Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
Especially For College Students
“You are not alone. Breakups in college are very common. Hopefully you will learn from each relationship how to select a partner and achieve a more satisfying relationship in the future.”
Katherine, dressed for the Arctic, which is about how cold the Wardman library usually feels, has just been through a breakup. This breakup, with a fling, followed closely on the heels of a breakup with her long-term boyfriend. Discussing her recent romantic setbacks, Katherine’s face, peeking out from bundles of clothes, turns red and she scuffs her feet as she says, “I was with my ex for three years.”
Not surprisingly, Katherine (not her real name) dealt with that loss and heartache by jumping into a rebound relationship. Just as unsurprising, it did not turn out great. Rebound relationships are common, but a July 2011 piece written by licensed therapist Becca Smith for her College Relationships blog warns that while they can be a temporary distraction they can also impair healing.
“Yes, those feelings I had [with the fling] were real, but I was also not in a good place,” she explains. “It’s a distraction, like you kind of have to do because you don’t really want to focus on what is going on inside.”
In Katherine’s case, the rebound ended fairly quickly, leaving her feeling depressed, “emo” — and with a new habit. “Yeah, I started smoking. Break ups [expletive] suck,” she says after taking a hit off her red juul pen. “That’s my Ted Talk.”
NBC News’s Lisa Heffernan reported on a 2016 survey of 24,000 college students across 22 campuses that showed while hook up culture is a part of college life — 62 percent of those surveyed had hooked up — an equal number had been on dates and and even higher percentage of men and women wanted longer-term relationships. So, breakups are inevitable. The Washington Post recently reported on a long-running study of relationships that showed that 60 percent of unmarried couples who’d been together less than two months ended up breaking up. That drops by 10 percentage points every year couples stay together over the first five years, by which time the breakup rate is 20 percent.
Most people will experience more than one breakup in their lifetimes, but the inevitability of suffering a breakup doesn’t make it any easier to navigate the journey of college and adulthood.
Francis (also not her real name) said that her breakup, which happened just before the fall semester started, detracted from her schoolwork and social life. Fixing her shoulder length, she says she felt distracted and depressed. “I would procrastinate a lot of my work and skip my classes.”
This is not unusual. Whether working a part-time job, doing extra curricular, managing school work or being in a relationship, students have a lot on their plates. A break up in the middle of all that can be hard to handle, often leaving students feeling depressed and to lose sight of their goals, academic or otherwise. Since many students will have to deal with a breakup at some point during their college years, here are some helpful coping tools.
Pain is inevitable
It is normal for people to feel pain when going through a breakup. In fact, research has proven that areas of the brain that are associated with physical pain are also associated with how we deal with relationship breakups. In addition, those who have experienced breakups deal and process it as if they were dealing with trauma. This can lead to excessive and obsessive thoughts and sometimes cravings.
Psychology Today states that “Recent research provides some suggestion that there may be a physiological basis to these “cravings” for the ex-partner. Pain is okay because it is part of the healing process and it is okay to feel great and to feel sad. Postdoctoral fellow Jonathan Ly from the Whittier College Counseling Center states that accepting that feelings will come and go and having good days and bad days is normal. An article on Bustle reports that healing takes time, and you can’t get to a better emotional state without going through the entire, sometimes lengthy, healing process.
Friends help heal
Friends can be the biggest and best support system. Says Katherine, “I am so thankful for my friends. My friends would help me get out of bed to go to class, to try and just keep a normal routine even though I did not want to.”
In fact, according to Heathline, getting through a breakup is easier with friends and family and just surrounding yourself with positive people who encourage you. Theresa Massony from Elite Daily writes that having friends who help you heal make the breakup process a lot easier because depression, even if it is just breakup depression, can affect people’s ability to just get up in the morning and go about their lives. Connecting with friends and family can seem hard when dealing with a breakup. Jonathan Ly, a Post Doc Fellow at the Whittier College Counseling Center, says that taking the time to make plans to see people or even hang out spontaneously is an important coping tool.
Focus on the future
With the darkness that comes with heartbreak and pain, there is often a light at the end of the tunnel. One of the most important things to allow healing is to focus on bigger and better things. Even though it might seem like doing work is impossible, it can give structure. According to a recent article in Study Breaks, you should make school a main priority and put effort towards things that will shape your future. Focusing on important things such as school work can help with distract from the breakup while improving academic performance. According to Study Breaks, being more active in the classrooms and joining extracurricular activities improves academics while allowing one to meet new people.
Another thing people can do after a breakup is get physically active, even if you may not want to. While eating buckets of ice cream and packets of cookies seems good at the time, it actually makes you sluggish and feel a lot worse.
A February 2017 article in Absolute Health says that doing cardio exercise or yoga can busy the mind and can boost confidence. It is a great distraction and since your body releases endorphins, it brightens one’s mood and can help improve one’s mental health. Whittier College Counseling Center’s Jonathan Ly agrees, saying that focusing on things that provide fulfillment, such as a personal project, a hobby or exercising can go a long way.
Having a good, normal sleeping pattern is important for healing, too. Plenty of rest can improve one’s mental health. Most importantly, an article from the National Sleep Foundation says that acute insomnia happens because of life circumstances such as being stressed or receiving bad news such as a break up.
Self Love
In the midst of all the emotions that come with a break up, self care is important. That means don’t just drown your sorrows. An article from Bustle about things to never do after a breakup says that drinking excessively will just stop you from feeling any emotions which is not healthy if you want to heal.
An August 2014 piece by Dr. Erica Slotter for Psychology Today recommends that you need to be compassionate to yourself not overly focused on negative emotions. In addition, Dr. Jill Weber from Psychology Today cautions against the dangers of allowing a breakup to hold all the power over one’s self esteem and recommends picking up new hobbies, taking on new project and meeting new people in the wake of a serious breakup. Weber suggests that those suffering should “Consider this breakup or divorce as a way to finally work on feeling good about yourself from deep within, not because of a romantic partner. This kind of self-worth lasts, no matter what setbacks you encounter in your life.”
Most of this is common sense, but common sense is often hard to find, or remember, in the wake of traumatic breakups. This article offers 17 common-sense suggests for getting right again after a romantic heartbreak, as always, music, creative pursuits, exercise and self care make the list. So does creating a vision board to manifest goals and aspirations.
It is hard to have an optimistic outlook after a breakup, but as Professor Chuck Hill from Whittier College says, “You are not alone. Breakups in college are very common. Hopefully you will learn from each relationship how to select a partner and achieve a more satisfying relationship in the future.”
Katherine, agrees. It wasn’t long after our initial encounter that her bright smile starting coming out of hiding. “Everyone goes through breakups and as much as they suck they are definitely learning experiences,” says Katherine. “So these boys did not discourage me from putting myself back out there eventually because everything you go through makes you who you are. So, I’m optimistic about the future.”
