How to Stop Pining

Mending a broken heart over a lost love. To forget about her you have to pine for her.

By PT Staff, published on January 01, 1992 - last reviewed on September 27, 2005

Despondent lovers take note. The latest advice to the lovelorn comes from an expert on thought control.

He finds that the best way to stop pining for a lost love is... to pine for the lost love. Attempts to banish the memories only fan the flames.

The paradoxical prescription stems from studies which show that suppressing an unwanted thought prevents people from habituating to it. Each time the thought reenters consciousness, the body reacts to the distress as if it were the first painful time.

Daniel M. Wegner, Ph.D., and his University of Virginia associate Daniel Gold tested the physiological reactivity of 70 young men and women to thoughts of an old flame. In half of them the flame was hot -- that is, a relationship was still desired. In the others the flame was deemed cold because the relationship was no longer desired.

Among those who focused on relationships that were still desired, levels of skin conductance started out high; they were more physiologically aroused. After a period of thought suppression, they were asked to think about their old flame again. This time their physiological responsiveness was even greater. The responses were identical in men and women.

Those whose flames were cold from the start had lower skin-conductance levels at the outset and after thought suppression, and their reactivity decreased over time. It was similarly low among those who were asked to suppress thoughts of a neutral object -- such as the Statue of Liberty.

Best to get a past love off the mind by expressing the thoughts, Gold and Wegner reported to the American Psychological Association. Otherwise, in the immortal words of Hank Williams, you'll find yourself crying the whole night through.