One of the biggest flaws of the online breakup and “Get Your Ex Back” industry is that no one really follows up with their readers and customers to see whether they were successful and how they have been doing in their love life. Even if they do, no one has published the results of their findings …………. until now.
Our website gets a lot of visitors through search engines. Our readers are people who either want an ex back or want to figure out how to deal with a breakup. A lot of our readers also subscribe to our emails for additional information.
We conducted a survey of our readers and subscribers after almost a year of their breakup. The survey was taken by 3512 participants. We analyzed the results and the data gave us some very interesting statistics about breakups, reconciliation, moving on from the breakup and obsessing over an ex.
Before we get into the results, here is a little bit about the participants of the survey.
- The participants wanted to get back with their ex at one point of time.
- The participants broke up with their ex at least 9 months ago and at most 3 years ago. We know this because the survey was only sent to people who subscribed to us before 1st January 2019.
- The participants are from all over the world. The majority of participants (80%) come from North America and Europe. 20% of the participants come from rest of the world.
- The participants took the survey willingly. They were not offered anything in return to take the survey.
About This Study
As mentioned before, we got some very interesting data in this survey. We used TypeForm to conduct the survey, IBM SPSS Statistics to analyze the data, and Infogram for charts and graphics.
Our purpose for conducting this study was to understand breakups and recognize the patterns associated with reconciliation and moving on from a breakup. We wanted to cross-analyze age, gender and length of the relationship with how the participants were doing after almost a year of the breakup. We believe we have enough participants to come to reasonable conclusion. As far as we know, such a study has never been done by any organization ever.
We tried our best to analyze the data and come to get insights. However, the data can be analyzed even more and we are open to sharing the anonymous data with any persons/organization if they are interested in exploring the data for more insights. If that’s you, please contact us.
As we go through the results of our study, we will also reference some scientific studies on breakups and reconciliation for some perspective and contrast.
Do People Get Back Together? – The Results
The first question that comes to the mind is whether or not the participants got back together with their ex. If they did get back together, did they stay together after almost a year of the breakup? Here are the results.
We found that around 15% of people get back together and stay together and around 14% of people get back together but break up again.
We analyzed the results even further. We wanted to find out how the numbers change when we cross analyze it with gender, age and length of the relationship prior to the breakup. Here are the results.
The results were interesting to say the least. Here are the results of the above analysis in brief.
1) Heterosexual women had more success in getting an ex back than heterosexual men.
This finding may be surprising for some. But not if you look at this study published in the Evolutionary Behavioral Science Journal. According to this study, (that surveyed more than 5000 individuals about breakups) even though women tend to be more hurt by a breakup initially, they heal more fully. But men, on the other hand, have the tendency to repress their emotions. Only to feel a deep sense of loss after a while.
Women, in the Ex Back Permanently study were searching for help online. Specifically, they were searching for how to get their ex boyfriends back. And most likely, the advice they found was to stop chasing their ex, give yourself some time and focus on healing. As a result, they were healed more fully while their ex boyfriends eventually felt a deep sense of loss and started missing their ex girlfriends (after trying to ignore or repress the feeling for a long time).
In contrast, the men in our study (who were trying to get their girlfriends back) had a slightly lower success rate because their ex girlfriends were most likely more adept at dealing with the breakup grief. They most likely got support when needed and focused on recovering from the breakup pain rather than just ignoring it. As a result, they healed from the breakup and had less incentive to go back to their ex boyfriends.
2) Age group 18-24 had the highest rate of breaking up again after getting back together.
One of the most quoted study on the topic of getting back with an ex was published in the Journal of Adolescent Research in 2012. The study titled, “Relationship Churning in Emerging Adulthood: On/Off Relationships and Sex with an Ex” found that nearly half of the people reported getting back with their ex. The study only examined young adults from the age of 17-24 and only included date from one area of the country. This study is often quoted without including the fact that it only examined young adults in a specific area (For example, in this BBC Article). As a result, readers can be misguided thinking that 50% of all couples reunite.
While our study found only 30% of young adults got back together. We did find that they had the highest rate of breaking up again. While our numbers don’t really match with the above study, we did find that relationship Churning, or On/Off relationships are most common in young adults.
3) Age group of late 20s had the lowest success rate of getting an ex back.
4) The length of the relationship prior to the breakup has an impact on the success rate of getting an ex back. The longer you were with your ex before the breakup, the higher your chances of getting them back. But this only applies until the 5 year mark. Your chances of getting an ex back reduces slightly if you were together for more than 5 years.
5) Majority of participants who got back together and stayed together, did so within 1-6 months of the breakup.
Participants Who Got Back and Stayed Together
For the next set of analysis, we only focused on the participants who got their ex back and stayed together. This was about 15% of the participants. We wanted to figure out how long does it take to get an ex back, whether or not the relationship was better than before, whether or not the participants were happy in the relationship with their ex, and what helped the most in getting an ex back.
Here are the results.
In Summary,
1. 78% of the participants who got their ex back and stayed together said they were happy in the new relationship. 74% of the participants said that the rekindled relationship was better than before they broke up.
2. 69% of the participants said that both they and their ex have improved as a person and are better at handling relationship problems.
3. 54% of the participants said that Self-Improvement helped them get their ex back. Other factors that helped people get their ex back include “Time Apart”, “No Contact“, “Ex Back Websites/ Self-Help Websites/ YouTube Videos” and “Therapy/ Relationship Coaching”.
