Love Fool

“I believe everything happens for a reason and I never have regrets...But I regret ever meeting this girl. She hurt me worst than any girl ever has. Now my problem is,should I say now it's over for us, or should I say for her I’m still massively attached to her. She has moved on and already has another guy… she treated me balyd and I can't understand this myself. I embarrassed myself today by calling and texting her and I could tell she no longer had any interest in me at all” Andy79

I came across this on a self help forum whilst desperately trying to find out how to write a best man speech and couldn’t help but feel sorry for Andy79. But after some thinking I also felt quite frustrated about not being able to put Andy79 straight with some psychology talk about love, break ups and getting over ‘the one’ (this phrase is horrific). From the looks of things Andy79 didn’t get treated particularly well at all and this girl is almost definitely not right for him. But Andy79 can’t seem to see this, stuck hoping and desperate to get back with someone that has treated him terribly. What has gone wrong with poor Andy79?

First of all Andy believes that everything happens for a reason. People who say this are largely idiots for numerous reasons. But I will not bang on about fate or destiny regardless of the fact they are ridiculous ideas. Instead we will discuss some research that suggests Andy is going to be a lot better a lot sooner than he realises and that although when writing that tear-wrenching post he thought his life was terrible - in reality it probably wasn’t all that bad.

People break up and within days they are back together. What does this mean? That they got it wrong and quickly rekindled the flame? Perhaps in some cases, but in other cases it is likely to be very strong feelings of loneliness and loss clouding their judgement. Eastwick et al. (2008) did some interesting research examining break up’s and individuals predictions and feelings of happiness as a consequence of the break up. University students signed up to the study at the start of the academic year and the researchers literally waited for relationships to fall to pieces. On a weekly basis participants rated how happy they though they would be if they were to break up with their boy/girlfriend, as well as some additional questions. If a participant broke up with their partner they then continued to answer questions every week, but instead were asked about how happy they were, amongst other things. Heartbreakingly quite a few did break up with their respective partners.

From this kind of design the researchers can examine a number of things. First of all, they could examine whether people overestimate how much of an impact the break up will have on their happiness. Additionally, they could examine whether people are wise to the fact that the pain eases in time. Interestingly there was a large bias in the expected direction. Although participants predictions indicated that they appreciated the pain would become easier over time, they overestimated how bad they would feel. Furthermore, there were some individuals that made this over-estimation to an even greater extent. Participants that; a) thought they would be unlikely to enter a new relationship any time soon, b) played less of a part in the break up and c) rated themselves as being very much in love with their partner, all underestimated how happy they would be feeling in the near future.

How can this help Andy79? Probably because a, b and c are all applicable to him. At a bit of a guess he doesn’t seem to truly believe he will be happy again. This is unlikely to be true. Additionally, if you have broken up with someone that you very much loved and didn’t have much of a say in it, it is likely you will be feeling really quite bad and the future doesn’t look too rosy. Yet, it probably won’t be the case. As humans we are extremely resilient, but it seems as though when break ups occur we tend to lose our minds in this respect.

A second piece of research that is of relevance underlines how we can have a tendency to add too much weight to our love life in terms of how happy it can or will make us. A classic study asked participants two questions ‘How happy in life are you in general? And ‘How often do you normally go on a date?”. When asked in that order there was next to no correlation between the two questions. Yet, when the order was reversed and the dating question came first, the two became highly correlated. In essence, participants based their life satisfaction response more on how often they dated as it was recently thought about. The fact that there was no association between the two when the order was: life in general question > dating question, suggests dating habits really don’t have too big an impact on how happy we really are.

In no way do I even suggest that relationships aren’t any good. There is very good reason to believe they can make us happier, healthier and more satisfied with life. But what I do suggest is that for the average singleton dwelling on dating habits may lead him/her to believe they are less happy in life than they actually are.

A final mention is more speculative. Philosopher Alain de Botton suggests that when we meet someone special we are overwhelmed by how lucky we have been and this can make us fall even deeper in love. What were the chances of having to have bumped into her or him as a result of your delayed train and then helping her or him pick up her bag they had dropped, as well having happened to both be reading the same books? At first glance it is 1/100000 and almost like fate. The importance of numbers and probability might also be important in the reverse of getting over a lover. Perhaps some of the participants in Eastwick et al.’s study were down and so negative in predicting future happiness because they were at odds with the numbers and probability of them ever finding anyone quite as special as the ex. Maybe finally realising he/she isn’t ‘the one’ and that the probability of meeting someone else you will probably also end up calling ‘the one’ is good is a big step in recovering from the break up blues. Maybe.

Application

Don’t watch Sex and the City.

Although it is difficult, give things a try and attempt not to let emotions override good decisions. You broke up for a reason, he was probably rubbish. Go girlfriend!
Dating: Andy79 is single and from the sounds of things quite desperate.