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We are attracted to those that we find it satisfying and gratifying to be with. If a relationship gives us more reward and pleasure than cost and pain, we will like that relationship and wish it to continue. Thus, even after a relationship ends, we may find ourselves drawn to people that remind us of the former person.
This can help explain why no love can feel quite the same as that "first". These "firsts" can generate sensations so new and unfamiliar that the experience feels almost unreal. Besides emotional engagement, these experiences also have a heavy dose of novelty. Novelty simply driving up dopamine and norepinephrine (brain systems associated with focus and paying attention and rewards). A first romantic relationship is the only time in which an individual is in "love" without ever having been hurt from such a relationship. If a person meets someone who reminds them of an ex, whether physically or a similarity in attitudes, gestures, voice, or interests, it may engage the representation in their memory. And since their first love, by result of its novelty and emotional significance, is potentially the most prominent, it may be the representation that is summoned when they meet a potential someone new, which effects the way they see that new relationship. Their old feelings, motivations, and expectations are all transferred into their memory, which can cause them to (if their new found partner reminds them of an ex) begin to repeat behaviors that they engaged in with that ex.
In 2005 Fisher and colleagues conducted a second fMRI study in which participants were still in love with a past partner. The study included 10 women and 5 men. The rejected participants viewed pictures of their ex and of a similar, emotionally neutral individual. Within the participants dopamine was again increased with viewing of the photographs
This can help explain why no love can feel quite the same as that "first". These "firsts" can generate sensations so new and unfamiliar that the experience feels almost unreal. Besides emotional engagement, these experiences also have a heavy dose of novelty. Novelty simply driving up dopamine and norepinephrine (brain systems associated with focus and paying attention and rewards). A first romantic relationship is the only time in which an individual is in "love" without ever having been hurt from such a relationship. If a person meets someone who reminds them of an ex, whether physically or a similarity in attitudes, gestures, voice, or interests, it may engage the representation in their memory. And since their first love, by result of its novelty and emotional significance, is potentially the most prominent, it may be the representation that is summoned when they meet a potential someone new, which effects the way they see that new relationship. Their old feelings, motivations, and expectations are all transferred into their memory, which can cause them to (if their new found partner reminds them of an ex) begin to repeat behaviors that they engaged in with that ex.
In 2005 Fisher and colleagues conducted a second fMRI study in which participants were still in love with a past partner. The study included 10 women and 5 men. The rejected participants viewed pictures of their ex and of a similar, emotionally neutral individual. Within the participants dopamine was again increased with viewing of the photographs
