--- title: Why Some People Are Hurt More by Break-Ups Than Others description: New research highlights how the pain of a breakup can linger for years. canonical: https://time.com/4198374/psychology-past-romance/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-01-28T19:19:01.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:38:17.098Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Why Some People Are Hurt More by Break-Ups Than Others og:description: New research highlights why the pain of a breakup can linger for years og:url: https://time.com/4198374/psychology-past-romance/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc4013d1e7b88ef5c/69887b18bc6cfc69733db775/broken-heart.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4147 og:image:height: 2333 og:image:alt: broken-heart og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why Some People Are Hurt More by Break-Ups Than Others twitter:description: New research highlights why the pain of a breakup can linger for years twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc4013d1e7b88ef5c/69887b18bc6cfc69733db775/broken-heart.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why Some People Are Hurt More by Break-Ups Than Others > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: Sam Yagan on The Future of Dating [Watch (HLS stream): Sam Yagan on The Future of Dating](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/0ilB08NT.m3u8) (2:40)  _Published 2015-09-17. How online dating will make us more connected_ by [Lauren Howe, Stanford University / The Conversation](https://time.com/author/lauren-howe/) ## Lauren Howe, Stanford University / The Conversation Jan 28, 2016 7:19 PM UTC  Broken heart Broken heart Getty Images by [Lauren Howe, Stanford University / The Conversation](https://time.com/author/lauren-howe/) ## Lauren Howe, Stanford University / The Conversation Jan 28, 2016 7:19 PM UTC A friend once grumbled that, given the choice, she’d rather see her ex miserable than herself happy. Few things in life are as traumatic as the end of a long-term, romantic relationship. Nonetheless, many people are able to eventually recover and move on relatively unscathed. Others, like my friend, aren’t so lucky. Even years later, they remain mired in the pain of the experience. Any reminder of their former partner – whether it’s a casual mention in conversation or a Facebook photo – can elicit profound feelings of sadness, anger and resentment. Why is it that some people continue to be haunted by the ghosts of their romantic pasts, struggling to let go of the pain of rejection? In [new research](http://psp.sagepub.com/content/42/1/54.short), my colleague Carol Dweck and I found that rejection actually makes some people redefine themselves—and their future romantic prospects. In one study, we asked people to write about any lessons they’d taken away from a past romantic rejection. Analyzing their responses, we realized that a number of respondents thought the rejection unmasked a basic negative truth about themselves—one that would also sabotage their future relationships. Some said they’d realized that they were too “clingy.” Other thought they’d been “too sensitive” or “bad at communicating.” [Additional studies](http://psp.sagepub.com/content/42/1/54.short) explored the consequences of believing that rejection had revealed a fundamental flaw. By linking rejection to some aspect of their core identity, people found it more difficult to move on from the experience. Some said they “put up walls” and became warier about new relationships. Others were afraid to disclose the rejection to a new partner, fearing that this person would change their opinion of them, thinking they had “baggage.” (This might explain why some people hide past rejections, treating them like a scar or stigma.) We then wondered: what makes someone more likely to link a romantic rejection to some aspect of “who they really are”? After all, other respondents wrote that rejection was merely a part of life, that it was an important part of growing up and actually caused them to become better people. It turns out that your beliefs about personality can play a big role in how you’ll respond to romantic rejection. [Past research](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327965pli0604%5F1) has found that people hold divergent views about their personal characteristics, whether it’s their intelligence or shyness. Some people have a “fixed mindset,” believing that these qualities are unchangeable. In contrast, those who have a “growth mindset” believe that their personality is something that can evolve and develop throughout their lives. These basic beliefs shape how people respond to failure. For example, when people believe that intelligence is fixed, they’ll feel worse about themselves – and are less likely to persist – after experiencing a setback. We thought that beliefs about personality might determine whether people see rejection as a piece of evidence about who they really are – as a sign of whether they are a flawed and undesirable person. In one study, we divided people into two groups: those who think personality is fixed, and those who think personality is malleable. [Participants then read one of two stories](https://osf.io/h6tm5/). In one, we asked them to imagine being left, out of the blue, by a long-term partner. In the other, we asked them to imagine meeting someone at a party, feeling a spark and then later overhearing that person telling a friend that they would never be romantically interested in her or him. We might expect that only a severe rejection from a serious relationship would have the power to make people question who they are. Instead, a pattern emerged. For people with a fixed view of personality, we found that even a rejection from a relative stranger could prompt them to wonder what this rejection unveiled about their core self. These people might worry that there was something so obviously undesirable about them that a person would reject them outright—without even getting to know them. So what can we do to prevent people from linking rejection to the self in this negative way? One promising piece of evidence shows that changing someone’s beliefs about personality can shift his or her reaction to rejections. In a final study, [we created articles](https://osf.io/yt49a/) that described personality as something that can evolve throughout the course of a lifetime, rather than as something that’s predetermined. When we asked people with a fixed view of personality to read these articles, they became less likely to interpret rejections as an indication of a permanent, fatal deficiency. By encouraging the belief that personality can change and develop over time, we may be able to help people exorcise the ghosts of their romantic pasts—and move on to satisfying relationships in the future. _This_ [_article_](https://theconversation.com/why-is-it-so-tough-for-some-to-exorcise-the-ghosts-of-their-romantic-pasts-53028) _originally appeared on_ [_The Conversation_](http://theconversation.com) ## Transcript The most important search of your life isn't for a house or a car, it's for companionship. It's for love, it's for romance. It's why I come to work every day. [ MUSIC ] So my parents immigrated to the United States from Syria. And my mom was a doctor, my dad was a computer scientist Just they were here literally living the American dream. Really hoping that their kids would have better lives than they left in Syria. I was obviously aware that I was an immigrant but I don't think I really appreciated what it meant to leave everything you had and starting over. As I've gotten older and thought more about where did my entrepreneurial spirit come from, I really think. Immigration is the ultimate entrepreneurship. If you think about what it takes to be an entrepreneur, you've gotta have a vision for something. You're giving up what you know. In many of the same ways, that approach to life, that outlook to risk taking and comfort with ambiguity, I think, has been a lot of my sorta comfort with entrepreneurship. I had a professor in college who was one of the first people to really, I think, believe in me when I didn't believe in myself. I was taking the introductory computer science class, I thought it was too much for me, and I said, you know, I've been thinking about dropping your class. She said, don't do that, you're taking the next class, and not only that, I want you to be on my teaching staff next year. It ended up being the most transformative experience of my college career. I see this in the people I mentor Sometimes when they're down, sometimes you just have to remind them that you're good, and that pat on the back or that confidence from someone else can really be what sets you back on to the right course. Well, I'm a professional love maker, which has got to be one of the best jobs on the planet. The dating category has really evolved a lot In the last 20 years. In the early 2000s was a period of time marked by the psychologist era. And as a computer scientist mathematician at heart, that message really didn't resonate with me. So, we thought let's create a way for people to make their own algorithms for themselves. You've got an algorithm in your head, you just don't call it an algorithm. You just got a set of questions that you wanna know What kind of car? What kind of job? What kind of religion? Do they want to have kids? Whatever your set of questions are. And so all we've said is let's ask the same questions and then mash that all together and come out with a list of people that we think you might have a good first date with. Because we introduce people to each other who wouldn't normally We have met who aren't necessarily crossing paths every day in their normal course. Those kinds of impacts have these tremendous implications for society. And every time I think about doing something else for a living, I always come back to is it as meaningful as what we're doing now. I mean, imagine if everybody in the world was in love. What a great place. 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