How long does it take to get over a breakup?

Curiously, women seem to recover sooner, but they suffer more at that stage.

The end of a love relationship is not only emotionally painful; it also causes us to feel a sense 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.

How long does it take to get over a breakup?

No psychological change happens overnight, neither in theory nor in practice. Simply trying to force oneself to stop feeling bad immediately is at best ineffective and at worst harmful.

In the case of the breakup of a couple this is very clear. The love story that has been lived with another person leaves a very powerful emotional a very powerful emotional imprint that does not have to disappear just when it is convenient for us, as if it were a computer file. Our brains do not function in obedience to our desires, because they have been there long before we began to think about the emotions we feel.

Thus, time is a key element in time is a key element in overcoming a breakup.Whether we want it or not, we need this ingredient to feel better when we realize that one of these chapters in our lives is closing. And how long does this period last?

According to research carried out by University College London and Binghamton University, the results of which have been published in the journal Evolutionary Behavioural Sciences In most cases it takes between six months and two years for people to consider that they have overcome a breakup. However, there are many factors that seem to influence the time needed, and the sex of the person is one of them.

Women recover sooner after heartbreak.

As reflected in 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.women suffer more intensely than men when the breakup has occurred recently, but they also recover sooner than men. In fact, as far as we have seen, it is relatively common for men to start a new relationship without having completely overcome a previous breakup.

One possible explanation for this difference between women and men is the following: women tend to invest more in each relationship, given that their well-being is more compromised by the possibility of being mothers and by the cultural pressure associated with the female gender role, while men tend to assume that they must adopt a competitive mentality in love. tend to assume that they must adopt a competitive mentality in love.. This would cause many women to experience breakups in a more ad hoc manner, while men would always carry the pressure of having to get the attention of a potential partner.

The importance of resilience

It is true that time is an important factor in 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.

Strangely enough, there are those who are almost totally lacking in resilience. It is not that they are people who do not want to make an effort to get out of those kinds of potholes; precisely, when we are at our worst, it is very easy for us to lose control of our attitudes and our habits. it is very easy for us to lose control of our attitudes and habits.As a consequence, there are those who, when going through a bad moment, feel totally incapable of doing anything other than trying to resign themselves, or even fantasizing about their own miseries.

It is very possible that resilience has in part a genetic component, so that different people have different degrees of ease or difficulty to overcome, but there is no doubt that the environmental and learned aspect is basic. Therefore, internalizing a series of skills can shorten the time needed to overcome a breakup, improving our resilience, but it may also be that learned behaviors, voluntarily or involuntarily, can also help us to overcome a breakup. unnecessarily lengthen this period of suffering.

Therefore, 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 to 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 generalized tendency, a result of statistics and not of the functioning of one's own brain. In emotions there are no clear rules that no one can surpass; everyone must explore the ever-mysterious jungle that is his or her own mind.