Well, not love itself, but the “flip side” of it for want of a better term. When I say “flip side,” I don’t mean just a rejection, but things such as:
Why would the pain follows rip a person apart and rend his soul asunder? What is the cause of this pain? Is it evolutionary? If so, what is the advantage? 
I’d say the advantage is that since breaking up is so awful you try to stay in a relationship, which is good for procreation, and if a relationship breaks up you tend to search for another one to alleviate the pain. The “rebound” syndrome.
Not sure if this is evolutionary, though. It’s probably just one of those things that comes with sentience, society and all that jazz.
Yeah… a lot of things that accompany sentience (many emotions, for example) aren’t exactly 100% evolutionarily advantageous.
Anything that makes you more likely to procreate is an evolutionary advantage.
This also explains why breakups tend to be harder on men: they have a much harder time finding a new mate than a woman does.
I think one possible advantage is that, in the sort of commitment required to produce that sort of pain their is an instinct to put your partner above yourself. If your partner is a female, then you could, hypothetically, sacrifice yourself to save her.
I’ll take a shot at this…
Hmm…evolutionarily love is important as both parents’ combined care ensures better survival. Hence why humans have one child at a time.
Individuals that feel bad when breaking up(hence break up less) have an upper hand in their childs survival when compared to parents that break up and couldn’t care less.
I’m still going through unrequited love, any ideas on how to get over it?
Go out with someone else? If you’re doing all the loving and getting nothing in return it might be time to move on.
I agree with the point made about the pain of a break-up possibly being an evolutionary thing, to try and keep people together to procreate more.
I have only had one serious (living together) relationship. We were together for about nine months. It was heavy stuff (there was talk of babies, for example). In the end we were never able to reconcile our fundamental differences. She was much older, she already had three kids to look after, etc etc. We must have split up maybe five or six times over that nine months. Each time we split up the pain felt (on both sides, I think), kind of brought us back together again.
It was a real wrench when we finally parted ways, so I know a little about the pain of a love lost. The pain takes a long time to really go away, and I’m still kind of getting used to dating again.
Well, I didn’t really intend that to be such an autobiographical account, but it all kind of came out. Any way the point is, the pain of a love lost can sometimes be the blue that hold people together through the rough times.
I just threw that in to rent space in your head. I meant “glue”, of course… 
They become a part of yourself & then when you get that part ripped off, well…
Any more thoughts on this? Do chimps and other primates have similar sort of emotions, or is it just us humans?
That’s one of the most satisfactory bits of unintentional poetry I’ve seen in a long while… I’m sure that “the blue that holds people together” is going to rattle around in my head long after I forget where it came from. Beautiful.
If you would consider their so called “instincts” of parental care and the males’ protective and guardian like behavior as love…well, yes then
As for do they experience heartbreaks? well, no cite, but if i didn’t remember wrongly primates of all kinds are known to act “depressed” when seperated from its clan.
While we modern folks distinguish between sexual attraction and love, and tend to be very familiar with the idea that sexual attraction is a biochemical hormonal thing – and that, while often pleasant and often compellingly powerful, it is something that is other than a see-into-the-soul honest evaluation of the person to whom we are attracted – we don’t conventionally distinguish between love in the sense of “loving someone” and love in the sense of “falling in love”, and we probably should.
(Since we don’t, there’s the real risk that you don’t use those terms as I do, in fact. By “loving someone” I refer to an emotional attachment and valuation of another person who could be your lover but could also be your grandpa, your kid, or your best friend. By “falling in love” I refer to a somewhat more intoxicating emotional experience that is definitely more than sexual attraction but you don’t experience it towards people unless you also are drawn to them sexually. “Romantic love”.)
So, umm…falling in love is hundreds of times more intense than mere superficial sexual attraction. It is the ultimate hedonistic supercandy, the thing that really turns on the lights and boosts the sound and kicks in the afterburners. The forbidden secret is that falling in love does not occur in reaction to a see-into-the-soul honest evaluation of the person to whom we are attracted, either. It involves the full mind in a way that plain old “ooooh hot body!” carnal lust does not, but it is still powered by hormones and biochemicals; it develops over time like wine fermenting, gradually percolating into all the feeling and thinking parts of the mind, but its substance is not the long slow assessment of how terrific another person is.
It’s a natural drug of great strength, and the withdrawal effects suck most miserably.
In addition to the normal advice (get involved in something, distract yourself, meet new people), deal with it as you would deal with the withdrawal from any addictive drug (not that you necessarily have lots of experience with that) – remember first and foremost that you will detox, this is not how you are going to feel until you get so old and senile that you forget the wonderful person you just broke up with or get over the horrendously destructive break-up fight that ended it all. You’ll still remember and feel, but you’ll be a lot more human and a lot more capable of coping with it once your hormones have quit kicking your butt. Oh, and chocolate. Seriously. There’s something in chocolate. And get lots of sleep.
Chocolate has a chemical which is very similar to sebum, a chemical found on the lips, nipples, and genitalia of human beings. We are more or less addicted to it from birth, but whatever it is that’s in chocolate is close enough for a quick fix.
Of course, this is all IIRC.
Hmm…I thought it took two to tango, of course, we’re assuming we’re talking about heterosexual relationships, here! Also, wouldn’t many women argue against this since, IIRC, there are fewer men than women in the world? - Jinx
Yes. I don’t know how it would affect homosexual breakups.
Of course, I was talking about general tendencies. YMMV.
**
Yes, but the total number of men and women in the world matters far less than the total number of people nearby who are willing to mate with you. And if you’re a man looking for a woman, that number is far less than if you’re a woman looking for a man.
It may be harder for a woman to find an acceptable man, but that’s more a question of her standards, not of the number of men who are willing to try.
The bottom line is that the pain is there to motivate change. Breaking up with someone means that you have wasted your time and effort. Although dating is fun, you get far less out of it than you put into it (particularly if you are a man IMO). People deal with the pain in many different ways – trying to get back together, isolating themselves, having superficial relationships, turning over a new leaf, etc. So what the pain is motivating is nothing in particular, just change. The pain is often also accompanied by depression, and that just makes it difficult for you to invest yourself into anything – depression is like hyper-conservatism; in a sense, it is a way to gauge how hostile your situation is – could you handle your life if there was a major strain on it? If you can make it in a depressed state, then you are ready to take another risk, but if you can’t cut it when you are depressed, the depression and pain will continue. So the best way to alleviate the pain is to change what sort of person you are. The best way to alleviate the depression is to do everything in your power to keep strong and improve yourself.
What about the dark side of love? Abnormal psychological needs, using mates to avoid needed growth, etc.
I’ve long wondered how much of romantic love is actually unhealthy “co-dependency,” where rather than trying to heal older damage and become mentally healthy, I block the pain by getting into a relationship. In that case not only would breaking up cause the expected mourning, etc., but it would also tear open some major mental wounds which had nothing to do with the failed relationship.
Shouldn’t a person who can’t stand living alone go out and try to fix their problem, and not just cover it up with so-called love?
Having lived a few years now with a psychologist i think i can say that love is never without other forms of psychological needs. No such thing as purely love.