Dumped!

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"Why is it so painful when romance goes wrong? Blame the wiring of your brain and the harsh realities of evolution\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\", says anthropologist *Helen Fisher.

Emptiness, hopelessness, fear, fury: almost everyone endures the agony of romantic rejection at some point in their lives. Why do we suffer so? Sorrow and anger are metabolically expensive and time consuming. Why didn’t humanity evolve a way to *shrug off romantic loss and easily renew the quest to a suitable reproductive partner?

I have been studying romantic love for 10 years or so and have come to see it as an evolutionary adaptation. The ability to fall in love evolved because those who focused their courtship attention on a preferred partner saved time and energy and improved their chances of survival and reproduction.

Unfortunately, the same applies to love’s darker side. We humans are soft-wired to suffer terribly when we are rejected by someone we adore- for good evolutionary reasons.
The fact that intense, early-stage romantic passion is associated with areas rich in dopamine suggested to us that romantic love is not, in fact, an emotion, but primarily a motivational state designed to make us pursue a preferred partner. Indeed, romantic love appears to be a drive as powerful as hunger.

But we weren’t interested in just the love-dovey side of romance. We wanted to understand every aspect. So in 2001 we began scanning the brains of people who were suffering the trauma of a recent rejection in love.

Even before the results come in, there is a lot of we can say about the biology of rejection which suggests that it is an evolved response with specific functions. Psychiatrists have long divided romantic rejection into two phases: “protest” and “resignation/despair”. During the protest phase, deserted lovers become obsessed with winning back the object of their affections. They agonise over what went wrong and how to rekindle the flame. They make dramatic, often humiliating, appearances at their lover’s home or workplace, then *storm out, only to return to berate or plead anew. They phone, email and write letter. They revisit mutual haunts and mutual friends. And alas, as the adversity intensifies, so does the romantic passion. This phenomenon is so common in the psychological literature(and in life) that I coined a term for it-frustration attraction. When romantic love is thwarted, the lover just love harder.

What brain systems might underlie these odd behaviours? Psychiatrists Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini and Richard Lannon, all of the University of California, San Francisco, have argued that protest is a basic mammalian response to the rupturing of any social tie. They believe it is associated with dopamine, as well as with the closely related neurotransmitter norepinephrine. Elevated levels of both these chemical lead to heightened alertness and stimulate the forlorn animal to call for help and search for its abandoner-generally its mother.

The rising level of dopamine may help explain the biology of frustration attraction. Since our research suggests that the dopamine system is activated during early-stage romantic love, one would think that as dopamine activity increased during protest the rejected lover would feel even greater passion. And another brain mechanism* kick in during the protest phase that could add to this frustration attraction- the stress system. In the short term, stress triggers the production of dopamine and norepinephrine and suppresses serotonin activity, that heady combination of neutransmitters that I maintain in my book, Why We Love, is associated with romantic love.

What irony! As the beloved slips away, the brain networks and chemicals that most likely create the potent feelings of love increase.

The protest phase of rejection may also trigger activity in the brain’s panic system. Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp of Bowling Green State University of Ohio believes that this brain network generates that well known “separation anxiety” response in infant mammals abandoned by their mother. When their mother leaves, infants become troubled. They express their alarm with a pounding heart, sucking gestures and distress calls.

Yet another brain system often becomes active as one protests against the departure of a lover: anger. Even when the departing lover severs the relationship with honestly and compassion, and honours social and parental obligations, many rejected lovers swing violently from heartbreak to fury. Pshychologist Reid Meloy of the University of California, San Diego, calls this reaction “ abandonment rage”. I use a different term: “love hatred”. Whatever you call it, it’s a curious reaction. Hate and rage don’t generally entice a lover to return. Why does love turn to hate?

At first I assumed that hate was the opposite of love. But it isn’t. The opposite of love is indifference. Moreover, it occurred to me that love and anger might be linked in the brain, and indeed they are. The basic rage network is closely connected to centres in the prefrontal cortex that anticipate rewards, including the reward of winning a loved. In fact, experiments in animals have shown how intimately these reward and rage circuits are intertwined. Stimulate a cat’s reward circuits and it feels intense pleasure. Withdraw the stimulation and it bites. This common response to unfulfilled expectations is know as the “frustration-aggression hypothesis”.

So romantic love and love hatred are probably well connected in the brain. And when the drive to love is thwarted, the brain turns passion into fury.

Why did our ancestors evolve brain links that enable us to hate the one we cherish? Rage is not good for your health: it elevates blood pressure, places stress on the heart and suppresses the immune system. So love hatred must have evolved to solve some crucial reproductive problems. Among these, I now believe that it developed to enable jilted lovers to extricate themselves from dead-end love affairs and start again.

Sadly, abandonment rage does not necessarily extinguish love. In a study of 124 dating couples, psychologists Bruce Ellis of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and Neil Malamuth of the University of California, Los Angeles, found that romantic love and feelings of anger are independent, and can operate simultaneously. Hence, you can be terribly angry but still be very much in love.

