Why Some
People Take Breakups Harder Than Others: Part of it depends on whether they
believe personality is fixed or constantly changing.
An interesting
article! This is why it frustrates me to see people who are stuck and
constantly ruminating on their past – can’t forgive, can't let go, can’t move on, therefore can’t
grow and can’t change, leading to a vicious cycle further reinforcing the
belief that the personality is fixed and therefore remaining stuck, hopeless,
and depressed, which further repels other people away leading to further experiences of rejection.
In one study,
people were asked to reflect on a time when they were rejected in a romantic
context, and then write about the question: What did you take away from this
rejection? For some people, their answers made it clear that the rejection had
come to define them—they assumed that their former partners had discovered
something truly undesirable about them. For example, one person wrote: “Things
were going well when all of a sudden he stopped talking to me. I have no idea
why, but I think he saw that I was too clingy and this scared him away.” “Why
wasn’t I good enough?” or “Is there something wrong with me?”
But the loss
of a partner can make it easy to fall into the self-deprecation trap. Research
by the psychologist Arthur Aron and his colleagues shows that when people are
in close relationships, their self becomes intertwined with their partner’s
self. In other words, we begin to think of a romantic partner as a part of
ourselves—confusing our traits with their traits, our memories with their
memories, and our identity with their identity. In a measure designed to
capture the closeness of a relationship, Aron’s team ask people to consider
themselves as one circle, their partner as another, and indicate the extent to which
the two overlap.
If rejection
seems to reveal a new, negative truth about a person, it becomes a heavier,
more painful burden. When rejection is intimately liked to self-concept, people
are also more likely to experience a fear of it. People reported becoming more
guarded with new partners and “putting up walls.” One study participant wrote:
“I feel like I constantly withhold myself in possible future relationships in
fear of being rejected again.” The belief that rejection revealed a flaw
prompted people to worry that this defect would resurface in other
relationships.
In some
cases, rejection also seemed to fundamentally change people’s outlook on
romantic partnerships, leaving them with pessimistic views about the
fundamental nature of relationships. As one person wrote: “To me, this
rejection was like opening Pandora’s Box, and concepts like love and trust
became fantasies that never really existed.”
So what
makes for a healthy breakup, one in which the person moves on with minimal
emotional damage? In the author's study, some people drew much weaker connections
between rejection and the self, describing rejection as an arbitrary and
unpredictable force rather than the result of some personal flaw. One person
wrote, “Sometimes girls are not interested. It’s nothing to do with yourself,
it’s just that they’re not interested.” Another noted how rejection wasn’t a
reflection of worth: “I learned that two people can both be quality
individuals, but that doesn’t mean they belong together.” Other people saw the
rejection as a universal experience: “Everyone gets rejected. It’s just part of
life.”
Yet another
group of people saw the breakup as an opportunity for growth, often citing
specific skills they had been able to learn from rejection. Communication was a
recurrent theme: People described how a rejection had helped them understand the
importance of clear expectations, how to identify differences in goals, and how
to express what they wanted out of a relationship. Other participants wrote
that breakups had helped them to accept that they couldn’t control the thoughts
and actions of others, or to learn how to forgive.
