# Strategies for Coping With the End of a Desirable Intimate Relationship: An Exploratory Study

## TL;DR

This study explores how people cope emotionally when a desired intimate relationship ends, identifying five main strategies and noting differences by sex and age.

## Contribution

The study introduces a classification of 16 distinct coping acts grouped into five main strategies for ending desirable intimate relationships.

## Key findings

- The most common strategy was 'Transfer focus to different things,' including self-focus and staying busy.
- Sex and substances were the least frequently used coping strategy.
- Significant differences in strategy use were found based on sex and age.

## Abstract

Frequently, people find themselves in a situation where an intimate relationship they wish to keep ends, creating emotional pain that requires coping strategies. The aim of the present study is to investigate the various strategies people employ for this purpose. Using a mixed-methods approach, we identified 84 distinct acts, which we classified into 16 strategies and subsequently classified into five main strategies for coping with the end of a desirable intimate relationship. The most likely to be used main strategy was “Transfer focus to different things,” including strategies such as “Focus on myself” and “Keep myself busy.” Other commonly chosen main strategies were “Seek support,” involving reliance on friends, family, and professionals, and “Social withdrawal,” characterized by isolation behaviors. Additionally, several participants indicated readiness to adopt the “Disassociation and positive reframing” main strategy, involving attempts to positively reframe the end of the relationship and disassociate from the former partner. The least frequently adopted main strategy was “Sex and substances,” involving substance use (such as alcohol) and casual sex encounters to cope with the end of a relationship. Furthermore, significant main effects of sex and age were observed for several of the identified strategies.