The end of a romantic relationship is not only emotionally painful; Furthermore, they make us have a feeling of loss of control over our lives. Therefore, it is normal for those who are going through these experiences to ask themselves a question that practically all those who suffer from heartbreak ask themselves: How long does it take to get over a breakup?
In the following lines we will see what is known about the duration of this psychological recovery process.
No psychological change happens overnight, neither in theory nor in practice. Simply trying to force yourself to stop feeling bad immediately is ineffective at best, and harmful at worst.
In the case of a couple breaking up, this is very clear. The love story that has been lived with another person leaves a very powerful emotional imprint that does not have to disappear just when it suits us, as if it were a computer file. Our brains don’t work on our desires, because they have been there long before we started thinking about the emotions we feel.
So that, Time is a key element when it comes to getting over a breakup ; Whether we want it or not, we need this ingredient to feel better when we realize that one of these chapters of our lives are closing. And how long does that period last?
According to research carried out by University College London and Binghamton University and whose results have been published in the journal Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences , in most cases it takes between six months and two years for people to consider themselves over a breakup. However, there are many factors that seem to influence the time needed, and the person’s sex is one of them.
As reflected by the data collected from this research, based on questionnaires administered to more than 5,000 people from 96 countries , women suffer more intensely than men when the breakup has recently occurred, but they also recover sooner than the latter. In fact, from what has been seen, it is relatively common for men to start another relationship without having completely overcome a previous breakup.
A possible explanation for this difference between women and men is the following: they tend to invest more in each relationship, given that their well-being is more compromised due to the possibility of being mothers and due to the cultural pressure associated with the female gender role. while the men They tend to assume that they must adopt a competitive mentality in love This would cause many women to suffer the breakup more punctually, while men always carried the pressure of having to attract the attention of a potential partner.
The importance of resilience
It is true that time is an important factor when it comes to overcoming a breakup, but it is also true that each person has a different way of dealing with adversity. This ability to take the blows (metaphorically speaking) that life gives us is what is known as resilience.
Although it may seem strange, there are those who almost completely lack resilience. It’s not that they are people who don’t want to make an effort to get out of those kinds of potholes; precisely, when things are worst for us It is very easy for us to lose control of our attitudes and habits and as a consequence there are those who, when going through a bad moment, feel totally unable to do anything other than try to resign themselves, or even fantasize about their own miseries.
It is very possible that resilience partly has a genetic component, so that different people have different degrees of ease or difficulty in overcoming it, but there is no doubt that the environmental and learned aspect is basic. Therefore, internalizing a series of skills can shorten the time necessary to overcome a breakup, improving our resilience, but it may also be that behaviors learned voluntarily or involuntarily unnecessarily prolong this period of suffering
For this reason, some people will need to go to psychological therapy to have a kind of “emotional training”; Others will only need the support of family and friends, etc. The important thing is to be clear that resilience, whether applied to heartbreak or any other aspect of life, is something individual, and that research focused on the time it takes to recover psychologically after a breakup is a general trend, a fruit of statistics and not of the functioning of one’s own brain. In emotions there are no clear rules that no one can surpass; each one must explore that always mysterious jungle that is his own mind.
