Ovid on "The Cure for Love"

[Viper1]

No doubt if you've been kicked to the curb by someone who you have been deeply in love with for more than a few months, you've experienced almost unbearable physical and emotional pain, invested in books, cd programs and perhaps even professional counseling, often to no avail.

 

About 10 years ago I was really body-slammed by a woman and never saw it coming. At some point it occurred to me that my behavior and symptoms were similar to a person withdrawing from a narcotic. (I attended grad school in clinical psych but dropped out before meeting the requirements for an advanced degree).

 

A series of events insinuated themselves into my emotional crash at just the right time which lead to an epiphany of sorts and I was one of the lucky ones, I suppose. In less than four months the suffering had ceased and I was even genuinely thankful that the relationship was over.

 

Since, then, however, I became interested in the many strategies people use to stop the pain by either getting past it or employing tactics to win back the love they lost. One of the most common tactics was the "No Contact" strategy which dates back to Ovid, who was only behind Virgil and Homer as a great writer of the Greco-Roman period.

 

Ovid wrote several masterpieces on love, two being "The Art of Love" and the other being "The Cure for Love". His insights are astonishing and while some may question his ethics, he certainly understood love.

 

For instance in his "Cure for Love" (and I'll paraphrase) he has a short list of rules.

 

1. Attack your love (not your lover) as soon as you feel the first pang of heartbreak. Waiting is fatal to the cure.

 

2. Think about the "defects" of your beloved. To a certain extent love is blind.

We are in a sort of trance that prevents us from what others see. These defects can be our lover's propensity for emotional or physical abuse, moodiness, unpredictability, vanity, narcissism, bad habits, selfishness, lying--the list is long. Ovid says it is imperative that we take off the blinders and acknowledge what we might have tolerated but no longer need to.

 

3. No one can break the chains that bind us to this person but ourselves.

 

4. Fake it until you become it. Forget about this rebound nonsense and get another boyfriend or girlfriend immediately. It's not important that he or she does not incite the same passion or feelings but companionship is critical. Being alone is a risk factor that will keep you tethered to the one you have lost.

 

5. If you do bump into your ex be pleasant but cool. He actually says "chillier than ice".

 

6. Act as if you are completely over the lost love. Show no signs of remorse, sadness, anger, or in any way suggest there may still be a future for the two of you. Your behavior must keave her believing he or she no longer has the key to unlock the place where you keep your love. Ovid promises the surge of power you will feel is euphoric.

 

7. This should probably have been at the top of the list but Ovid suggests creatig an actual plan to stop loving the lost lover. The plan might include, travel, returning to school, relocating, speed dating… . The idea is that "winging it" is a prescription for suffering since the person is still in the victim mode rather than being the initiator of a new future.

 

8. Do not give a man or woman power to despise you. My guess is that Ovid is advocating that we do not make a bad situation worse by cyber-stalking an ex, speaking about our "ex" to others in a defamatory way, or do anything that could cause whatever indifference or dislike he or she feels for you to escalate into a feeling that you are despised.

 

9. Don't ask anyone questions about your former love no matter how seemingly cordial or benign. It's almost a certainty you'll hear something that will cause you greater pain, i.e., "She's got a new boyfriend and seems happy."

 

10. Let your love die a slow, peaceful death. Don't expect to wake up one morning and notice all those loving feelings are gone. If you take the right steps and let the brain do its work and get out of its way, in 90 days or so the love you felt will have almost withered to nothing. (For me it took 120 days because I couldn't isolate my friends from always bringing the girl's name up.).

 

11. Think of the man or woman you loved as just one of many. Most of us, even if we never loved someone like the one that got away, did feel on numerous occasions that we loved someone else. As I looked back through my life, while I had never been so passionately involved with another girl, I came to see I felt I had been in love with at least five or six other girls. It was a difference of degree but after the storm broke I saw I would have been equally as happy had any of these other girls been "the one".

 

12. Get rid of all the reminders of your ex. This is tough but every photo, every card, every love letter, has to go or the temptation to relive happier times will be overwhelming and each time you revist the past it will be another thrust of the dagger in your heart. At the same time don't revisit the old, familiar places, unless you can do so at a time with someone new has replaced the one you lost as the love of your life.

 

13. Respect, forgive, and speak highly of your rival. The moment you can meet this man or woman and be genuinely friendly, you're cured.

 

14, Finally, keep your distance. "No Contact". Neuropsychologists now know what Ovid only intuited. There's a neurochemical basis to the agony you're feeling. When two people become intimate, the sight of each other, hearing their voice, or feeling their touch produces a chemical called Oxytocin. As a chemical correlate of bliss it makes Heroin feel like Advil.

 

When you get that first rush or high when you're falling in love with someone it's Oxytocin that associates the bliss with that person. As long as the person is in your life (at least for two years four months, and 22 days) whenever you see that person or hear his voice, are hugged by your lover, or have sex, you'll feel like you're on a major upper. But if that person packs his or her bags and leaves, you're going to crash. For women the urge to get their Oxytocin fix by seeing the guy can become unbearable. That's what makes the "No Contact" strategy so incredibly difficult. It's not as bad for men but they'll get a major hit of Oxytocin during sex and, again, that incredible high, is associated with a specific person--which is why it's difficult to imagine yourself feeling as happy eventually with another person.

