Turns out, breakups actually change your brain chemistry and it takes people on average eight years to recover from it.

Turns out, breakups actually change your brain chemistry and it takes people on average eight years to recover from it. And men probably do have it worse, but we'll talk about it. I have been told all my life that it takes about two years between a really good event happening or a really bad event and then your brain returns to baseline. Turns out, that was a lie. Immediately when you break up with someone, yes, you are missing those neurotransmitters. People provide you with dopamine, it's a happy brain chemical and also does relieve pain to a degree. You also get oxytocin, that's the cuddle hormone. It's kind of the reason that animals don't often eat their offspring. The fortunate part is that this does in fact take two years to go back to baseline, but there's other stuff that can keep that from happening. Your brain doesn't actually know the difference between losing a loved one and breaking up with somebody. So people end up going through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, and ideally eventually acceptance. But here's why it actually takes longer to get there. The first one is the brain chemistry issue. The next ones fortunately can be mitigated. You need to stop reinforcing those neural pathways. So scrolling their social media, looking at pictures, replaying old events, that's not helping you. It's keeping you from resetting your brain. And unfortunately, one of the factors that really does help people move on is going to be having a support system. Men do tend to have weaker support systems than women, and that can result in diving into other relationships, bringing on more baggage, and just causing more pain in general. You got to be there for your bros, okay? That that goes for everyone. The good news is that no matter what, it eventually gets better. All injuries eventually heal and then they scar, assuming that you've survived them.