{"id":1022,"date":"2016-04-30T05:16:22","date_gmt":"2016-04-30T05:16:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=1022"},"modified":"2016-04-30T05:16:22","modified_gmt":"2016-04-30T05:16:22","slug":"love-heartbreak-devdas-dev-d-yash-raj-half-girlfriend-nicholas-sparks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=1022","title":{"rendered":"Unbearable Love for the Unreachable One"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"container page-content\"><p><span class=\"dropcap\">\u201cS<\/span><\/p><\/div><p>till pining for the love of my life five years after she ran out on me&#8230;\u201d begins the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.quora.com\/Still-pining-for-the-love-of-my-life-5-years-after-she-ran-out-on-me-Ive-had-therapy-Im-dating-again-I-write-my-feelings-down-I-have-a-job-friends-a-dog-a-social-life-Ive-tried-so-hard-to-heal-and-recover-from-the-shock-and-anguish-but-nothing-dulls-the-awful-loneliness-What-can-I-do\" target=\"_blank\">Quora<\/a> thread. I\u2019d arrived on the page after two whole minutes of researching the internet for a solution to my friend\u2019s umm&#8230; ailment. Suffering from a broken heart, he was slouched in his bed, wearing his faded Garfield shorts and a t-shirt that looked like it hadn\u2019t been washed in a year. He stroked his unkempt beard, with a pencil tucked behind his ear, probably contemplating a new sonnet for his ex.\n\nThis wasn\u2019t a case of freshly minted heartbreak. It had been eight months since their split, and all I wanted to do was drag him out of his wallowing and give him a good talking-to. Yet, as a friend, I first had to look for smoother alternatives.\n\nBack on Quora, concerned respondents gave a wide variety of inputs ranging from getting \u201cdeeply involved with doing something very good in the world\u201d to \u201cyour love is selfish\u201d. But perhaps the worst bit of counsel was that if they thought this was the love of their life, it wasn\u2019t possible to move on. Unfortunately, this was also the top-voted answer.\n\nI learnt that day that Google doesn\u2019t always have the best answers. We\u2019re in a culture that prizes \u2013 and actively encourages \u2013 pining for the loves of our lives. Yes, I hear the old-fashioned romance lobby beginning its howl, telling us how important it is to work hard at relationships and to stick to the ones that matter. Unfortunately, the romance lobby\u2019s manifesto has no advice on what to do <em>after<\/em> a relationship is actually over.\n\nAll we have by way of instruction, are the drunk shenanigans of Devdas \u2013 for those with a weak liver, good luck figuring your shit out. Thanks to the likes of Yash Raj and Nicholas Sparks, unrestrained pining is now considered a rite of passage for every great love story. Regardless of whether the two star-crossed lovers end up together, the torment of one, or both characters is eulogised. And no matter what end the crazed lover meets, we hear people say, \u201cWaah janaab, pyar ho to aisa!\u201d\n\n<blockquote class=\"quote--center\"><p>Researchers learnt that neurons in the brain\u2019s reward centres are activated because of long-lasting grief resulting in addiction-like responses.<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\n\u201cWe should watch a movie this weekend,\u201d my friend chirped suddenly. Yes, yes we totally should. The prospect of leaving the house would mean he\u2019d hopefully take a bath. He skimmed through the movie listings, and timidly looked up after five minutes to suggest: \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/pop-culture\/do-you-deserve-a-half-girlfriend\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Half Girlfriend<\/em><\/a>?\u201d It took all my self-control to bite back a dismissive \u201cCh****e ho kya?\u201d The last thing he needed right now was another film that glorified a bereft lover, running around an unfamiliar city and ignoring all road safety rules in search of the person they think of as their \u201cbetter half\u201d. (I know how much we enjoyed <em>Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam<\/em> back in the day, but can we please move on?)\n\nI\u2019m not a cold-hearted ice queen, but for how long is it appropriate to mope over a broken relationship? \u201cWell, forever,\u201d the abyss of pop culture seems to be telling us. Science, though, tells you something you\u2019ve obviously never heard before: It\u2019s not your heart, it\u2019s your brain. A New York Times <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/09\/07\/fashion\/how-to-get-over-that-ex.html?_r=0\" target=\"_blank\">report<\/a> quoted Dr Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist from Rutgers University who described how the ventral tegmental area of the brain, which is linked with creating dopamine, shows an increase in activity when jilted lovers are shown photographs of their ex. \u201cWhen you\u2019ve been rejected by someone, you love them even more.\u201d She calls this \u201cfrustration attraction\u201d.\n\nOf course, heartbreak can be crippling. In fact, researchers have found that pining can be physically <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/newstopics\/howaboutthat\/2211085\/Pining-for-lost-love-can-be-physically-addictive.html\" target=\"_blank\">addictive<\/a>. The condition was dubbed the \u201cMiss Havisham Effect\u201d in 2008 after the Charles Dickens\u2019 character from <em>Great Expectations<\/em>. Researchers learnt that neurons in the brain\u2019s reward centres are activated because of long-lasting grief resulting in addiction-like responses.\n\nLonging for someone who means the world to you, and whom you can\u2019t be with, is completely natural \u2013 and will draw a sympathetic response from your friends for a few weeks. But spare a thought for them. How long are your friends and family supposed to see you wallowing? Eventually, friends <em>will<\/em> stop inviting you out to lunch and literally no one will let you near a bottle of whisky.\n\nYou don\u2019t actually want that. Even Dev.D. cleans up his act in the modern update on the Devdas story. If the legend can do it, so can you.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How long is it appropriate to mope over a broken relationship? \u201cForever,\u201d the abyss of pop culture seems to be telling us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":1023,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1834,143,1789,1835,1836,1837],"class_list":["post-1022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-love-and-sex","tag-dev-d","tag-devdas","tag-half-girlfriend","tag-heartbreak","tag-nicholas-sparks","tag-yash-raj"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Unbearable Love for the Unreachable One<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How long is it appropriate to mope over a broken relationship? \u201cForever,\u201d the abyss of pop culture seems to be telling us.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/?p=1022\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Unbearable Love for the Unreachable One\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"How long is it appropriate to mope over a broken relationship? 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