According to a research published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, when a romantic relationship ends, an individual's self-concept is vulnerable to change. Self-concept is defined as a person's sense of "me". Romantic partners develop shared friends, activities and even overlapping self-concepts.
Researchers examined self-concept by three studies, looking into changes that can occur after a breakup; and they found that individuals have reduced self-concept clarity after a breakup. This reduced clarity can contribute to emotional distress. The loss of the relationship has multiple psychological consequences, including the tendency for individuals to change the content of their selves and the feeling that their selves are subjectively less clear and even smaller.
There is a prevalence of self-change experienced when a romantic relationship ends and this proves that loss can impact one's sense of self to a great extent. Couples not only may come to complete each others' sentences, they may actually come to complete each others' selves in a serious relationship, say the authors. And when such a relationship ends, individuals experience not only pain over the loss of the partner, but also changes in their selves.
This research is the first to demonstrate the unique contribution of reduced self-concept clarity to the emotional distress that individuals experience post-breakup.
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