The New York Times has a fascinating article on romantic love. It particularly caught my interest because of an analogy I made almost a month ago:

It is closer in its neural profile to drives like hunger, thirst or drug craving, the researchers assert, than to emotional states like excitement or affection. As a relationship deepens, the brain scans suggest, the neural activity associated with romantic love alters slightly, and in some cases primes areas deep in the primitive brain that are involved in long-term attachment.

The research helps explain why love produces such disparate emotions, from euphoria to anger to anxiety, and why it seems to become even more intense when it is withdrawn. In a separate, continuing experiment, the researchers are analyzing brain images from people who have been rejected by their lovers.

"When you're in the throes of this romantic love it's overwhelming, you're out of control, you're irrational, you're going to the gym at 6 a.m. every day - why? Because she's there," said Dr. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University and the co-author of the analysis. "And when rejected, some people contemplate stalking, homicide, suicide. This drive for romantic love can be stronger than the will to live."

[...]

In a follow-up experiment, Dr. Fisher, Dr. Aron and Dr. Brown have carried out brain scans on 17 other young men and women who recently were dumped by their lovers. As in the new love study, the researchers compared two sets of images, one taken when the participants were looking at a photo of a friend, the other when looking at a picture of their ex.

Although they are still sorting through the images, the investigators have noticed one preliminary finding: increased activation in an area of the brain related to the region associated with passionate love. "It seems to suggest what the psychological literature, poetry and people have long noticed: that being dumped actually does heighten romantic love, a phenomenon I call frustration-attraction," Dr. Fisher said in an e-mail message.

One volunteer in the study was Suzanna Katz, 22, of New York, who suffered through a breakup with her boyfriend three years ago. Ms. Katz said she became hyperactive to distract herself after the split, but said she also had moments of almost physical withdrawal, as if weaning herself from a drug.

"It had little to do with him, but more with the fact that there was something there, inside myself, a hope, a knowledge that there's someone out there for you, and that you're capable of feeling this way, and suddenly I felt like that was being lost," she said in an interview.

And no wonder. In a series of studies, researchers have found that, among other processes, new love involves psychologically internalizing a lover, absorbing elements of the other person's opinions, hobbies, expressions, character, as well as sharing one's own. "The expansion of the self happens very rapidly, it's one of the most exhilarating experiences there is, and short of threatening our survival it is one thing that most motivates us," said Dr. Aron, of SUNY, a co-author of the study.

If I had to pick the ten longest days in my entire life, two of them would be December 27th and December 28th, 2000. That was the day that things with Audrey came to a crashing halt and while they weren't entirely over, nothing was going to be the same again. Not for her and not for me. I was less than two weeks out of my relationship with Anna. Over the course of those two weeks I'd lost two futures. To be frank, I wasn't concerned about Anna. The day after things were over with Anna I allowed myself unrestricted emotion for Audrey. A couple days after that... things started to fall apart. It took almost a week for them to completely unravel.

It was unfortunately Christmas break at the time. Other than work I had nothing to be doing. I tried to sleep for hours on end. I wanted to go to bed and wake up when I would be over it. Unfortunately it doesn't always work that way and sometimes you have to suffer through it. It's part of the process of expunging your dreams. It's part of a process of ripping a part of you away - of ripping the spine out of the life you had, lost, and suddenly needed to rebuild.

If I had to pick two more days to be in the ten longest, it would be April 25th and April 26th. A little over a month ago, I was at Applebees making the comparison between December of 2000 and what I was feeling right then. Among other things, it reminded me of one of the Carebear movies I saw when I was young. A little boy trying to learn magic was turned over to the dark side. to represent this, the illustrators put black bags under the eyes of the young man. The shy and timid boy was now brash and evil.

That's how I felt. Anger. Bitterness. Instead of being the product of some evil magic book's evil deeds, it was the product of fear. I hadn't realized how much of my life had been revolving around the cigarettes. I figured that since I was down to a few a day anyhow that I was 90% there. I figured that since last year in Florida I managed to go an entire week without a cigarette, without going crazy, and without much in the way of physical withdrawal symptoms (day three and four are a bit tough, but some advil and ephedra always did the trick).

But what I didn't realize was that the difference between quitting for a little while and quitting permanently is the difference between leaving your lover for a week on a business trip and moving out. It's different entirely. The cigarette during break at work had somehow become a part of my coping with the every day stresses of work. The victory cigarette after work was the bridge between work and play. I'd used them to digest food, to pontificate, and to relax. It wasn't a matter of numbers, as I'd previously thought, it was a matter of having that escape. It was a matter of her being home when I got there... even if we weren't ineracting nonstop when I did.

Just as in late 2000, the days were dragging on forever. The stresses of work - in both cases - were suddenly a welcome relief from the haunting ghost in the back of my head and the fear that it would consume me. I was afraid to run and I was afraid to confront it all. I knew my life was about to seriously change, which is hard enough, but I didn't have the first clue as to how it was going to change.

And then... and then... things get better. I forget what I really saw in her (temporarily, but that's another story). I find it hard to believe that I was ever a smoker. I do. After a month. It may be the strangest thing I've ever experienced. There are gaping holes in the middle of my day that I have to fill. There are still things I don't know how I'm going to cope with. But as even a little time passes I look back and I laugh at myself. And I shake my head and sigh.

And, oddly, I don't regret a minute of it.

And I hope I never, ever, have to do it again.