Being in love is a little like writing a book.
Everyone hopes their own story will have a perfect ending, but that isn't a given.
A break-up isn't the full stop in that story; looking after yourself well once the relationship ends is what truly draws the story to a close.
Does loving more deeply mean the recovery takes longer?
Research by Frazier & Cook (1993) found that the distress felt when a relationship ends (initial distress) is only weakly correlated with how well a person eventually heals (eventual recovery). How committed you were to a relationship affects only the pain felt at the moment of the break-up, not the process of recovery; what shapes the healing process is instead the individual's own coping methods. So the pain you feel at the time doesn't mean your resilience is poor, and having loved deeply doesn't mean you can't heal.
By "coping" methods we mean the skills or strategies a person consciously draws on to deal with their personal or interpersonal problems, and so ease their psychological stress. But not every coping method is constructive. Because circumstances and individuals differ, some coping methods may end up bringing more trouble and problems. The thing to remember is that there is no one-size-fits-all coping technique that works everywhere; you can only find the methods that are more suitable and workable for your particular situation.
So then, after a break-up what coping methods can ease our pain?
In truth the healing process differs from person to person, and there is no absolute method. But by understanding our own state and needs, we can work out what suits us best.
Psychology often uses the "five stages of grief" to make sense of the series of reactions and emotional shifts a person goes through in the face of a major life change (Kübler & Kessler, 2005). Across the whole experience of loss, we may pass through five different shifts in our state of mind: denial, anger, bargaining, depression (depression) and acceptance. The "five stages of grief" can't make us walk out of our grief in an instant, but they can help us understand our inner world, and so understand what it is we need.
The "five stages of grief": Denial
When we lose a relationship or a person, at first we are in a state of shock and confusion. At this point some people refuse to accept reality, while others become numb and unfeeling. These aren't signs of immaturity; on the contrary, they are the defence mechanisms our body sets in motion to protect us. They may look like burying our heads in the sand, but in fact they spare us from collapsing under sheer shock in the moment, buying time so the body can slowly process the news. In this moment of greatest stress, your mind has already set its defence mechanisms in motion to protect you. Rather than forcing yourself to accept the facts or forcing yourself to think up solutions, perhaps what you need is some space, a moment of calm. Let yourself rest a little first; you've been through a lot!
The "five stages of grief": Anger and Bargaining
When the mind begins to understand that the break-up is real, some people attribute this pain to a particular thing or person, or even blame themselves. This anger springs from loss and suffering; it is an attempt to vent the emotion through rage so as to avoid being crushed by it. But once the venting is over, our body still hasn't adjusted to single life. We become wistful for the relationship, or even bend over backwards in compromise, begging for a chance to change the facts. A relationship is more than loving and being loved; more than that, we become each other's habits in daily life. A relationship suddenly ending is like having half your life pulled away, and no one adjusts to that easily. In fact psychology research points out that this kind of suffering is genuinely a withdrawal symptom from oxytocin and dopamine (Field, 2017). At the moment of greatest pain, for one more breath of them, for one more sight of them, some people are willing to sacrifice anything, which is why some liken heartbreak to an addiction. It is only natural that psychologically you can't let the other person go, but there's no need to blame yourself for it, because sometimes it isn't something we can control. Changing our habits and adjusting to single life isn't something done overnight. So we need to find some ways to help ourselves. For example, if you were used to eating with your partner, there's no need to force yourself to "cook just for one"; try finding other friends to keep you company instead, replacing the old routine, making a counter conditioning for yourself, slowly lessening the hold your old habits have over your life.
For the sake of this "closure", some people go and seek out the other person, hoping things might change as a result. It's a fine outcome if it works, and research does point out that when the reason for the break-up is clear (certainty of breakup reason), or when ending the relationship was a shared decision, it has a positive effect on recovery (Barutçu & Demir, 2015). But often all you get is a cold refusal, and the situation only grows worse.
It is understandable to make irrational decisions at this stage; after all, the emotions are still extremely tense. But it's worth asking yourself: are all the things you do that look like they're for the other person, for the good of the relationship, really meant to help you get back on your feet, or just to make yourself "feel a bit better"? Communication is of course useful, but only if both sides share the same goal and there's merely friction over how to get there. But if one side is willing while the other has no heart in it, then talking in circles may only hurt you more.
Cutting yourself off from news of the other person, or holding back from reaching out, is very useful but not easy to do; it can reduce the direct shocks you'd otherwise take, yet at the same time it can leave you lost in racing thoughts. In truth it's a bit like watching a film with a terrible ending, your mind endlessly thinking "the ending shouldn't have been like this", "the story shouldn't have ended this way". There is a gap between reality and what we imagined; in psychology this is called cognitive dissonance, and the human mind has a stubborn streak about such dissonance, constantly searching for ways to explain it away or ease the gap between expectation and reality. A film at least has closing credits to mark its end, but a relationship often has no clear stopping point, and so we keep clinging on, unwilling to let go, hoping that one day things will change. At times like these, rather than forcing yourself to do this or that, we can actually tell our mind another way: it really is over now; let's rest a while.
There's no need to fear a break-up! Use writing to find your way back to yourself!
A good deal of past research has found that expressive writing has a marked effect in easing emotions. And in the case of a break-up, expressive writing — writing out your feelings, even summing up the whole relationship — takes on the role of cognitive restructuring (Lepore et. al, 2002). In other words, it can help us put our memories in order and let us face our own thoughts. But past research also points out that expressive writing has its limits and things to watch out for. One study on self-narration and self-reflection after a break-up recruited two hundred and ten young people who had recently parted from their partners (Larson & Sbarra, 2015). The study found that keeping a personal account helps people find their way back to their sense of self and identity, but it also found there are limits to the subject of the writing. To avoid over-reflecting and slipping into thinking in circles (rumination) — meaning a negative loop of pessimistic thought — the subject of the writing should lean towards feelings and sensations, rather than causes and solutions. To put it another way, it's a stream-of-consciousness kind of writing that doesn't fuss over structure or prose, simply putting down how you feel in the moment.
Although writing isn't necessarily suited to everyone, the core reasoning behind it is well worth considering. At its root it is about looking back over this relationship, and then holding a farewell for it. Everyone's method differs: some people put everything connected to the other person into a box, while others delete every photo. Just as a funeral lays the departed to rest with proper rites, a broken heart is only human; but clinging to things and people already gone is like keeping the remains of the departed at home and refusing to say goodbye, which does no one any good.
References
Barutçu Yıldırım, F., & Demir, A. (2015). Breakup adjustment in young adulthood. Journal of Counseling & Development, 93(1), 38-44.
Field, T. (2017). Romantic breakup distress, betrayal and heartbreak: A review. Int J Behav Res Psychol, 5(2), 217-25.
Kübler-Ross, E., & Kessler, D. (2005). On grief and grieving: Finding the meaning of grief through the five stages of loss. Simon and Schuster.
Frazier, P. A., & Cook, S. W. (1993). Correlates of distress following heterosexual relationship dissolution. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 10(1), 55-67.
Lepore, S. J., Greenberg, Frazier, P. A., & Cook, S. W. (1993). Correlates of distress following heterosexual relationship dissolution. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 10(1), 55-67.M. A., Bruno, M., & Smyth, J. M. (2002). Expressive writing and health: Self-regulation of emotion-related experience, physiology, and behavior.
Larson, G. M., & Sbarra, D. A. (2015). Participating in research on romantic breakups promotes emotional recovery via changes in self-concept clarity. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6(4), 399-406.
Li Kai-man (2020). Deliberate Heartbreak. Taiwan: CommonWealth Magazine.
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