How to Stop Pining

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.