There’s a certain intangible something that allows people to fall in love, and oftentimes a certain intangible something that makes it all end. However, love, like life, the universe and everything, can apparently be molded into a handy graph like the one above. Oooo that Sentimental Equilibrium really got me.

This is the work of a Spanish mathematician named Jose-Manuel Rey. PhysOrg explains:

Breakup mechanics. The model produces a plausible scenario, through a sequence of effort inattentions, for the deterioration of a relationship in a gradual form, which seems to be typical according to data. Because of the effort gap, there is a tendency to lower the right effort level. Then the intrinsic instability of sentimental dynamics obeying the second law causes the piecewise decaying trajectories to move further and further away from the target trajectory and eventually to cross the threshold level xmin. This is considered a point of pre-rupture, since it is a matter of time before effort is abandoned.

I’m not sure exactly what all the symbols mean, I can barely add, much less do math with letters. But what I think it’s saying is that once it’s gone it’s gone, and it’s too much effort to get it back. Seriously, do we need math for that? I would love to hear what Jose-Manuel Rey’s exes have to say.