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... studies show people expect their break-ups to be longer and more painful than they are, in part because we forget that our psychological immune system will kick in and we’ll decide we never liked the person anyway.

I must be missing this "psychological immune system," as breakups of what (to me) were deeply committed relationships have been the most painful, longest-lasting things I've ever experienced.

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Yep. It's more likely that [certain] studies show [a proportion of] people expect their break-ups to be longer and more painful than they actually are.

I would have liked to see links to those studies in the article to evaluate them. I was unexpectedly broken up with once (after committing for around 'just' a couple months), and it hurt for far longer and was more painful than I thought it might be. Things were mostly better after 4 months, and rarely thought of after around 8 months.

I’ve heard a rule of thumb that a break-up will sting for twice the length of the relationship. Assuming you were not the instigator.

I've heard a rule that it was half the time of the relationship. From my experience your rule is more accurate!

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