Everyone who remains in the emotional stage after a breakup is forced to search for the reason behind the breakup. The rational one who let go knows the reason very well, but the emotional one usually thinks it’s because the other person no longer loves them. This reason is too general, and it doesn’t help the person in any substantial way, whether they want to salvage the relationship or move on to the next one. If you’re told during counseling that the other person no longer loves you, it’s not helpful to you at all.

Human beings pursue value and need. Needs generate value, and value subtly changes human needs. The progress of the entire society is closely related to the theory of needs and value. However, in intimate relationships, there exists an important mediator between value and need—emotional experience. Emotional feelings will define the value and need for you. What kind of thing makes you feel high value, and what makes you feel no need for it. When you were young, you were thrilled to see candied haws and couldn’t wait to have a bite because eating candied haws was an immensely happy and joyful thing. As an adult, you may not be interested in candied haws in the same way anymore and may be more eager for your dream house and car. The rules of need and value change—during the experience, anything that creates a positive emotion will trigger your need. When the need is repeatedly satisfied or the positive emotion diminishes, the need will also decrease, and the thing itself will gradually lose its value. As emotional experiences change, the more positive emotions it can trigger, the higher the perceived value, and the higher the value, the easier it is to stimulate pursuit. No matter how needs and values develop, this positive pursuit rule will not change. In the end, we will see that no matter how needs and values chase after each other, they are all for experiencing more positive emotions.

That’s exactly how love works. From all the cases I’ve observed, I’ve never heard of anyone entering into a relationship to pursue pain. Whether it’s an abnormal relationship or falling for a scoundrel, the person involved will also experience great positive emotions due to certain qualities of the other person or the sense of achievement brought by the changes in the other person amidst their own pain. In other words, in a seemingly painful romantic relationship, a certain emotional point can satisfy the person’s need for emotional experience, and with that need, the person perceives high value in the other. But in order to maintain a stable and long-lasting relationship, the emotional balance throughout the process is crucial. In other words, the feelings of pain and happiness in love should be relatively balanced. Conflicts or crises in the sweet rhythm of the relationship can stimulate possessiveness, reducing the probability of separation, or in a pessimistic emotional rhythm, the positive emotional experience can reduce the probability of separation by triggering the pain after the breakup. Through our detailed study of all types of breakups, we found that the reconciliation process for breakups of the “good person” and “princess syndrome” types can achieve a fast and efficient reunion, with a reconciliation rate of almost 98%. The reason for this is that both types belong to the balance of emotional experiences in the process of love. While the other party feels negative emotions, there are also a lot of memories of positive emotional experiences. Therefore, in a relationship, emotions shape the extension of value.

Of course, by now, you probably understand why you broke up. In general, the emotional process of a relationship from love to breakup is as follows: at the beginning, both parties were filled with positive emotions, or one party had previously experienced intense positive emotions, and the emotional stimulation led to the start of a beautiful love. The positive emotional experiences over several months gradually fade with time and environment, or one party becomes dissatisfied with the emotional experiences at that stage, leading to a shift from positive to negative emotional experiences. There is a sense of unmet expectations, which leads to emotional imbalance, and one party will always try to balance their emotions regardless of the other person’s feelings. Then either both parties’ negative emotional experiences explode and they break up, or one party’s positive emotions are suppressed and turn into an explosion of negative emotions, which is when you often hear the other person say they can’t take it anymore. After the breakup, people who had too many negative emotional experiences during the relationship will temporarily feel that their emotional experiences have returned to calm and comfort, while those who had too many positive emotional experiences during the relationship will feel a great deal of pain at that time. It’s like I’ve mentioned before that once a person switches from happy emotions to calmness, they immediately feel lonely and helpless. So, after the breakup, how long will the other person’s positive emotional experiences last, and how long will it take for them to recall the good times together? This, of course, depends on how many positive emotional experiences you gave them during the relationship. The greater their sense of happiness, the greater the pain after the breakup. Of course, there are also a very few relationships that end because of an excessive positive emotional experience and the other person’s needs are no longer met, in which case, after the breakup, all that’s needed is to increase the other person’s negative emotional experiences, and success will be in the bag.