Getting Over a Breakup With (Attachment) Style

“You Don't Know What You've Got 'Til It's Gone”

People have great difficulty getting over lost relationships… even if they didn’t value those same relationships highly while they were in them.

Consider the following real-life examples:

“I can’t keep myself from thinking that he was the one.”

Said by a preoccupied woman about a dismissing man who repeatedly devalued and distanced from her, broke up with her multiple times, and made her feel unloved and depressed.

“If only I had played things differently, we would still be together. I know that she’s the one I want to be with.”

Said by a dismissing man who a week earlier was stating that he had lost interest in his girlfriend, had gotten back on dating platforms, and was actively talking about being with other women.

“If I had just been different, he would have wanted me.”

Said by a fearfully attached woman about a man who said he loved her while simultaneously cheating on her with upwards of six other women.

These kinds of statements will be familiar to most readers… and most of us have said things like this in our own lives. But…

Each of these statements violates the rules of reason, is illogical, and is an example of “counterfactual thinking.”

We engage in counterfactual thinking anytime we think about how things could be different in the future or the present if we “had only” behaved differently in the past. It is called “counterfactual” because it goes against the facts of what already happened. Because the event in question is in the past, it is impossible to change. It cannot be undone. Therefore, it is illogical to think “if only” I had done XYZ, things would be different now.

Counterfactual thinking usually commences when someone comes close to a certain outcome. For example, if a relationship was never that strong the loss might just be accepted. But if the level of passion or felt experience led to dreams of a permanent love relationship, having a different outcome might evoke counterfactual thinking.

Creating a counterfactual thought amounts to doing a mental simulation (or thought experiment) where you imagine changing one event, in a causal chain of events, to see how things might have turned out differently. People with secure attachment styles might be able to adaptively apply this type of simulation because they have (a) learned (through childhood relationships with healthy adult role models) logical and predictable rules for how relationships work and what outcomes might be expected, and (b) the emotion regulation needed to look at upward counterfactual simulations without being flooded by intolerable negative emotions.

People with dismissing, preoccupied, or fearful insecure attachment styles, however, are not likely to have accurate causal roadmaps for relationships, and may not be able to tolerate the negative emotions caused by upward counterfactual thinking. This style of (upward counterfactual) thinking is likely to bring misery to people with insecure attachment styles. But, because the thought process is over learned as a useful strategy for understanding causal relationships, we persist and have a hard time letting go of it.

The "gold medal" illusion

Here is what the research has to say:

If you win a silver medal in the Olympics, you should be happier than if you win bronze… right?

In their seminal research, Medvec, Madey, and Gilovich 1995) showed that it is actually the bronze medalist who is happiest.

This is because the silver medalist is engaging in upward counterfactual thinking… or thinking about how things might have been better “if only… I would have won the gold.” So, this person is viewing their silver medal as a loss relative to how things “could have been” better. By extension, the silver medalist may experience a sense of loss and regret.

The bronze medalist, in contrast, may be engaging in downward counterfactual thinking. For example, “If I had done XYZ, I might not have gotten a medal at all! The bronze medalist is elated because the alternative would have been to win nothing. Relative to winning nothing a bronze medal is pretty good. By extension, this person is likely to feel a sense of relief and positive emotion.

How to get over a breakup

When trying to get over the end of a relationship…

1. Try turning your thoughts from an upward counterfactual to a downward one. For example: “If I had behaved differently, I could have wasted years being stuck in a relationship where I was disrespected, felt unloved, and the person was repeatedly cheating on me.” If you think like this, your emotional response might be relief and gratitude.
2. Try creating/considering alternate realities other than the one where you missed out on the gold. For example: “If I had stayed in a relationship with that person, I would not have had the opportunity to find my higher life purpose,” or “I would not have had the opportunity to become a healthier person or have a really healthy and rewarding relationship.”
3. Be aware that the gold medal was an illusion. In most of these relationship scenarios, there was never a gold medal to be had. Short of receiving a brain transplant, why would a person who is cold to you, doesn’t meet your needs for love and affection, and regularly distances from you, suddenly become warm and loving? Alternately, why would you go from being disinterested and turned off by someone one week, to being in love and looking forward to a rich and fulfilling future the next? The fact is that a week ago, you didn’t see any gold medal waiting at the finish line. But when the other person let you go and decided to move on, you all of a sudden start thinking in terms of realizing a loss. Now you imagine that there was a gold medal there all along and you just couldn’t see it. The fact is, however, that nothing really changed except that you started thinking you lost. But you didn’t lose. You simply made a choice.

When it comes to relationships, the illusion is that you think there was a gold medal and that you lost it. The statement “You don’t really know what you’ve lost until it’s gone” simply does not make rational sense. You can never really know what you lost in a relationship because you can’t go back and change the past and see how it might have turned out differently.

Instead, take a deep breath and feel your feet on the ground. Breathe. Feel your heartbeat. Feel the pain… and stick with the facts. All you really know is what happened and where you are now.