Eventually, however, the jilted lover* gives up. Then he or she must deal with new forms of torture: resignation and despair. Drugged by the potent liquor of sorrow, they cry, lie in bed, stare into space, drink too much or hole up and watch TV. Feelings of protest and anger or the desire for reconciliation sometimes resurface, but mostly the just feel deep melancholy.

Resignation and despair are well documented in other mammalian species. When infant mammals are abandoned by their mother, first they protest and panic. Later they slump into what psychologists call the “despair response”.

Despair has been associated with several different networks in the brain. One is the reward system. As the abandoned partner realizes that the expected reward will never come, the dopamine-making cells in the midbrain* scale down their activity. And diminishing levels of dopamine produce lethargy, despondency and depression. The stress system also plays a part. As the stress of abandoned “wears on, it suppresses the activity of dopamine and other potent neurotranmitters, contributing to feelings of depression.

Like abandoned rage, the despair response seems counterproductive. Why waste time and energy moping? Some scientists now believe that depression evolved millions of years ago as a coping mechanism. Theories on the subject abound. One I particularly like has been proposed by anthropologist Edward Hagen of Humboldt University in Berlin, biologists Paul Watson and Paul Andrews of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and psychiatrist Andy Thomson of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. They argue that the high metabolic and social cost of depression is actually benefit: depression is an honest, believable signal to others that something is desperately wrong. It is a cry for help which compels stressed people to request support in times of intense need.

As a result, we are built to suffer terribly when love fails-first to protest the departure and try to win the beloved back, and later to give up utterly, * dust ourselves off and redirect our energy to fall in love again. We are likely to find evidence of any combination of these the myriad motivations and emotions as we examine the rejected brain in love.

我被甩了！

“为什么失恋对于我们来说如此的痛苦？责备自己大脑短路，和进化论的残酷事实”——人类学家 Helen Fisher

 

空虚，无望，惶恐，暴躁：几乎每个人都要经受那么几次失恋带来的巨大痛苦。为什么我们可以如此隐忍？要知道悲伤和气愤促使新陈代谢变得紊乱，并且浪费时间。为什么人性不能演变成洒脱的放手，或者轻松地重新来过，去寻求一个更加合适的伴侣？

 

我曾经研究恋爱关系将近十年，并且我将此看成是一种进化的适应性。恋爱的能力得到进化，是因为求爱者的注意力放在一个更合适的伴侣身上会为他们节约时间和精力，并且增加他们存活以及重生的几率。

 

不幸的是，同样的反应也发生在爱情的阴暗面上。当我们被喜欢的人拒绝时，通常变得极其软弱的去忍受－为了一些好的进化论的理由。

 

事实上，早期的恋爱热情和注意力与大脑里的一些富含某种多巴胺的区域联系紧密。而这种多巴胺的功能向我们表示恋爱并不是一种情感，它首先应该是一种驱使我们持续寻找更适合伴侣的有动机的状态。的确，恋爱就像饥饿一样是一种欲望。

 

但是我们对那些爱情中安稳的一面并不感兴趣。我们希望去理解每一个方面。于是在2001年，我们对那些忍受着失恋带来的伤痛的人脑结构进行研究。

 

即使在结果出来之前，我们也可以说出大量的有关失恋的生理状况，它们显示这是带有特殊功能的进化了的反应。精神病专家长期将恋爱的失败分解为两个阶 段：“抗议”和“顺从/放弃”。在抗议阶段里，被抛弃的人们变得沉迷于赢回它们失去的爱。他们愤概于哪里出了错，或者如何去重燃爱火。他们会制造一些浪漫 的，常常带有些屈辱性的，表现在他们情人的家里或者工作场所。然后气冲冲地申诉，或者再一次的恳求对方。他们打电话、写电子邮件和普通信件。他们会重回旧 地，或者走访一些双方共同的朋友。当这种不幸加重，他们便唉声叹气，那些恋爱的热情也会跟着偃旗息鼓。这种现象在很多心理学的文学作品里（或者生活中）极其常见。我给它们取名为－吸引力的挫败。当恋爱受挫，那些人只是爱得更加沉重。

 

那么，这些匪夷所思的行为与大脑系 统有着什么联系呢？洛杉矶加利福尼亚大学的精神病专家Thomas Lewis，Fari Amini和Richard Lannon证明了“抗议”是一种哺乳类动物在任何社会关系断裂时的基本反应。他们相信这和多巴胺有关，以及与降肾上腺素的神经传递素有密切关系。这些化 学反应同时升级便会导致人们提高警惕，并且刺激那些被遗弃的动物去寻找帮助，以及去寻找他们之前抛弃的人－常常是他们的妈妈。

 

这种多巴胺的升级可以帮助解释那些吸引力受挫的生理状况。因为我们的研究显示多巴胺系统在恋爱早期很活跃，一方面我们推测，因为多巴胺在抗议阶段的增多，那些被拒绝的恋爱者会感觉有更大的热情去爱。另一方面，在抗议阶段，大脑的某种机制也许会囫囵地加入到这种吸引力的挫败中－抗压系统。从短期看来，压力导致了多巴胺和降肾上激素的产生，以及抑制了血液中复合胺的活动，这种神经传递素的紊乱组合，我在我《爱的原因》这本书里也提到了，与恋爱有关。

