Love Is a Neural Pathway – Why Letting Go Can Be So Hard
Five ways to weaken the grip of a romance you need to leave behind
Hi, I’m Caroline – mindset trainer, therapist and storyteller. Every two weeks I publish a free article like this one, giving tips on building a healthy, resilient, self-aware state of mind. Well not like this one, actually, as this is the most personal post I’ve written here. If any of this resonates and you’re not yet a subscriber, you can join or uplevel here:
I fell madly, badly in love.
We met when I was 19 and he was 21. I had zero resistance. Zero. My capitulation was immediate and total, though I couldn’t let him see that.
He fell hard too, but, unlike me, he had plenty of resistance. He’d just embarked on an exciting new life and capitulation wasn’t in his vocabulary.
Such a big gap in attitudes and expectations didn’t make for a smooth run. Yearning and chemistry we had a-plenty (oh, the chemistry…). But truthful communication and confidence in ourselves and each other? Not much of that.
He went away a lot and I never knew if he’d come back. Even though I came to realise the vast amount of energy I was pouring into longing for my largely absent beloved was probably futile (he was unlikely, even unable, to step up as I ached for him to do) I still fed my love habit with endless rumination and wanting.
He may have been the trigger but he wasn’t the one turning me into a pining creature with no ambition other than to be with him; I was managing that all by myself.
We limped on, off, and back on again for five and a half years. Even at the half-way point, I knew I needed to grow a backbone and make it stop, but my heart and my “it has to work! It has to!” stories kept pulling me back.
In the gaps, we sometimes distracted ourselves with other things, people and places, but we kept finding our way back – each time a little more ruined. Eventually ‘us’ had become just a patched-together mess of disappointment, guilt and hurt.
Why is it so hard to do the healthy thing and walk away from a relationship that isn’t working?
Because love is a neural pathway.
At rest, our brains use up to 20 percent of the energy in our bodies. If intense processing is involved, that energy consumption soars.
To ease this high energy cost, our brains have developed ways to increase efficiency, one of which is by forming neural pathways
What’s a neural pathway?
It’s a way of automating information processing. In lay terms, it’s a habit.
When we repeatedly think, feel or behave in a certain way, the links between the chains of brain cells (neurons) involved in carrying out that activity strengthen and bond. Effectively they become cemented together, forming a roadway that lets the electrical and chemical signals used in thinking, feeling and taking action whizz around our brains more quickly and easily. As we repeat those behaviours, the roadway becomes more robust.
There’s also evidence to suggest that if we layer deep emotions onto repeated thoughts and actions, it makes the habit stronger.
My romantic neural pathway was a monster. It was like a massive stone channel with its own gravitational pull, carved deep and wide by endless repetition and intense emotion.
Let’s talk about love, baby…
What do we do when we fall in love? If you’re like me, we think about our person incessantly. We pick through memories of meetings and conversations in forensic detail. We daydream. We imagine. We rehearse scenarios and conversations. And repeat… repeat… repeat…
Throw in a soup of hormones, plus intense feelings like longing, anticipation, excitement and anxiety, and we create the perfect conditions for a neural pathway that feels like it controls us.
So, romantic attraction can quickly become a commanding habit. For some of us (cough), even though we know it’s damaging, we can’t seem to help ourselves. Rational arguments get bulldozed by the intensity of how we feel.
Something had to give
After nearly six, frustrating and at times agonising years, self-preservation triumphed over helplessness. I’d learned a few things about him by then so I set a challenge I knew he wouldn’t be able to rise to. It was my line in the sand.
I got back what I expected: silence. There was no victory in being proved right.
After that there was no more ‘us’, just a painful void, but at last I could take myself off hold and start reclaiming some sense of self.
What happened to my neural pathway?
It wasn’t a quick process. Even though I was technically a free agent, it was at least two years before I could consider myself truly ‘available’ again.
The habit did eventually start to weaken, though. Gradually I went from thinking about him multiple times a day, to once every few days. Then weeks, then months, then years.
In time the old neural pathway silted up and became hidden by life’s detritus and the foliage of other interests and other people. New pathways took me away from the old road until it almost disappeared from the map.
Almost, but not quite.
Neural pathways don’t die
Any coach or therapist who tells you they can help you completely erase a habit isn’t giving you all the facts. Once a neural pathway is formed, it’s there for life. For an ex-smoker, there’s no such thing as ‘just one puff’.
The good news is we can weaken a habit and discourage it from derailing us, and we can create new, healthier, more compelling habits to take its place. Further down I’ll run through a few techniques for you to try.
But it’s important to remember that the ghostly outlines of old habits remain, in the same way that ancient roads and settlements can still be seen from the air.
In the year 2000, not long after the internet reached the masses, a website called Friends Reunited became the first popular social media site in the UK. A phenomenon knows as ‘the curse of Friends Reunited’ spread rapidly, as people who’d dated in high school and university found each other again, shaking the dust off old, passionate, neural pathways. Many marriages didn’t stand a chance against revived memories of youthful dalliances and the intoxication of first love revisited.
For UK readers d’un certain age, do you remember Simon Bates’ daily ‘Our Tune’ slot on Radio 1, where listeners shared their love stories and meaningful songs? I remember it featuring many a tale of old neural pathways reactivated.
The internet made reconnecting easy peasy. I know this, dear reader, because...
More than 20 years later, he got back in touch.
I can still feel the full-body shock of that moment.
