Interesting article but, as is too often the case with social studies, the core material is insufficiently structured. For example it’s of no real utility to ask whether men or women suffer more from a breakup, because this omits the a critical factor: who initiated the breakup? It is plausible to imagine that being dumped is far more painful than doing the dumping (a situation in which one feels in control and where one may already have arranged for a substitute relationship).

Furthermore it omits other key factors such as attractiveness. A young attractive person is far less likely to experience severe emotional trauma from a breakup than will an older and less attractive person. Evolutionary psychology would predict this, because the latter is losing a vital resource whereas the former is in a good position to acquire a new resource relatively easily.

Finally, as with far too many studies, the subjects were students — an entirely unrepresentative section of the species, and the sample sizes were far too small to provide meaningful data.