will send her new photos so that he will feel passion for her again. Iker is once again a witness to a situation that is already a reason for him to end definitively. He let Valeria finish the phone call. At that moment, he told her: Valeria, take your things and go. It is for others, you will never change. Valeria was surprised but she immediately accused him of spying and watching, she started with the rudeness and the yelling. Iker, sobbing, told him: This time it's not going to be like the others, I've decided that this has to end.

Sobbing, he told her: This time it will not be like the others, I have decided that this has to end. Please understand, don't make me suffer anymore, don't humiliate me anymore.

Valeria started crying and then she started screaming so loud that the neighbors went to ask if they were okay. It was evident that there was excessive violence within that department. Valeria, knowing that Iker's thesis was in one of her computer files, grabbed it with great force and smashed it against the wall until she was tired. She yelled at him:

You don't run away from me, Iker, I'm the one who's leaving! Indeed, it is time to separate, you are so little that you behave like this. You don't value me, you didn't give me what I needed. With you I never expected anything... I was never anything and I will be nobody. That I made it very clear to you that if I was with you it was out of pity. And if I didn't tell you before, it's because it didn't suit me.

There was a silence that lasted for hours, only interrupted by the sound of a door being closed outside. Iker came out of the bathroom to confirm the terrible damage that the apartment had suffered: his torn clothes, his painted shoes, the broken television and the discarded computer.

Actually, that was not what mattered to him, in his head he was spinning how it was possible for a person to change so much, for Valeria to make him suffer in such a way. Iker did not leave his apartment for three days. The phone rang almost every hour, it was Valeria.

She left him so many messages that it was hard to estimate how long it would take for her to hear them all. In some she apologized, in others she threatened him and in still others she spoke in a meek voice, as if nothing had happened, and she asked him to let her return. If there was one thing that was clear to him, it was that this department had returned to being calm and he had the certainty that nothing bad would happen to Iker. On the fourth day a locksmith changed the key, on the fifth day Iker changed all the things in her bedroom, he kept everything that belonged to her in some boxes and little by little the tears diminished.

Two weeks later, Valeria stood guard outside Iker's work. She was waiting for him, and Iker's friends made this situation clear to him. Iker was in so much pain that he didn't want to see her or talk to her. He did not leave the office to eat, he hid and went out through a door that few employees knew and led to a back street. The letters under the door of Iker's apartment were more frequent, a new note appeared every day, the vast majority blaming him for the breakup, others with the words sorry and call me.

A month later, Iker left the apartment to move to another place. Her desperation and anxiety was so great that several times he wanted to call her and answer her messages, but he knew that this would restart the vicious circle. His strength increased when he decided to go to a professional therapist, a psychologist who from the first session told her: Valeria does not have adequate management of her personality, her disease has a name called: borderline personality disorder. personality.

The terms were not far from Iker's understanding, he knew about the field of neurosciences from his readings in the fifth semester. Better understanding the situation he lived through gave him the strength to try to get out and realize the toxicity of that relationship.

For three months Iker received letters from him every day in his office, posters and documents that oscillated between Valeria's anger and the request for an interview with him to apologize. One day, the windshield of Iker's car was shattered by obvious blows from a blunt instrument. In the end, Valeria stopped insisting.

Almost a year has passed since the last time Iker saw Valeria.

He managed to graduate, received a promotion at his job and is dating Raquel, a young woman a year younger than him. Everything seemed to be much better, until today in his office he received a yellow envelope with a document written in Valeria's handwriting with a single sentence: Iker, I still love you and I'm watching you.

●  What happened in their minds?

The neurochemical characteristics of Valeria's brain have been widely studied: the levels of neurotransmitters that activate the cerebral cortex such as serotonin, adrenaline and noradrenaline are slightly higher compared to the average person. This motivates her to have great neuronal activity, selective attention and an ease of anger outbursts. Commonly, people who suffer from personality disorders called borderline disorder are characterized by frantic behaviors to avoid abandonment and frequently experience a process of imaginary separation that makes them suffer too much.

The vast majority of their relationships, both family and couple, are unstable. Their couple relationships are very intense, alternating between episodes of idealization and devaluation towards the same person. The perception of her self-image is unstable, she sometimes feels beautiful and sometimes ugly, she oscillates between feeling very thin and defining herself as very fat.

Impulsivity is one of the fundamental characteristics of this personality disorder, which is potentially harmful to the person. For example, it can break wads of money, throw the television out the window, smash the computer, or destroy a car in a matter of minutes. This impulsiveness can also be seen in other behavioral traits, for example, frequent reckless behavior, excessive spending, binge eating, substance abuse, immediate decision making without evaluating the consequences, or excessive sex sessions.

The behaviors are so intense that suicidal threats or attempts are also very common: borderline personality disorder is behind 8 to 10% of suicides. It is common to witness the self-mutilation of both their clothes and their hair or to see them bite their nails. Sometimes they indicate that through pain they make people pay more attention to them.

People like Valeria have affective instability due to fluctuations in their mood. At times they make the people around them feel uncomfortable, which can immediately lead to anger, anxiety or a feeling of emptiness that can last from minutes to hours or a day. The anger is so frequent that the people around him understand that it is the main marker of his state of mind.

They do not control their anger, their short temper and constant anger cause them to have frequent fights at work or at home. In less than two hours, the person can be talking as if no