Bam! Another TSN Turning Point. But this one is not that great of a TSN Turning Point because shit really hits the fan here…

So things used to be great, but you’re having doubts. Enter the relationship dissolution phases. Let me walk you through the model…

Individualization (people talk about “me” instead of “we”, people resent being in a relationship and having to compromise for someone else)

Circumscribing (topics discussed become very superficial and shallow to avoid any potential fights)

De-intensification/avoidance (partners physically avoid each other, someone stops answering calls/texts, person is all the sudden busy all the time or out with friends)

Separation/Termination (relationship over, could re-start remains but difficult, partners start to untangle from one another’s lives ranging from divorce to packing someone’s stuff up in a box and the dreaded – untagging yourself from being in a relationship on Facebook – the horror)

Post-interaction effect (recalibrating to being single, RSVP’ing to events as only “1”)

Now the weird thing is, we don’t know much about break-ups. Turns out, us relationship and sex researchers are much more interested in the beginning and the middle part of relationships, than the unraveling of people’s lives as their relationships fall apart. Our bad.

But here is some cool research being done at the University of New Brunswick (that’s in Canada) on break-ups that was recently presented at the annual Canadian Sex Research Forum conference in Charlottetown, PEI.

276 adults between 18-25yrs (66% female) were recruited online (Facebook, Twitter) to fill out an online survey. They had all experienced a break-up in the past 12 months.

The researchers asked about “pursuit” behaviours – behaviours typically described as in-person stalking (showing up at someone’s house or work) or cyberstalking (harassing someone via email).

Turns out, most of us like to “pursue” our ex’s a little bit. 78% of this sample reported having engaged in some type of pursuit behaviours of an ex in the past year.

Most common pursuit behaviour?  – we like to call our ex (47%) or ask around regarding what they are up to (40%).Some of us like to send our ex special messages of affection online like “I love you” (22%) or just email them to make sure they keep us in the loop on their new life that mostly doesn’t include us in it (40%).

The good news is that only a few of us say things to scare our ex’s or pretend to be someone else in order to get information from them. That’s nice of us, huh?

So moral of the story here…I don’t know….maybe don’t be an asshole to your ex and don’t stalk them. That sounds reasonable, right? And don’t be an asshole to someone you’re dating but about to break up with? Nobody likes assholes.

Here is a link to the 6min podcast on this topic.