 

As luck would have it, "No Contact" is really the best (and most painful way) to get through the flames of a love that's been torched. You're not dying although you might wish you were dead. You're not losing your mind althought you feel like you're headed for a closed ward.

 

How powerful is Oxytocin? It reduces the withdrawal symptoms from alcohol, opiates, and cocaine significantly.

 

I'm sorry if this was a long read but most people don't know of Ovid's brilliance and how much he knew about seduction and surviving a broken heart.

 

His most important principle was "The cure for love is finding a greater love" but you can't do that until you've kicked the Oxytocin habit you've developed to your ex and the only way you break that habit is by being absolutely committed to the "No Contact" exit strategy.

 

It never fails to kill love when employed ruthlessly but it's track record for getting your ex to see the light and come crawling back to you is far from a sure thing.

[Indio Negrito]

Thanks for posting this much needed primer for a lot of us.

 

So where is your heart today my friend? In more happiness than you knew 10 years ago?! Or are you more realistic about love now?

 

It seems like there's planned obsolescence in relationships these days thanks to media influences (personal opinion)....lol, yeah i'm hopeful of another but the idea of permanent - I don't know anymore....

 

Have you seen online dating profiles - if everyone's perfect, why are they alone?

 

Anyways, your info got me thinking...thanks again for sharing.

[Viper1]

So where is your heart today my friend? In more happiness than you knew 10 years ago?! Or are you more realistic about love now?

 

The answer is "yes". I'm in a much better place. And the reason is because a firned of mine who is an attorney who practices divorce law said something no one else ever had, nor had I read it anywhere: "The first person to leave a relationship physically is more times than not the first one who left the relationship emotionally."

 

I realized that although it was my ex who broke it off, I had checked out emotionally years before when I realized (but didn't want to admit) that she wasn't "The One" for me. We all have ideals--about where we want to live, the car we want to drive, the work we want to do…the man or woman we want to be with. My friend has litigated thousands of divorces and he said, "The reason why so many couples split up is because they didn't have the wisdom to know there was a particular kind of person they should marry; they didn't take the time to identify the most important traits they wanted in that person, the patience to wait until someone who came close to the ideal entered their lives, and the balls to committ to "winning" that person without a "plan b".

 

I remember asking him "So what happens when you meet the one who seems like your ideal but she blows you off or cheats on you?"

 

His answer was funny but brilliant: "If she IS the one she's not going to blow you off because I'm guessing one of the qualities you'll want in her is that she can recognize in you the qualities she is looking for in the man she wants."

 

Getting back to the other thing he said, a lot of unnecessary pain could be avoided if--as I eventually did--I was compelled to admit that before my ex left, I knew she wasn't the one and somehow must have communicated that to her. There's an expression: "What is whispered in the ear is heard a thousand miles away."

 

I can absolutely guarantee that if a person is radically honest with his or herself and admitted there was at least the possibility that he or she wanted something more than their ex could give them, they will no longer feel like a victim, and it's feeling like we've been played that causes most of the pain

(that an Oxitocin withdrawal). In my case, I had to admit my ex gave me a lot of opportunities to say, "This isn't what either of us need or want so let's admit it and move on."

 

Is it a more realistic way to think about love? I don't know. It seems more rational but it took a degree of courage I didn't have and so when she dropped the hammer I was totally unprepared for it because I was choosing to endure a situation that wasn't right for me.

 

if everyone's perfect, why are they alone?

 

Good question. I stay away from Facebook, My Space, Match.com, and all of that. One of the reasons I registered here was because I think a lot of people hurting on this board are pretty young and maybe sharing some of the things I've learned will spare them unnecessary grief.

 

If I had to guess, I think so many people are alone because doing what's necessary to connect with another human being can be frightening, depressing at times, and we are blind not only to our faults but to our virtues as well.

 

Things started turning around for me when I began to understand that yes, women, like men, are just as attracted to one's physical appearance but they also give you points for being funny, charming, courteous, respectful, intelligent, and chivalrous. The good news is most of these things can be learned.

 

My attorney friend said the most successful guy with women he knew was a guy who worked for FedEx. He said the guy was of average looks, carrying maybe 20-30 pounds of extra weight, and nobody's idea of Casanova. But he was the best "listener" he had ever seen.

 

That was his gift. He could turn a simple "Hi…" into small talk and seemed so focused on WHOEVER he was talking to it was if that person and his or her problems were the only thing in the world that mattered at the moment. Eventually, if it was a woman, they would ask his name, he would get theirs, and almost always they would say, "Here's my cell number (or email address), it was great talking to you" when he basically just listened. As a matter of fact my friend said this guy swore by two books "Just Listen" and "Power Questions".

 

Now that I think about it, I suppose so many people are alone because they

don't listen attentively and they don't ask the kind of questions that would have somebody think you're really interested in what they're thinking and/or feeling. I also think at some level they simply don't believe they are worthy of another's love, commitment, and respect which is the most vile lie a person can believe.

[NewPerspective93]

Very insightful.

[Balzac]

Thanks for the mention of Ovid. I have studied Ovid and relied on his wisdom many times. How great to have your post and applied sharing here on LS.