You've fought. You've cried. You've pleaded in a way that even your supportive roommates will never let you live down. But it's all come down to this -- the sad moment when you sign on to the facebook and change your relationship status from "In a Relationship" to "Single." Breaking up is hard to do.
People experiencing the loss of a relationship tend to experience common emotions, whether they split with their high school sweetheart over Thanksgiving break or realize the guy they have been with since first year is not "the one." And the emotions are similar regardless of whether the breakup is amicable or acrimonious, said David Sbarra, assistant psychology professor at the University of Arizona.
As a psychology graduate student at the University of Virginia, Sbarra studied 58 undergraduate students who were experiencing breakups after an average of 20 months with their significant others.
Sbarra's "Dissolution Study" found that most people who experience a breakup must contend with anger, grief and continued feelings of love and longing for their former partner. Those who are broken up also have to deal with injuries to pride and self confidence, he said.
Sbarra said students who played the role of "dumpee" generally had a harder time moving on. Overall, the dumpees had made great strides in recovering from their breakups by the end of their 30-day observation periods.
Sbarra found that the "dumper" typically had an easier time coping because students who chose to end their relationships had already begun to recover from the relationship before its official dissolution.
"Most people did well in a month," Sbarra said. "They ended up with sharp decreases in their anger and their experiences of sadness. Their feelings of longing for their partner hung around a little longer but were also declining."
Sbarra contacted study participants at random times during the day and found that these three emotions ebbed and flowed over the course of the first month after their breakups.
Though he said there is a natural tendency for people to wonder how long it will take for them to feel better and to ask what they can do to best facilitate recovery, his study found that there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to getting over a breakup.
Throwing oneself into activities or taking it easy at home both seem to be equally useful depending on the individual, Sbarra said.
"There's no clear evidence about what people 'should' do," he said. "You're probably dealing with it in an okay way if you're not crying yourself to sleep every night."
The one exception, Sbarra said, is that contact with ex-significant others invariably prolonged the pain of the students he studied.
"Any contact the students had -- good, bad, anything in between -- always slowed down people's recovery," he said.
Russ Federman, director of Counseling and Psychological Services at the University, agreed that for most breakups, it's just a matter of waiting out the pain.
"I often say to people that I'm working with how do they imagine themselves feeling differently in six months and how do they imagine themselves in a year," Federman said. "The more they can rationally understand that getting over pain of breakup takes time," the easier it will be to begin the healing process.
However, it is also important to remember that breakups can result in deep psychologically damage, he said.
"Sometimes the effect of a relationship breakup can really be immense," he said. "It can easily bring about a major depressive or anxiety episode. Relationship endings can be the precipitants of major psychopathology."
It may be useful to seek counseling in cases where the impact of the breakup is impeding one's ability to function normally -- to go to class, to sleep regularly and to focus on daily tasks for a long period of time, Federman said.
CAPS offers a range of therapy options including individual psychotherapy, group psychotherapy and psychiatric medication, Federman said.
CAPS also offers crisis intervention and consultations to students who do not need long-term care. Also available is an after-hours telephone number for students who need to talk to a counselor after normal business hours.
Students are most helped if they use the services as a way to strategize ways to feel better instead of as outlets to talk about the end split, Federman said.
"I think there's a difference between wallowing and productively receiving support and exploring ways that one can kind of resolve the issues," he said.
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