4. In the study, we didn’t include details of getting back together such as “What did they do after no contact?”, who reached out first, or what did they text their ex to get them back. We believed these are mostly minute details and don’t make a major difference in the process of getting an ex back. However, we got some interesting answers in the “Others” section where readers could write their own answers to the question. We plan to analyze those answers and release an article on that soon.
According to the results, we can confidently say that sometimes, second chances do work out.
Participants Who Were Not In a Rekindled Relationship
We wanted to analyze the participants who were not in a relationship with their ex at the time of the survey. This includes participants who never got their ex back, and participants who got their ex back but broke up again. That is about 85% of the participants.
We analyzed how many of these participants moved on, how long did it take to move on, and what factors helped in moving on.
Here are is a summary of the results.
1. 72% of the participants who were not in a relationship with their ex at the time of the survey said that they have moved on. 28% of the participants said that they still want their ex back.
2. Of all the participants that said they moved on, 73% of them said they moved on within a year.
3. 63% of the participants who moved on said Time was one of the biggest factor in helping them move on. 61% of the participants who moved on said that “Focusing energy on themselves” was one of the biggest factor in helping them move on. Spending time away from your ex and focusing on yourself is the core concept behind “The No Contact Rule“.
4. 69% of the participants who moved on said that they are not in contact with their ex.
5. 90.38% of participants who moved on chose not to be friends with their ex. They either don’t speak to with their ex, speak because of shared responsibilities (such as children) or only speak when their ex texts them. This again reinforces the idea that if you want to move on from an ex, you should stop contact with your ex.
Next we wanted to what factors affect the time it takes to move on from a relationship. Here are the results.
6. We found that that the length of the relationship prior to the breakup does affect the time it takes to move on. The longer you were with your ex, the longer it will take you to move on.
7. We also found that the age of the participants affects the time it takes to move on. Older participants took a longer time to move on than younger participants.
According to a study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology, “length of dissolved relationship was significantly associated with loss of self, negative emotions, and coping through venting.” The longer you were in a relationship, the more you lose your identity and may find it harder to move on. This may be especially true for older people. The younger you are, the easier it may be to reinvent yourself and develop a new (or rediscover your old) sense of self after a breakup.
Participants Who Still Wanted Their Ex Back
Some of the most interesting participants were the ones who still wanted their ex back. After all, it had been more than 9 months since the breakup happened. For some of the participants, it has been more than a year since the breakup. Why would someone still want their ex back so long after the breakup? What factors contributed to their inability to move on? We analyzed these participants to figure this out. Here are the results.
1. We found that age is one of the main factors when it comes to moving on. Older people were less likely to move on from a relationship than younger people.
2. In addition, we found that length of the relationship prior to the breakup also had an impact on the inability to move on.
3. We also found that the major reason people found it difficult to move on is because they believed their ex was the one for them.
4. Interestingly enough, only half the people who have not moved on still text their ex or are in contact with their ex.
Conclusion
This study is definitely one of a kind. There have been studies prior to this one that tried to find out how many people get back together after a breakup. But most of those studies are limited to a certain place and age group. This is the first study that covers all age groups and so many other factors. In addition, we also cross-analyzed a lot of data to come to some very interesting insights about breakups and getting back together. Here are some of the best insights from this study.
1. 15% of participants got their ex back and stayed together. 14% got their ex back and broke up again.
2. Women have more success in getting their ex boyfriend back than men have in getting their girlfriends back. Men have slightly more success than women in moving on.
3. The length of the relationship prior to the breakup affects the chances of getting back together and the time it takes to move on. The longer you were with your ex, the higher your chances of getting them back. Similarly, if you don’t get your ex back, the longer you were with your ex before the breakup, the longer it will take you to move on.
4. The age group 24-30 years had the least success in getting an ex back.
5. Age seems to have an impact on the ability to move on. We found that the older you are, the less likely you are to move on from a breakup. In addition, the older you are, the longer it will take you to move on from a breakup.
6. 27% of the participants who have moved on were connected with their ex on social media compared to 34% of the participants who have not moved on. This suggests that social media may have a role in preventing people from moving on.
7. Majority of the participants who got their ex back and stayed together were in happy in their new relationship and believed it’s better than it was before.
8. Majority of participants who got their ex back and stayed together attributed “Self-Improvement” as the reason they were able to get their ex back.
9. Majority of participants who still wanted their ex back after more than 9 months of the original breakup said that they were not obsessed over their ex. They also said that they do not want to date anyone else.
10. Most people who get their ex back, do so within 6 months of the breakup.
Thanks for the study, it's really interesting.
I find myself currently in the middle of the break up progress. I'm curious where I'll stand, let's say in 6 month.
It would be very interesting for me to see deeper statistics from these 14.38% of couples who came back to each other but broke up again, after how long did they break up again during those 9 months. I wonder how many of them (in percent) broke up almost immediately (say after a month), how many of them after half a year and how many of them just a few days before taking part in your survey.
Yes, it would indeed be interesting to see that. Unfortunately, we didn't think of it at the time of taking the survey. I will surely include that statistics next time we do a similar study.
This appeals to my logical brain, thank you so much
Hello, I feel like all of Kevin’s material is worth the read and introspection. By the time you get done with all the reading and worksheets you’ve definitely surpassed the one month no-contact rule, based under the specificity of your circumstances.
I truly recommend this program to anyone who is going through a break-up and suffering through that horrific pain.
Thanks you very much for this article it's really helpful