Why Do Our Loved Ones Leave Us?

At the start of any kind of relationship, the people involved are really excited about each other. The reason behind this excitement is freshness and newness. Our brain loves novelty.

Dr Düzel said: "When we see something new, we see it has a potential for rewarding us in some way. This potential that lies in new things motivates us to explore our environment for rewards. The brain learns that the stimulus, once familiar, has no reward associated with it and so it loses its potential. For this reason, only completely new objects activate the midbrain area and increase our levels of dopamine."

Ahhh, the good old dopamine! But, there is more than just dopamine.

Depending upon the type and the category of your relationship, certain chemicals are released by your brain.

For example, high levels of dopamine and a related hormone, norepinephrine, are released during attraction. These chemicals make us giddy, energetic, and euphoric, even leading to decreased appetite and insomnia – which means you actually can be so “in love” that you can’t eat and can’t sleep.

Technically, it is not the person but the release of these chemicals that make you feel special. And there are many other ways by which you can release those chemicals, more on that later on.

Anyways, it is not just you but the other person involved in the relationship who is also feeling the equal rush of chemicals in their body. Although that largely depends on how novel and fresh you are for them. To sum it up, the initial stage of any relationship is always exciting because of how our brain works and the stimulation of different parts of it.

As time passes, the novelty and freshness fade away. Your brain is not stimulated anymore as much as it used to be.

This is also because of Hedonic Treadmill. The hedonic treadmill is a theory based on the observation that there is a tendency for people to quickly return to a relatively stationary level of happiness or “set point” despite experiencing major positive or negative events or life changes.

So, basically what happens is that the high doses of excitement and happiness you received after developing a new relationship, settle down to your base level of happiness after some time.

It should be noted that the time frame and the base level vary from individual to individual. That is the reason that for some people the initial excitement lasts for years and for some it is just a few months.

Once this phase, which is also called the honeymoon phase, is over, the existence of the relationship is in danger.

That next phase is very crucial as a lot of effort is required to make the relationship work during that time. A lot of things are happening in that phase, all at the same time.

The freshness and novelty are absent. The real nature of the person also starts emerging which was held back for a long. That leads to fights, problems, misunderstanding and a lot of all those bad things that can lead to the collapse of the relationship.

Your brain is not stimulated anymore. You feel dull. The relationship feels boring. The chemicals which made you feel euphoric once, now make you agitated, frustrated and hateful. So, your brain is in constant search of novelty again because of the reward system.

You have felt the rush of dopamine when you hugged them for the first time or the day you had sex for the first time. You seek the same level of happiness again. But, you don't get it anymore from that person.

That is when the maturity of both people comes into play. They should be aware that to make a relationship work, constant efforts are a must. They should do the things together that would make both of them feel good - which is basically the release of dopamine.

That can be the simplest activities like a hug when the other person expects it the least or saying I love you or buying a rose. That can also be a bigger activity like vacationing together at their favourite places.

It should be noted that to make a relationship work, the desire to be together should be equally strong from both the people involved. If the constant efforts after the honeymoon phase are not made, it can lead to the end of the relationship and also cheating and affairs.

In the case of friendship, although old friends are always trustworthy, new friendships are always exciting because of their freshness. Or in some cases, if you are the one who left someone hanging, your place is taken by alcohol or other drugs.

Research has shown that the drugs most commonly abused by humans (including opiates, alcohol, nicotine, amphetamines, and cocaine) create a neurochemical reaction that significantly increases the amount of dopamine that is released by neurons in the brain's reward centre.

It's funny that an ounce of chemical released from a tiny part of your 1500 grams brain can make your 60 kilograms body dance like a puppet on its fingertips!

Anyways, this is a straightforward technical answer to why people leave us. In real life, however, the answer isn't as straightforward as this. Everything is highly complicated in real life.

I had to move out of many important relationships because my circumstances didn't permit me to be in those relationships. In some cases, it was logical to move away before it was too late. In some cases, it was wise to not continue a relationship that could potentially destroy the lives of other people too.

Whatever the reasons are, people leave because they think that leaving is the right decision.