It May Actually Be Healthy to Dwell on a Broken Relationship
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iStock/Thinkstock(CHICAGO) — Getting over the heartache of a failed relationship is easier said than done but as Northwestern University researchers point out, it’s actually easier to emerge from the ashes of busted romance by really dwelling on it.
While others might tell you to try to forget all about the slings and arrows of a now-ruined affair, study co-author Grace Larson says that serious reflection about what went wrong is a healthier alternative.
Larson and her colleagues conducted a study of 210 people who experienced break-ups within the past six months, having one group fill out two surveys about their relationship while the other groups did the surveys in addition to activities that included interviews, stream-of-consciousness exercises and other methods of understanding their emotional state.
The bottom line was that the people in the talky groups came out of the nine-week sessions feeling less lonely and more emotionally stable than the people who only did the surveys.
What Larson and others noticed too was that by meeting the beast head-on, the participants used fewer words like “we” and focused more on “I,” meaning they started to think like individuals again instead of as part of a couple.
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