Breakups are the absolute worst.
They’re the loss of the life you imagined.
They’re the derailment of the future you were supposed to have together.
They make moving, breathing, and eating seem impossible, or maybe like someone wound you up too many times to count and you might fall apart if you have to start moving.
What can science tell us about how long this yuck will last?
Ex-Avoidant Behavior
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Stay away from your ex. No one ever got over a lost love by scrolling through their ex’s Instagram feed. In fact, some research from 2012 points to the fact that staying Facebook friends with an ex can limit self-growth.
No one posts about their worst characteristics on social media. You are left watching an idealized image of your former partner living their best life.
What Is Attachment Theory?
Attachment theory operates under the assumption that the relationship you have with your parents or caregivers when you are younger forms the template for how you will act with romantic partners later in life.
For example, if your parents did what they said they would do when they said they would do it, you are more likely to have a secure attachment. Not only will you have more trust in other people, but you also have more security in yourself.
Secure attachment makes you feel worthy of love and of being loved in return.
If your parents were available and responsive to your needs some of the time but unpredictable on many other occasions, you are likely to have an anxious attachment style. You never knew what you would get from your parents, and you anticipate the same regarding an adult partner.
If your parents were unavailable or unresponsive to your needs, you may end up with an attachment style that is avoidant.
Literally. As in avoiding other people, conflicts, etc.
After all, why depend on anyone when everyone is unreliable?
A 2013 study by Marshal, Bejanyan & Ferenczi conducted two studies of approximately 450 people. Study #1 sought to understand the relationship between attachment style, personal growth following a breakup, and breakup distress.
Study #2 examined all that the first study did but also focused on rumination over the breakup by constantly repeating the same negative thoughts, brooding (being caught up with depressing, negative thoughts or memories), and the tendency to rebound with a new partner.
Three major findings emerged:
- People with anxious attachment styles are more likely to experience intense post-breakup distress at first, but also more likely to have greater personal growth in the long run. This may be in part because of how much they overthink the breakup and in part because individuals with anxious attachment are more inclined to jump into a rebound relationship. Rebound relationships are actually helpful in recovering from a breakup.
- Individuals with avoidant attachment styles will feel less upset after a breakup. This is definitely a coping skill, but one that ends up limiting the potential for self-growth. A bad relationship can often teach us more about what we want in a partner than a good relationship can—but only if we spend some time thinking about it.
- Part of rebounding from your lost love appears to be thinking about what you lost and what that means about your future partner, for better or worse.
An Equation That Describes How Long Heartache Will Last
Many of us grew up believing in what I like to think of as the Cosmo equation for how long it takes to get over a breakup: x/2 = y.
X is the number of months you were in a relationship divided by 2 equals how long it will be before you are freed from the burden of lost love and regret (a.k.a. the time it takes you to get over your lost love).
Is time the best tool for getting over heartache?
Source: Freestocks / Pexels
In this equation, x refers to the number of months the two of you dated; divide it by 2 to get y, which is the number of months until you can expect freedom from being burdened by memories of what could have, should have been.
For example, if you dated your partner for 60 months, it should take 30 months, or roughly 2 1/2 years, to be free from that heartache.
Relationships Essential Reads
For shorter-term relationships, research shows that 71 percent of undergraduate students felt significantly better around 12 weeks post-breakup.
But, it seems too simple to be true, right?
This equation makes it seem as if a twelve-year-old recovering from a boy saying that he doesn’t “like like” her anymore is akin to a grown woman’s loss of a marriage with shared pets and possessions.
So I went digging and found the modern AI answer to how long it takes us to recover from a broken heart:
x/2 + j + 4 – t + k/2 + r = y
Pretty impressive, eh? Shiny and everything!
Welcome to Sourcetable, where there is a potential mathematical solution to every problem. Sourcetable is one of many current AI spreadsheets. At any moment, an AI spreadsheet will regularly update its future predictions based on present activity. It allows us to predict future activity from a constantly changing data set.
This formula takes the amount of time invested in a relationship, but also calculates two different levels of emotional investment, the amount of time you spend checking your former flame’s social media each day, and any additional emotional conflict, such as shared possessions or having the same work place by more heavily weighting the amount of time it will take you to get over your ex. While those variables may not give you a true, evidence-based formula, they point to real world concerns that people articulate following breakups.
Spoiler alert: The less you interact with your ex, the easier it will be to get over them.
Conclusion
If you think about your heart—your actual oxygen-pumping, life-giving heart—it may be easier to understand why a broken heart is so difficult to get over. This mushy, messy, vital organ can be easily damaged by dangers both inside and outside the body.
But your heart is necessary for your biological and emotional survival. And it is more than OK to take the time you need to heal.
