The Psychology of Love, Heartbreak, and Healing | Guy Winch EP 807

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:12Brain studies have shown that the withdrawal from romantic love activates the same mechanisms in our brain as when addicts are withdrawing from substances. I don't know if that's from your TED Talk or on your website, but that seems fascinating to me that the same type of withdrawal from a relationship, from love, is similar to an addict from substances. Which one do you think is harder to heal from? Someone going through substance abuse or someone going through a breakup? Look, first of all, we have services for people who go through substance abuse. There's a lot of medical care available. There are medications available.

0:56There's support available, much less so for romantic heartbreak, especially if you're an adult, especially if you're older than your 20s where you're supposed to be over it, where these things are for kids kind of thing. And so you find then that you're going through a ridiculously difficult experience and people are looking at you like, come on, it's been a week. They're over it. You know, and you would not say that to somebody who's, you know, coming off opioids. But what's interesting to me is it actually starts before the heartbreak when people begin to fall in love. And anyone who's done that recently will remember you become addicted to the person.

1:37And it can happen extraordinarily quickly. It can happen because you swiped and they swiped back and you suddenly figured out, oh, this is it. she's the one that's going to be the answer to all my problems and you start to feel addicted i.e. you think about them all the time nothing else really matters as much there every correspondence every word tilts you up or down and what did she didn't say love you she always says i love you what now she was in the supermarket with five bags in her hand she didn't have this finger you know but that's not you go into a panic and so it starts when you get addicted love is an addiction or a form of one.

2:16That's why the withdrawal of love is the form of withdrawal. Interesting. So what is the way that most people fall in love? How does it look like in today's society? How do we fall in love? Is it, I see someone and eventually I make a decision, that's the person I want to be with. Like if something clicks, and is it around their identity or their potential identity of what they could give me in the future? Is it around our chemical attraction that gets us kind of deciding? Is it more analytical of like on paper, they look amazing and all their accolades and their status or what they can provide for me.

2:53When do we make a decision that I'm going to choose to love this person? We don't make a decision. We don't decide. Because if you decided, you could actually decide to fall in love. And there's so many people who would love to fall in love, maybe even with the person that they're actually with already, but struggle to do that or people who have fallen out of love would like to fall back in love or the person that's trying to woo them is perfect for them in every way. Why can't I just love them? That would be great. I just don't. So we can't quite make ourselves fall in love. But you know what happens is that people fall in love, it's very psychological because it's with an incredible absence of information.

3:33It happens quite quickly. You don't know the person. You don't. You have a few data points and you're connecting them to create a Mona Lisa with five data points. Out of a flawed human being. Potentially flawed. You have no even idea where. And, you know, you have the rose-colored glasses. Everything's cute. Those things that are going to become incredibly annoying later on are still cute to you. And you just fill in the gaps with optimism, with hope, with, oh, they're probably like this. And so you really don't know the person you've fallen in love with most of the time. because I say if you need to know the person you have to wait until you have your first fight if you don't know how they fight you don't know how ugly it gets you don't know how ugly they get and that can make a big difference but that doesn't usually happen before you fall in love it happens after you don't know how they fight you don't know how they travel you know maybe you love to travel and they are such an anxious mess in an airport that you really want to just I am not with this person at all.

4:33You know, like, you don't know that. You don't know how they are with their parents, your parents, with, you know, the holidays, whether they are a mess, they're fun. Like, there's so much you don't know. But people tend to fall in love before, you know, a full year cycle of getting to know someone, right? Could you imagine if you had a full year where it's like you went through every holiday cycle with someone, you got to meet their family and friends in multiple different situations, You traveled once or twice at least. You got to notice them when they're at their lowest moment or emotionally tired or physically tired.

5:08And so you got to see how they react to situations that are not ideal. You got to deal with arguments with them or disagreements and see how they respond when you don't agree with them. You got to see how one of your values don't fully align with their values. and can you accept one another's values and their background and their upbringing and their deficiencies? Wouldn't it be amazing to have a full year of that before deciding to fall in love? It would be amazing. Some people do. I mean, it's not everyone that does that. And some people, I mean, it's hard to not fall in love for that full year.

5:44You really have to kind of hold yourself back in a certain way. But some people do are much slower to boil in that sense. And so they are very fortunate in that way because they're making a much more informed decision. What you're doing, if you don't do that, is you're doing damage control or you're trying to shove a round peg into a square hole or something like that sometimes. And that's when it becomes a little iffy. And then a lot of people are like, I don't know if we should get married. We're having so many problems. We've been together for three years. Yeah, I guess, but it says you should somewhere.

6:15I don't know where it says it, but apparently it says you should somewhere because that's how they act. Like it says you should.

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7:18Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.