Dr. Gregory Guldner, of the National Institute for Building Long Distance Relationships, shows in his book "Long Distance Relationships: The Complete Guide", that puppies also "feel" the same as us.

According to Dr. Guldner, "Although it's difficult to apply conclusions from research done on animals to the emotions described in humans, I've found that the reactions of the pups are strikingly similar to the reactions of many of those in LDRs."

And he continues, "When the researchers removed the mother dog from the kennel, the pups began to protest. They cried and ran around the kennel sometimes for hours and even days. Eventually the pups stopped protesting, but they began to behave as if they were depressed. They slept poorly, they lost their appetites, they stopped playing with toys in the kennel, they lost weight, and they withdrew from other dogs."

And more, "This pattern of protesting the separation, then behaving depressed, then developing some emotional distance, seemed to represent the usual reaction of the pups to separation. Because these reactions occur very early in the lives of the pups, there is good reason to believe that the sequence of emotions may even be programmed to help them survive."

And he states that, " Researchers speculate that the sequence of separation, protest, depression, and detachment may reflect an almost automatic protective reflex in many mammals. How much of this reflex remains in us humans we don't know, but I think it unlikely that we have managed to escape it entirely. More likely, the emotional reactions remain, but we have learned to change the behavior they evoke." "But the emotional triggers that cause the pups to cry for days, and us to feel saddened by our partner's departure, remain deeply ingrained."

And as I told you before, it's a fact that no matter how many times you go by the experience of separation again and again, nothing eliminates this three phases. The only thing you can do is to realize their existence, understand each phase, and take action so you can make this experience more "soft".

And the advice's I am going to give you, comes from my personal experience, and from the help of 2 fantastic books, (you can find their references, at the end of this post) that I did buy, read and apply, that did in fact help me a lot living again and again the experience of being apart again and again.

So my advice's to help you in the phase of Protest (when you fight against the separation in all the ways you can) are:

- Spend the morning or afternoon before your beloved leaves, with friends. Do something active, to keep your minds "off" of that moment, and avoid being alone, crying all the time.

- Don't focus on the pain of being apart again, focus on the pleasure. How bliss you are for loving and be loved. And you will not be apart forever.

- If it is too hard for you to take your beloved at the departure place, like to the airport, and stay together as long as possible, then either say goodbye at your home and let your beloved take a taxi to the airport, or take your beloved at airport but say goodbye in the car.

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