Many of us at times during our lives have witnessed the death of a loved one and we know how painful that can be. Can the same apply to someone who we have been dating for several years and suddenly decide to call it quits.

Can a break-up with your long dating partner be like bereavement?

Many dating couples do eventually decide to break-up and some do it amicably while for others the break-up can be a messy affair. This becomes more complicated when couples are married or have children and decided they can no longer live together. The fact is that so much time and investment has been put into this relationship that a break-up will naturally have consequences. However, since we are comparing bereavement to a break-up, are the two similar in certain respects or are there specific differences?

Bereavement by definition implies the sorrow and loss of a loved one specifically after the death of someone. Being humans, we all have a natural ability to come out of this state of mind and correct ourselves but there is the distinct possibility that side effects can occur as a result of suppression and mental control (*1). The paper by Daniel M Wegner of Harvard University concludes that suppressing mental thoughts can lead to more accessibility of the thought to consciousness and some side-effects. In other words, there will be some differences in the case of bereavement and the loss of a break-up if we examine it from a psychological point of view.

One could also compare the case of bereavement of a long standing couple who have been married or dating for many years with the case of the couple having a break-up. How do the feelings and subsequent mental thoughts and anguish compare with each other for the two different cases above? One can argue that the loss through bereavement will be greater than a loss from a break-up. But this is easily said but in practise we know the lengthy and mental anguish of couples who go through separation and divorce.

The differences in the two cases is down to the mental coping. We know that when someone passes away there is nothing we can do and our fears and anxieties are of our own doing. It’s possible that we can cope with this better than a break-up from a love relationship. In the latter case we know that person is already alive and our torment could be greater because we can always try to convince ourselves of the fact that things could have been different and the relationship could have worked out. These thoughts can have a significant effect in one’s own self and can impact the individual’s thinking for years to come. A substitute through another dating relationship can alleviate the problem but if the intensity of the last relationship was very high, the lingering thoughts will remain in the person for many years.

It is highly possible that the subsequent feelings from a break-up of a love affair can be equal or more than the case of feelings emanating from a bereavement.

*1 Thought supression and mental control
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wegner/pdfs/ECS.pdf