Break up Season is Here. Let’s Talk About It.

Let's talk about something I have seen every fall for more than twenty years. Right around now, relationships start ending.

In my practice it starts in late October and builds through November. Then the holidays arrive and everything goes quiet. Come March, it starts all over again. We are in breakup season, and if you are in the middle of it, I want to help you through it.

The calendar is real

Researchers have noticed it too. Back in 2010, two data journalists combed through about 10,000 Facebook posts looking for the words "breakup" and "broken up." The posts started climbing in early November, peaked right before Christmas, and spiked again after Valentine's Day. Keep in mind that Facebook only hears about a breakup once someone is ready to say it out loud. The ending itself starts earlier, and for a lot of couples it is starting right now.

Sociologists at the University of Washington studied 14 years of divorce filings and found the same rhythm. Filings dropped to their lowest in November and December, then shot up in March.

So if your relationship feels shaky this month, or it has already ended, you have a lot of company.

Why now?

Think about what is coming. Thanksgiving means deciding whether this person sits at your family's table. December means choosing a gift that says something about where the two of you are headed. New Year's Eve means choosing who you kiss at midnight.

If you have had doubts since summer, late October is when they get loud. You can leave now, or you can sign up for two months of family dinners with someone you are unsure about. A lot of people choose now.

Once the holidays begin, most people hold on. Nobody wants to be the one who ruined Christmas, and we all hope the season will fix things. Sometimes it does. When it doesn't, March is waiting.

Why it hurts this much

If you are going through a breakup, you may feel like you are in withdrawal. In a way, you are.

Anthropologist Helen Fisher put people who had just been rejected into a brain scanner and showed them a photo of their ex. The parts of the brain that lit up were the same ones involved in craving and addiction. So when you catch yourself checking your phone for the fortieth time, please be gentle with yourself. Your brain is craving something it used to get every day.

There is a second loss that nobody warns you about. Over time, two people come to share friends, routines, even opinions. When the relationship ends, a piece of who you are seems to leave with it. Researchers have found that people feel less sure of who they are after a breakup, and that the confusion hurts all on its own. You miss them, and you also miss you.

What actually helps

I want to give you three things you can use today.

First, stop looking. A study of 464 people found that those who kept checking an ex's Facebook page felt more distress and more longing, and they grew less from the experience. The study can't say which causes which. I can tell you that every look is another dose of the thing you are trying to quit.

The same researcher, Tara Marshall, followed up this year with nearly 800 people, and the new work is harder to argue with. People who went searching for their ex online felt worse that day and still felt worse the next day. She calls it an emotional hangover. Simply having the ex pop up in a feed hurt too, though that usually faded by morning. The photos that did the most damage showed the ex looking good, having fun, or seeming to have moved on.

Then there is what lives on your own phone. In a small interview study, people who held on to every photo and message took longer to heal. The ones who deleted everything in a rush often wished they hadn't. So you do not have to erase your history tonight. Move it somewhere you will not see it every day, and unfollow so the feed stops serving it to you.

Second, tell yourself the whole truth about the relationship. When we have been broken up with, we tend to romanticize what we lost. We remember the person's good qualities and then we exaggerate them, until the person we are missing is better than the person we were actually with. An honest look corrects that. In one small study, heartbroken people who thought about their ex's faults felt less in love afterward, even though it stung in the moment. Distraction lifted their mood for a while and left the love exactly where it was. So go ahead and watch the movie with your friends tonight. Tomorrow, write down what was really going on.

Third, find yourself again. In a nine-week study of 210 people fresh out of a breakup, the ones who were asked to reflect on it regularly came out with a clearer sense of who they were. They felt less lonely and the breakup intruded on their thoughts less often. Nobody handed them advice. They simply had a regular time and place to ask, "Who am I now?" A journal can give you that. So can a good therapist.

You have company

If this is your breakup season, please remember how many people are going through the same thing right now. It happens every year, on schedule, to smart and loving people.

You can start picking yourself back up today. Stop checking on your ex. Tell yourself the truth about what the relationship really was. Set aside a regular time to ask who you are now, on your own. None of it will fix everything overnight, but it will help.