“On average, people overestimate how distressed they will be following a breakup,” Finkel said in a telephone interview.
The nine-month study involved college students who had been dating at least two months who filled out questionnaires every two weeks. They gathered data from 26 people ”” 10 women and 16 men ”” who broke up with their partners during the first six months of the study.
The participants’ forecasts of distress two weeks before the breakup were compared to their actual experience as recorded over four different periods of time.
Don’t let the headline freak you. I read it and thought it was some TEC research to celebrate divorce… but actually, it is a kind of “Duh” research into what we already know – college relationships are practice runs.
Yes, there is a lot of “emo” melodrama with it all, but folks get over it.
Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.
Breaking up is just practice for a future actual divorce.
It looks as though the propaganda is successful.
After all, if breaking up is so easy, won’t divorce also be easy?
The article is yet another page out of the its-all-about-me generation.
This article is very misleading. Yes, the “casual sex” encounters don’t seem to mean much at the time – but they leave lasting impressions, especially with women. In a sexual encounter, “soul ties” are created – and they are next to impossible to break, cropping up years later. God created sex to be a one-flesh union. Jesus is the only one who can break those “soul ties.” I want those researchers to re-interview those people 15-20 years from now, especially after they have had a “true love” experience. They will not be so cavalier about their past encounters. Let’s hope that someone will show them how Jesus can help them.
#2 Don – when I said “practice runs”, I meant that dating is where people practice interaction with the opposite sex in relationships that are not expected to be permanent – in order to build skills for more permanent relationship later. In a healthy setting, dating is the next step after our relationship with the opposite-sex parent. And dating creates emotional highs and lows as every pop tune, sitcom, B-movie &c;. bears witness.
But I agree with #3 that where sexual promiscuity is prevalent, the ability to learn and navigate relationships with the opposite sex is stunted. As a baby boomer, I would say that my generation’s sexual license fueled the instability of marriages. Not just by infidelity, but by making relationships about short term, personal gratification. Such predisposition does not make for good marriage material. And #3 is also right Jesus is the one to help us overcome such impoverished living.
As a baby boomer, I would say that our generation’s sexual licence was fueled by the advent of the birth control pill, media hyping of sex-as-recreation, the expectation that an active sex life was part of healthy development, and especially of an institutional breakdown at colleges where young people of both sexes suddenly found themselves housed together at the peak of their hormonal surges. We were like rats in a newfangled maze that nobody had explored before. Thank you, Helen (#2) for your testimony. There is much truth in it.