Anyone who has painstakingly belted out the words to '70s rock band Nazareth's big hit ("Love hurts, love scars, love wounds and marks….Ooo-oo love hurts"), knows it’s true. A broken heart can hurt like a mother.
“When we break-up, or are rejected, the separation from the beloved is almost like hacking off a part of ourselves — the pain of heartbreak uses some of the same circuits in our brain associated with physical pain and tries to get us to not break up with a loved one,” says Louann Brizendine, M.D., a neuropsychiatrist and practicing physician at the University of California San Francisco and author of
The Female Brain
and
The Male Brain
. In plain English: Your brain doesn't want you to lose the body part (a.k.a. ex) that seems to have been chopped off (a.k.a. unceremoniously cut out of your life).
Photo: Via Calvin Klein