How much time is needed to overcome a break?

April 3, 2024

The end of a romantic relationship is not only emotionally painful; They also cause us to have a sense of loss of control over our lives. For that reason, it is normal that whoever is going through these experiences should ask himself a question that practically all those who suffer from lack of love are: How much time is needed to overcome the breakup of a partner?

In the following lines we will see what is known about the duration of this process of psychological recovery.

How much time is needed to overcome the breakup?

No psychological change occurs overnight, neither in theory nor in practice. The simple act of trying to force oneself to stop feeling bad immediately is at best ineffective, and at worst, harmful.

In the case of the couple breaking this is very clear. The love story that has been lived with another person leaves a very powerful emotional footprint that does not have to disappear just when it suits us, as if it were a computer file. Our brains do not work obeying our desires, because they are there long before we started thinking about the emotions we feel.

So that, time is a key element when it comes to overcoming a love break ; Whether we want it or not, we need this ingredient to feel better when we realize that one of these chapters of our lives is closed. And how long is that period?

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 having overcome a rupture. However, there are many factors that seem to influence the time needed, and the sex of the person is one of them.

Maybe you're interested: "The stages of heartbreak and its psychological consequences"

Women recover before heartbreak

So they reflect 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 rupture has recently occurred, but they also recover before 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 break.

One possible explanation for this difference between women and men is the following: they tend to invest more in each relationship, since their well-being is more compromised because of the possibility of being mothers and because of the cultural pressure associated with the female gender role, while men tend to assume that they must adopt a competitive mindset in love . This would make many women suffer the break in a more timely manner, while men always carry the burden of having to call 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 couple breakup, but it is also true that each person has a different way of facing adversity. This capacity to fit the blows (metaphorically speaking) that life gives us is what is known as resilience.

Although it may seem strange, there are those who almost totally lack resilience. It is not that they are people who do not want to make an effort to get out of that kind of potholes; just when the worst is going it is very easy for us to lose control of our attitudes and our habits , and 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 fantasize about their own miseries.

It is very possible that resilience has a genetic component in part, 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, internalize a series of skills can make the time needed to overcome a break is shortened, improving our resilience, but it can also be that behaviors learned voluntarily or involuntarily unnecessarily lengthen this period of suffering .

Therefore, some people will need to go to psychological therapy to have a kind of "emotional training"; others, just need the support of family and friends, etc. The important thing is to be clear that resilience, whether applied to the lack of love or any other aspect of life, is something individual, and that research focused on the time needed to recover psychologically after a break is a generalized trend, a fruit of statistics and not of the functioning of one's brain.In emotions there are no clear rules that no one can surpass; everyone must explore that always mysterious jungle that is their own mind.