Breakups in the shade of Chemicals!

Smiling sheepishly, thinking about him/her round the clock, looking at him/her makes your heart skip a beat, and suddenly all those romantic bollywood songs start making sense to you. What a breathtaking episode of life? Isn't it? All at the hands of the outburst of oxytocin (a.k.a. love hormone). But this Corona Era has stopped our lifestyle in peculiar ways. (Yeah, another corona related post. Sorry!)  Lockdown gave many couples a good time together to grow mutually with new hobbies and strengthen their bond. On the other side, our teenage lovers are facing hardships. The Romeo-Juliet, Heer-Ranjha, Tota-Mena of their schools and colleges are not getting a chance to meet. This pandemic has tested many adolescent relationships by making them long-distance in a blink of an eye. Now, the only way to survive this long-distance relationship is via digital gadgets. As we know that texting or calls lack that humane and loving touch which the in-person interactions used to give so this made us think about what effects could this have on adolescent relationships.

Adolescent dating has the potential to affect mental health both positively (if happily ever after exists) or negatively (i.e. Heartbreaks). Loneliness in Lockdown can cause mental distress and emotional torture. The recent increase in the number of mental health problems among teens and the boiling teen hormones for romance has pushed us to hunt for the possible reasons behind breakups. 

(Image by- MaNa KaSh)

Why does love end? 

The romantic culture has taught us the know-how of how people fall in love. But falling out of love is still under the dark. Seems like we were not the only one curious about the dynamics and reasons for ending romantic relationships. Many people have tried scientific tools to study this human behavior. What these researches have in common is the pattern that they define as some key reasons for the end of a romantic relationship. Adolescent and young adult relationships have a lot in common with the adult relationships, yet some differences lie which are included in the following points of reasoning:

1.   Loss of romantic affiliation: It comprises feelings of incompatibility or loss of interest in the current partner. One reason for the loss of these feelings could be the loss of chemical patterns that once used to make one feel loved; after all, what we feel is all hormones and chemicals in our brains. These feelings are very common in casual dating and casual sexual relationships. The rise of dating apps had made these relationships very common especially among the youth.

2.   Loss of intimacy: It is one of the most commonly stated reasons for breakups. This consists of feeling that the partner is avoiding physical or sexual intimacy in the relationship. One of the most important features of adolescent romantic relationships is companionship and shared activities on a date, along with closeness, trust, and intimate communication. This reason is constant with adult relationships and is most commonly found to be a reason for the breakup in serious relationships.

3.   The gain of personal autonomy: This reason circles around feelings that the relationship has become too demanding in terms of personal time and space.The breakup is centralized around gaining personal control over one’s life. This is also more often found to be a reason for the breakup of casual relationships or dating.

4.   Infidelity: This accounts for feeling cheated by your partner and this can break all the relationships be it casual or serious long term relationships. Now each person has different measures of cheating. One may consider talking to other males/females rather than the person itself as cheating; on the other hand, one may consider sleeping with someone else other than the partner as cheating. This differs from people to people but what does not differ is the total outcome which is the ending of the relationship.

5.   Status and other concerns: This is a miscellaneous bag of feelings like peer pressure or the social status of the partner. Adolescent relationships are often influenced by the views of their friends for their partner. This makes peer pressure a common factor of breakups. Moreover, such relationships are also influenced by the popularity and the physical looks of the partner. If the partner fails to maintain these, then it may also lead to a breakup. This concern is common with casual dating and relationships.

These kinds of behaviours and thought processes set the developmental stage of adolescent brains for future adulthood relationships which makes these really significant in one’s life both emotionally and scientifically. Thereby to set the identity of oneself as the romantic partner they would be. 

The Chemical Chaos! 

(Image by- Disha Talukdar)

Hearing about breakups has become such a common thing in our lives that we hardly acknowledge the pain and its aftermath effects. It bears with it a lot of mental and emotional exhaustion that leads to self-doubt, hopelessness and clouded vision. When we develop strong bonds of attachment with someone, our entire world seems to revolve around that person and we start depending on them. This dependence is much likened to the reliance on drugs. It is seen that the addiction of drugs and feeling of love are linked to the same hormones in the brain - serotonin, dopamine and nor-epinephrine. The release of these leads to a feeling of euphoria and when these stop people experience withdrawal symptoms wherein letting go of a person becomes quite tough. Stalking their exes, obsessive thinking or patch-ups are a result of this. Breakups are often related to heartache as our body often reacts to it in a much similar fashion as to a physical pain. Research shows that regions of the brain that get activated in response to physical pain are stimulated in case of breakups too. But the post-breakup effects don’t just end here, along with it comes depression, lethargy, messed up circadian rhythm and changes in appetite. Right after a breakup, our body enters into fight-or-flight condition thereby releasing ample amounts of adrenaline which increases our cortisol levels that leads to elevation of blood sugar, loss of calcium from bone, affects our immune system and decreases appetite. Soon lethargy creeps in too due to lack of alertness and mood swings. Duration of sleep increases as our subconscious mind tries to stay away from reality.

But does that mean that we won’t recover from this? Of course we do! In fact we bounce back with a much stronger vigour! (How? Well that’s the topic for another post)

Uncertainty is natural!

The above discussion has led us to the conclusion that there is no definite conclusion. We can only speculate. Physical distance might be the reason for lack of intimacy (Believe it or not, most of the adolescent relationships nowadays depend on physical intimacy), leading to increased numbers of breakups. Moreover, a relationship and its end should not be subjected to generalization. So, you need to know that you are not weak if you are taking a longer time than others and you aren’t wrong if you keep becoming nostalgic. All of this is triggered by some chemical imbalances that each of us goes through. So, give yourself some time and a little more love because this too shall pass.