When looking at the timeline of breakups, many sites refer to a “study” that's actually a consumer poll a market research company conducted on behalf of Yelp. The poll's results suggest it takes an average of about 3.5 months to heal, while recovering after divorce might take closer to 1.5 years, if not longer.
Even ifyou were the one who initiated the split, there are five stages ofgrief that you will go through. They are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, according to Mental-Health-Matters. These are the natural ways for your heart to heal.
"It can take anywhere from six weeks to three months to forever, depending on how intense the relationship was, how invested you were in each other, and how heartbroken you are," says Jane Greer, PhD, New York-based marriage and family therapist and author of What About Me? (Those three factors all sort of piggyback on ...
“There are likely several reasons for this,” she says. “Men are not reinforced or socialized for emotional communication the same way as women, relationships may often have a different functionality for men, and men at a certain younger age may not feel the same pressure about family planning and marriage.”
“The No Contact rule is where you don't call, text, or message an ex in any way after the breakup. It includes not talking to their friends or family about them or the breakup itself,” says dating and breakup coach Lee Wilson.
After you realize that bargaining didn't work, you go into the depression phase – one of the hardest stages of grief in a breakup. This is different from Clinical Depression because what you feel in this stage is a normal reaction to the loss of a relationship. You might feel sad or lost or just not yourself.
Studies suggest that most people start to feel better around three months post-breakup. One study, which evaluated 155 undergraduates who'd been through breakups in the last six months, found that 71 percent start to feel significantly better around the 11-week mark, or around three months.
Initiating a breakup when the other person does not want to break up can cause sadness, guilt, and worry. Being broken up with can lead to feelings of hurt and rejection. Even if the breakup is mutual, it's still natural to struggle with difficult feelings, like anger or depression, at least for a while.
Researchers asked participants to rate emotional and physical pain of a breakup and found that women tend to be more negatively affected by breakups, reporting higher levels of both physical and emotional pain. While breakups hit women the hardest, they tend to recover more fully.
It can fade and come back, it can be 'fixed,' but because love is a feeling, it is not a guarantee that love lost will return." That idea that love lost won't always return can be a tough one to wrap your head around, but it's important to remember that falling out of love doesn't happen overnight.
"Most people need a month or two to process the breakup, to mourn, and to integrate lessons before jumping back in if they were in a fairly serious relationship," she says. If you dated someone for a year or more, you may need three to four months.
The breakup spikes for highest amount occur in spring and right before the holidays. The lowest amount or breakups occur between the end of July and beginning of October.
Set a reasonable time frame
Six months is a break up, not a break, the experts say. Anything from one week to a month should be enough time for one or both parties to determine whether they should stay together.
' Although ending a relationship can be painful, a separation can give a couple space to work on personal issues that have been harming the relationship. 'It can help individuals reassess their priorities, helping them to know more about what they would like to get out of a relationship,' says Fredrickson.
Exes may return in some cases. Since couples break up for various reasons, the circumstances of a breakup may impact the potential for reconnection. A recent study showed that 44% of Americans have gotten back together with one of their exes after breaking up with them.
“There are three main ingredients that make a breakup healthy: deep reflection, good communication, and most of all, lots of self-love,” says Nicole. “In order for a breakup to be healthy, you've got to have space to process your emotions–both with the other person and even more importantly, with yourself.
They actually occupy nerve cell pathways and physically live in the neurons and synapses of the brain. When we lose a lover through a breakup or divorce, our brain gets confused and disoriented. Since the person lives in the neuronal connections, we expect to see them, hear them, feel them, and touch them.
According to experts, it's totally possible to fall back in love with someone you used to date, and the reason why makes sense. "Once you love someone, unless your respect for them is destroyed, you can always love them again," Susan Trombetti, matchmaker and CEO of Exclusive Matchmaking, tells Elite Daily.
While it may feel impossible and certainly takes time to stop loving someone, it's absolutely possible to do just that. In fact, you may find that in no longer loving this person you open yourself up to the possibility of loving others — and even yourself.
If your relationship had abuse, exposure to threat, domestic violence, or chronic psychological abuse you may have relationship trauma. A breakup can feel more traumatic when there is a history of past trauma making you more vulnerable. This will create a risk for relationship PTSD.
Going through a breakup can be traumatic. Similar to other traumas, like the death of a loved one, breakups can cause overwhelming and long-lasting grief.