Male Codependence

Over the past decade, scientists have shed new light on heartbreak. The forces that bind two people in union are powerful, but love’s dissolution is more potent—a trauma that in some cases can be indistinguishable from mental illness. A study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that of men who’d been romantically rejected, 40 per cent remained clinically depressed. “A heart broken from love lost rates among the most stressful life events a person can experience,” says David Buss, PhD, the author of The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating. The end of a long-term relationship can be traumatic, especially for a man whose mate cheats on him, suddenly announces a divorce, or dies. The flood of stress hormones accompanying such events can actually weaken the heart. Experts know three drives goad our urge to mate and each of them steers our actions through neurotransmitters and pathways in the brain. The most primitive of these drives is lust, which propels us to seek sex with a range of partners. Lust is fueled mainly by testosterone. The second and more potent is known as attraction or “romantic love.” Unlike lust, this focuses our energies intensively and selectively on a preferred mate. It’s what we feel when we meet “the one.” Neuroimaging studies of men who are “madly in love” reveal significantly elevated activity in the brain…where dopamine, a neurotransmitter critical to motivation and reward is made and distributed. Dopamine drives us to look for food, water, sex and love, says Lucy Brown, PhD, a neuroscientist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Our third system is called attachment or “companionate love.” This drive is critical in cementing the bonds vital to cooperative parental care. Attachment is not an all-or-nothing proposition, but a gradual process that is likely facilitated by two other hormones that flood the brain during intimacy: oxytocin, dubbed the “cuddle compound,” and vasopressin, a tension-taming peptide. When attachment is broken, says Todd Ahern, PhD, a neuroscience researcher, the effects are twofold: It leaves males bereft of stress-relieving compounds and spikes their level of stress hormones. The result is heartbreak and, in some cases, depression. By Jim Thornton http://menshealth.intoday.in/story/Survive-a-heartbreak/0/2018.html

…pieces of your heart
clearly weigh more
when they’re sitting
shattered at the bottom
of your stomach.
Heather Brewer