Have you ever found yourself feeling upset over a relationship breakup that you knew was doomed two years ago or even earlier? In other words, you suspected for a long time that your love had faded, but you just didn’t want to admit it.
“To better understand relationships that are falling apart, we examined them in light of the time leading up to the breakup. For this, we applied a concept that is widely used in other areas of psychology,” said Janina Bühler, a professor of personality psychology and diagnostics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the lead researcher of the study.
Using a combination of four datasets (one each from Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, and the United Kingdom), covering 11,000 individuals, the researchers analyzed people’s satisfaction with their relationships over time—right up to their conclusion. The scientists discovered a fairly consistent pattern: couples start off happy, but over the next eight years, they increasingly feel less satisfied, leading to a critical “turning point” in their relationship.
“From this turning point, there is a rapid decline in relationship satisfaction. Couples then move toward separation,” Professor Bühler noted. According to her, “once this final phase is reached, the relationship is doomed to end.” Partners have, at worst, seven months before the final breakup, and at best, about 28 months. On average, it’s between one to two years after the boiling point, as reported by IFLScience.
Are there exceptions to the rule? The good news is that there are. Researchers say that only a few couples manage to bypass this turning point.
But can a broken relationship be mended? The team believes that after this critical point, desperate attempts to reignite the spark of love are often futile. To maintain a relationship and prolong it, partners need to work on it together long before the destructive phase sets in.
“Initiating actions at the pre-terminal stage of a relationship, that is, before they start to spiral downhill, can be effective and even contribute to their preservation,” Professor Bühler offered as a glimmer of hope.
The study’s findings were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.