Shankar Vedantam

We're going to talk about the psychology of breakups.

We'll examine the most common mistakes we make when it comes to splitting up and explore techniques that can help us do better.

How to set the past to rest.

This week on Hidden Brain.

Any aspiring novelist will tell you that it's easy to start a story and very hard to bring it to a close.

The same is true in real life, as most of us have discovered.

Navigating the conclusion of a relationship with someone we loved and who once loved us is not simple.

Antonio Pasqualeone is a psychologist at the University of Windsor in Canada.

He studies the emotions we feel around these complicated events and how they shape our behavior.

Antonio Pasqualeone, welcome to Hidden Brain.

Thank you so much for having me, Shankar.

Antonio, as a young man in your late teens and 20s, you were an aspiring actor.

I understand that you also like to write poetry.

You must have cut quite a romantic figure.

What kind of poetry did you write at this time of your life?

So I understand that you had a girlfriend at the time, someone that you cared about deeply.

But at one point, the relationship founded.

Did anyone get this serenade and this poetry reading on camera?

Because this would be one for the ages if someone recorded you.

I'm glad you didn't take his advice, Antonio.