You Can Force Yourself to Fall Out of Love

Lessons from neuroscience about easing the pain of a breakup

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Last month, an NPR story detailed rapper Dessa’s efforts to get over her ex — using science. Inspired by a TED Talk from biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, Dessa told NPR, she used a technique called neurofeedback, which measures brain waves using electroencephalography (EEG) and turns them into visual or audio tones. The idea is that by seeing or hearing what’s happening in your brain, you can retrain your thoughts. In the context of breakups, by heading off constant thoughts about an ex, you could ostensibly speed up the process of getting over them.

Over the past several years, clinics offering neurofeedback for the treatment of anxiety, insomnia, headaches, and a host of other complaints have popped up all over the country. And especially with regard to heartbreak, it’s easy to see the appeal — when you feel powerless against your own emotions, it’s soothing to think that there’s a process, with science behind it, that can help you regain control. Still, though Dessa told NPR she felt better after the therapy, there’s not a ton of research about the effectiveness of neurofeedback, and none about using it specifically for breakups.

But according to Fisher, chief scientific officer for the dating site Match and…