Why is it almost impossible to forget a great love?

Scientific studies have discovered that Intense love relationships generate in our brain a kind of “roots or “anchors”, which recurrently keep our memories active. These studies name the existence of a neurological circuit that records with greater intensity, memories endowed with more emotional charge. Therefore, it is very difficult for us to forget a great love.

According to specialists, staying alone after a relationship does not help or benefit you in overcoming the end of it. Loneliness or replacing it with a new partner does not prevent our brain from continuing to repeat memories. Neurologists call this situation “cerebral conflict” (the relationship ends but our mind continues to emit images and bodily sensations).

Our brain and the difficulty of forgetting a great love

In our brain there are two structures in the temporal lobe. One of them called the hippocampus where we find declarative and fixation memory, and the other called the amygdala, which contains emotional memory.

Let’s say to understand it simply, that For declarative information to be distributed at the brain level, there must necessarily be an emotional context.(as an example we could use a situation experienced with great love) it is then when the amygdala detects that context of emotions and generates the sending of neurotransmitters to the hippocampus, thus incorporating it into our memory as a fixation phenomenon.

This event explains why even after a long time, sensations and memories return so freshly to our body. The amygdala sends emotional discharges involuntarily, such as palpitations, sweating, dizziness, etc.

The greater the quantity or quality that our brain recorded in that emotional situation, the greater the recording of data in that amygdala will be and the greater the sensations it will send continuously. It is common to meet with an ex-partner or relationship after a year, and still feel how an endless number of memories are triggered as real as if just one day had passed since the breakup.

Time heals all?

Time helps us forget a great love because brain connections decrease in intensity. Neurotransmitters are losing power and this means that memories linked to important people also lose strength.

Indeed, time heals any pain, including the pain of love. When a relationship gets sick, all we have to do is get entangled in a vicious cycle of fights, jealousy, whims, shouting, and suffering. It’s not worth suffering endlessly for love.

We need to grieve accordingly and embark on a journey of detachment, not longing for the past, directing our heads toward the future and waiting for time to pass. We have to do everything we can to look forward without dwelling on the past.. Well, sometimes it is a trap that is difficult to overcome.

In reality, what heals is also our attitude. Because forgetting a great love may be impossible, but what is not impossible is getting over it and moving on with our lives. It has been an experience, a part of our life that we have learned from, but that is not part of our present.

Forgetting a great love is complicated. We have to keep in mind that we must go through grief. A series of phases that, successfully overcome, will help us move forward, leaving behind what once was, but now is no longer. Perhaps it is smarter to learn instead of trying to forget a great love. At the end of the day it is the most enriching of all the experiences we live.

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