Hey everybody and happy belated Halloween. In case you were wondering I was an astronaut
for Halloween. True story, I was at a Halloween party and a woman walked up to me and looked
at me like this. And asked very slowly, 'Are you an astronaut?' And I said 'What are you
talking about?' And then moonwalked away. But enough about me, lets talk about you.
So last week's Ask Cristen was all about people who don't want to fall in love, sometimes
called aromantics, and there were a lot of comments about people not necessarily being
aromantic but being adverse to falling in love because they were scared of what might
happen. Scared of that worst case scenario when you meet that amazing person and then
that amazing person decides that he or she doesn't want to be with you anymore and then
you go through heartbreak and it's--it's awful. Jacob mufasa for instance commented, 'I'm
scared to fall in love because I'm scared to get hurt. I think that's the reason why
hooking up is easier.' And then we have loneloba8 saying, 'I'm afraid to fall in love. The idea
terrifies me. By the way I'm a 15 year old girl and this fear is causing me to avoid
guys entirely. What do I do and is this a kind of phobia?' There were a lot of other
comments along those lines of people feeling like they were afraid to falling in love or
really just being afraid of it not going well. And I wanted to share with viewers something
about the science of love and attraction, that physiology, the neurochemistry of what
happens to our bodies when we fall in love and when we subsequently fall out of love.
A lot of times our fear of the breakup is usually a lot more extreme than the reality
of what that breakup really feels like if and when it happens. And this was verified
in a study that was done I think in 2007 at North Western University where they found
this group of people who were all madly in love, in really happy relationships and they
asked these people to rate how it would feel, how they would react if that relationship
came to an end. These people said it would be devastating, they wouldn't be able to get
on with their lives, that fear of falling in love that came up over and over again in
those comments. But then when those researchers followed back up and found the group of people
who were no longer in those relationships and they asked them about the breakup experience
and how they were able to get through it, if it was as bad that they thought that it
would be. Turns out that it wasn't, that our expectations of heartache far exceed the reality
of it. This isn't to say that heartache and breakups aren't horrible. I have had my heart
totally just smashed into a million little pieces and you do wake up and you feel so
empty and you wonder what you did with all that time. When I've been able to funnel that
into other outlets, throwing myself into work or throwing myself into hobbies, throwing
myself into creative projects, anything that I can do to focus that energy in a more positive
way. It really does lessen the terribleness of it. So I thought that this might be a small
encouragement to people who are watching who might not be aromantic but might just be relationship-avoidant
because they don't want to get hurt. Empirically speaking at least, it probably won't hurt
as bad as you think it will. I can tell you from personal experience that even if it does
hurt like nothing you've ever experienced before, you can become a stronger person from
it and be even more prepared for even better relationships, even healthier, even longer
term relationships. Of course if you don't want to be in a relationship because you simply
enjoy being simple or maybe you're aromantic or maybe you're a tad asexual, whatever it
might be, that's totally fine, I'm not saying that everyone has to go out and get themselves
a girlfriend or a boyfriend ASAP, I'm just saying to not let fear be what holds you back
from pursuing relationships that could make your life a little bit of time or maybe a
lot of time. I want to hear from you now, do you have any tips on dealing with fears
of relationships, falling in love, all of that kind of stuff? And do you have any questions,
what is on your heart and your mind, let me know in the comments below and I'll see you
next week. Over and out.