What happens in the brain of someone who gets dumped? One answer is increased activity in the nucleus accumbens, which is the same brain region that becomes active when you become addicted to cocaine, cigarettes, or gambling.

Romantic love, in other words, is an addiction. That’s one key takeaway from the research of anthropologist Helen Fisher, who argues that we should learn to respect the intense feelings of people who get romantically rejected.

According to Fisher, a better understanding of how the brain processes love and romantic desire can help us find the right partner and sustain a meaningful, healthy relationship.

0:00 Charles Darwin’s ‘game of love’

0:58 Sexual attraction in a partnership

1:49 The 3 brain systems

3:20 Romantic love

4:32 Romantic rejection

5:51 Long-term love & sex drive

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About Helen Fisher:

Helen E. Fisher, Ph.D. Biological anthropologist, is a Senior Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, and a Member of the Center For Human Evolutionary Studies in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University. She has written six books on the evolution, biology, and psychology of human sexuality, monogamy, adultery and divorce, gender differences in the brain, the neural chemistry of romantic love and attachment, human biologically-based personality styles, why we fall in love with one person rather than another, hooking up, friends with benefits, living together and other current trends, and the future of relationships — what she calls: slow love.

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