 

多么讽刺啊！因为失去了被爱的方方面面，大脑网络和化学反应极其有可能创造出更强烈的爱的感觉。

 

在被拒绝的抗议阶段，可能同样导致了大脑中焦躁系统的活动。俄亥俄州，Bowling Green州立大学的神经科学家Jaak Panksepp提出，但脑网络产生出著名的“焦虑分解”反应在小象被它们的妈妈遗弃之后。当它们的妈妈离开，小象便开始捣乱。它们通过吸水和发出哀号警示外界自己心灵受创。

 

然而，另外一个大脑系统常常变得更加活跃，当抗议它们情人的离开时：生气。甚至当情人将这种离开处理得非常平和，真诚和具有同情心，像家人一般关照对方或者相敬如宾，很多被拒绝的人仍然要从难忍的悲伤中转而开始暴躁。加利福尼亚大学，圣地亚哥校区的心理学家Reid Meloy称这种反应为“被遗弃的狂暴”。我用了另外一个词：“憎恨的爱”。不管你怎么叫它，这个过程非常让人好奇。仇恨和暴躁通常都不会让你的情人回头，可为什么要因爱转恨呢？

 

最开始我们假设恨的反面是爱。但是我们错了。爱的反面应该是无视。之后，我开始觉得爱和生气也许与大脑有 些关联。事实上也的确如此。最基本的暴躁的网络与大脑前额的皮层联系紧密，这个区域期待回报，包括爱的回报。事实上，对动物的实验证明这些回报与暴躁系统 异常纠葛。当你刺激一只猫的回报系统，它就会感到特别开心。当你撤销这种刺激，它就会咬你。这种普通的现象表明当期待值不被满足时，我们把它叫做“受挫的 侵略性假说”。

 

所以，浪漫的爱情和憎恨的爱可能真的与大脑关系密切。当爱的欲望受挫时，大脑就会将热情转化成暴躁。

 

为什么我们的祖先会进化为让自己去恨一个曾经珍爱的人呢？暴躁对我们的健康并没好处：它升高了血压，压迫心脏并且抑制了免疫系统。所以，憎恨的爱必需演化为解决一些核心的繁衍的问题。在这中间，我现在相信它提高了人们从失恋中救赎自己的能力，并且重新开始一段新的恋情。

 

可悲的是，被抛弃的暴躁并没有能够抑制爱情。在对124对情侣的调查中，新西兰Canterbury大学的心理学教授Bruce Ellis和加利福尼亚大学洛杉矶校区的Neil Malamuth教授发现爱和生气是相互独立的，并且可以分别被刺激。因此，你可以极度的生气但是仍然深陷爱河。

 

最终，那些被抛弃的人也许还是会放弃。然后他或她必需面对几种新的折磨：放弃和绝望。他们借酒消愁，躺在床上哭，直勾勾的盯着天花板，喝很多酒或者宅在家里看电视。抗议的感觉和生气，或者想跟对方讲和的渴望有时候还会回来，但是更多的只是愈加的痛苦不堪。

 

放弃和绝望在哺乳类动物里有清楚的记录。当小象被妈妈遗弃时，首先他们会抗议并且焦躁不安。然后他们跌入心理学家所说的“绝望反应”。

 

绝望和几种大脑中 的结构相联系。其中之一便是回报系统。因为被抛弃的一方认识到自己期待的回报也许永远也来不了，制造多巴胺的细胞在中脑里就会减小它们的活动强度。并且， 这些多巴胺减小的过程会让人无生气、郁闷和消沉。压力系统也会参与其中。因为当被遗弃的压力上身，它酒抑制了多巴胺的活动，和其它一些传感神经的强度，并 且促进压力的产生。

 

正如被抛弃的暴躁，绝望的反应也让人匪夷所思。为什么要拖时间和消耗精力呢？一些科学家现在认为，压力的进化在百万年前就像一个复制机器。关于这个 主题的讨论五花八门。我比较倾向的一种说法已经被柏林的Humboldt University的人类学家 Edward Hagen，University of New Mexico的生物学家Paul Watson和Paul Andrews，以及Charlottesville的University of Virginia的精神病专家Andy Thomson列为专项开始研究。他们认为高速新陈代谢和因为消沉带来的社会开销实际上具有其优点：消沉是一种诚恳的，可信任的信号，向他人表示自己绝对 错了。这种哭诉迫使压力下的人为了内心需求而发出的对外界支持的要求。

 

综上所述，我们被塑造成为可以坚忍的承受恋爱被拒的初始去抗议对方的离开，以及试图赢回对方的心意，和之后无可抗拒的放手，洗心革面再重新定位我们坠入爱河的能量的去向。事实上，我们就是希望可以找到这些神秘动机和情感结合在一起的任何证据去检验那些在大脑中被拒绝的爱。