Curiosity won over common sense and we met for lunch. Holy fuck. I felt as though someone had taken a giant pressure washer and blasted the debris out of the old neural pathway. In an instant it was just as intense, just as joyful, just as painful as it had been decades before.
We were hitting 50 and our circumstances were very different this time around. Life was more complicated. Having reopened the pathway, we found we were rubbish at plain old friendship but could still do longing and hurt like champions. Minimal contact was a sensible option, so that’s largely how we ran.
But not having much physical presence in my life didn’t mean he wasn’t firmly back in my head. The pathway was wide open again and peace was gone.
How did it turn out?
The short version is it went nowhere. Of course that isn’t nearly the whole story, but many of the original problems were still there, plus a whole load more.
When it finally closed down, as it had to, it was painful but I dealt with the aftermath more constructively. First I let myself feel it – all of it – though it wasn’t a wallowing this time, more like mourning.
Then I regrouped and decided to take advantage of being a therapist and mindset trainer. I experimented with different ways to weaken and reroute the old pathway, and put energy into building new ones: creative, social, healthful, loving, living pathways.
Training as a therapist is the most helpful thing I’ve ever done, and it’s not just my clients who benefit; I do too, every day. This experience has brought peace and made me stronger, more self-aware and more in touch with what I want and deserve.
Let me share five ‘moving on’ techniquest that worked for me.
If you’re struggling to let go of an old love, whether they ended it or you did, try these techniques:
1. Weaken the old habit.
Thinking about the person constantly and revisiting old memories and hurts again and again will only reinforce the neural pathway. Remember, repetition plus emotion strengthens a habit.
Obviously grieving is part of the process of dissolving a relationship, but instead of allowing the person free rein in your mind, when thoughts, memories and feelings flood in, acknowledge them and consciously choose to let them go. If you’re a visual person, try imagining each of these thoughts and feelings as a bubble, floating away, or a sheep walking through a gate, or a carriage of an endless train, heading off into the distance. Use whatever imagery works for you.
NB: Pushing a thought away isn’t the same as letting it go. With the later, you’re acknowledging the thought and choosing to release it. This sends a very different message to your mind than, “I mustn’t think about xxx!”. Avoiding a thought or pushing it away can actually focus your unconscious mind on it. If I say, “Don’t think of a white horse!” What comes into your head? Exactly. In he gallops, white tail streaming.
If you consciously let go each time you feel the memories and sadness (or rage or other emotions) crowding in, in time they’ll arrive less often. It may take a few days of consistent effort before you start seeing results, or it could take a little longer. Just keep at it. Soon you can feel more accepting of the break-up and start putting it behind you.
2. Build compelling new habits.
Your brain has the amazing quality of neuro-plasticity, meaning you can change the way you’re wired. One of the most effective ways to get past old neural pathways is to create new habits that are healthier, more interesting and more fun than the one you want to leave behind.
Try learning a new skill, getting fit or ramping up a creative activity that requires your conscious focus. When you deliberately apply yourself to learning a new skill or building on an existing one, old pathways can become less prominent. You also gain satisfaction and improve your self worth. My activities of choice were screenwriting and taking piano lessons.
One thing I suggest you don’t do is immediately replace an old relationship with a new one. We need time to process what’s happened and learn from our experiences. If we simply swap one relationship for another, we risk being retriggered, dragging our baggage into the new situation and continuing those old, destructive patterns.
3. Practise mindfulness
Focusing on the present moment, and not past memories, or anxieties about the future, is a great way to train your mind to think in new ways. We spend our whole lives living in ‘the now’ but missing it because our minds are elsewhere.
If you train yourself to concentrate on the present moment, and on making that moment the richest it can be, you’ll occupy your mind in a healthy, realistic way and prevent old neural pathways from taking charge. Honour the now!
4. Seek professional support.
Certain types of talking therapy, such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can help us rewire unhelpful thoughts, feelings and behaviours. By consciously changing how you think, feel and behave, your brain can weaken those old, unwanted pathways.
If you’d like to explore this option I’d be happy to have a chat. Send me a message through substack or put “please contact me” in the comments and I’ll reach out to you.
5. Edit the old neural pathway.
This one’s a bit more advanced and may be best done with guidance from someone with experience. Basically you exploit the fact that you already have an embedded neural pathway and create a ‘sequel’, adding new beliefs, feelings and behaviours to the old story you’ve been telling yourself up to now.
Again, this technique takes advantage of the neuro-plasticity of the brain to change the wiring and create new neural connections. I had some fun with it and was surprised (and happy) at how effective it proved to be.
Phew. That’s it for this week.
This is probably the most personal story I’ve aired on Substack. It’s been on my list of posts to write for over a year but felt like such a vulnerable share.
In the days after taking a deep breath and pressing ‘Send’, I realised I was hiding behind language in the original verson. I’ve now edited it for greater transparency and ‘they’ has become ‘he’.
If you’ve taken food for thought from this post and believe others might benefit, I’d be grateful if you’d like and restack it. My story, and the comments below, might be just what someone needs to read right now.
I’d also love to hear about your experiences of heartbreak, and what you’ve done to heal and move forward.
Much love and take care,
Thank you for your post and your vulnerability Caroline. Very close to home for more words; will hang on to your techniques. 💝🤗
Wonderful article, Caroline. I wish I'd read it 25 years ago when a disastrous affair with a man who left for Spain left me pining for far too many years, but at the same time, ruminating with regret and guilt about what I'd done in nearly wrecking my family and marriage......