Romantic breakup distress: a narrative review

Abstract

This narrative review includes all 30 papers that were published on romantic breakup distress over the past five years. Although the prevalence of romantic breakups is still as high as 82% of adolescents and young adults, there is relatively little literature. Earlier research focused primarily on the negative effects of romantic dissolutions, while the more recent research involves risks and predictors of the breakups. This review includes different types of romantic breakups, negative effects like depression as well as positive effects like posttraumatic growth. The predictors include finding words on social media that are predictive of romantic breakups as early as three months in advance of the breakups, as well as negative behaviors, lack of self-esteem and grit, narcissism and demographic risk factors including female gender. Interventions have included “storying” about the breakup, Internet Group Therapy and Emotion Based Therapy. Methodological limitations of the literature continue to include the samples which are typically limited to the initiators of the breakup, self-report data taken cross-sectionally, and the limited number of studies that could be systematically reviewed and meta-analyzed