How Humans Break Up: Three Exit Strategies and a Thousand Emotional Loops
Thursday, June 26, 2025.
Picture this: your ancestors are huddled in a Paleolithic cave.
One wants to leave the relationship, but breaking up means exile, starvation, or being eaten by a saber tooth tiger named Chunga.
Fast-forward 50,000 years and breakups still suck—but now, instead of tigers, we have TikTok therapists and group chats.
In a recent Greek study that’s as poignant as it is uncomfortably relatable, Apostolou and Kagialis (2024) decided to investigate how people break up—not just why.
And what they discovered is depressingly logical and oddly familiar: most of us try to be decent about it, some of us hedge our bets with ambiguity, and a few of us just quietly vanish like interns after lunch.
But wait. Before you tattoo “Soften the Blow” on your wrist, let’s explore what this research really says—and how it syncs or clashes with what couples therapy titans like Gottman, Perel, Tatkin, and Johnson have been saying all along.
The Study in a Nutshell: Three Grand Strategies, 45 Tiny Maneuvers
Researchers asked 620+ Greek adults to either imagine or report how they would end an unhappy relationship. From their answers, they distilled 45 specific breakup tactics—grouped neatly into nine mini-strategies, which were in turn bundled into three mega-strategies:
Soften the Blow (86%)
You explain. You take responsibility. You try to make it seem mutual. You might even say, “It’s not you, it’s the evolution of our dynamic.”Take a Break (24%)
You pull a Ross Geller. A tactical pause. Maybe you'll return, maybe not—but it's less like amputating a limb and more like temporarily icing it.Avoid Confrontation (16%)
You ghost, fade, vanish—whatever the kids are calling it. No note, no closure. Just radio silence and a Netflix password that stops working.
These strategies don’t exist in a vacuum—they echo, contradict, and complicate what leading couples therapy voices say about how relationships die.
Gottman’s Death Knells: Where Breakups Begin Before They Begin
John Gottman, the maestro of marital misery metrics, doesn’t talk much about how people break up—but he’s crystal clear on how we get there.
His Four Horsemen—criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling—gallop in long before anyone drafts a breakup text (Gottman & Silver, 1999).
Gottman might look at Apostolou’s findings and say: “Of course people want to soften the blow. You don’t want the Four Horsemen following you into your next relationship.” But Gottman’s research also suggests that by the time a breakup strategy is deployed, the emotional disconnection has already baked into the relationship cake.
Friction Point:
Gottman emphasizes behavioral erosion over time, whereas Apostolou’s study captures snapshot intentions.
See the difference? It’s kinda the difference between chronic illness, and elective surgery.
Esther Perel Would Like to Speak to the Manager of Ambiguity
Esther Perel, our contemporary psychoanalytic poet of erotic dislocation, might call “Soften the Blow” a self-soothing ritual.
She sees modern relationships not just as attachments, but as curated identities—and breakups, then, become performances that preserve our sense of self (Perel, 2017).
Perel might applaud the Greek participants’ impulse to be kind and articulate.
But she might raise an eyebrow at the “Take a Break” group. For her, ambiguity is often a sign of people clinging to fantasy rather than intimacy. “Are we breaking up, or are you just cooling off before checking Tinder in Santorini?”
Agreement Point:
Perel and Apostolou both recognize that modern breakups are more about managing perceptions than just ending a bond.
Stan Tatkin and the Neurobiology of Ghosting
Stan Tatkin, the colorful attachment-focused neuroscientist of couples therapy, would wave a red flag at the “Avoid Confrontation” folks.
According to Tatkin (2012), breaking up by ghosting isn’t just rude—it’s a nervous system betrayal.
From Tatkin’s perspective, safety and attunement are the lifeblood of secure-functioning relationships.
Disappearing without a trace doesn’t just end a relationship—it dysregulates the brain.
He might say: “You’ve left someone in an unresolved attachment spiral. That’s not just mean—it’s biologically destabilizing.”
Friction Point:
Where Apostolou records ghosting as “less preferred,” Tatkin considers it nearly unforgivable.
One is a frequency count; the other, a relational crime scene.
Sue Johnson and the Ache of Unfinished Bonds
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) creator Sue Johnson (2008) wouldn’t have been surprised that most people “soften the blow.” That’s because she sees humans as wired for attachment. Even when we leave, we still want to matter.
Her concept of “attachment injury” is relevant here. A breakup isn’t just a logistical shift—it’s a threat to one’s internal model of love and worthiness.
For Johnson, the way we leave is as important as why. She’d probably consider Apostolou’s nine strategies as variations on a deeper theme: the terror of disconnection.
Agreement Point:
Johnson and Apostolou both observe that people prefer connection-preserving exits—even in separation.
Personality Traits: The Surprising Absence of Chaos
Now here’s the twist: despite surveying a bunch of people and measuring everything from agreeableness to Machiavellianism, personality traits barely mattered.
Agreeable people were slightly less cold. Machiavellians liked the “cold and distant” vibe. Psychopaths blamed others. But most people, regardless of their Big Five scores or inner Bond villain tendencies, chose soft landings.
This is where evolutionary psychology rubs against modern psychotherapy.
Apostolou suggests that “Soften the Blow” is an evolved strategy for maintaining social alliances. After all, in the ancestral environment, you couldn’t afford to burn bridges with someone whose brother owned all the fire.
But therapists are more interested in emotional regulation than tribal survival.
Gottman wants your cortisol levels down. Perel wants your erotic dignity intact. Tatkin wants your nervous system soothed. Apostolou wants you not exiled from the clan.
Limitations, Or Why Greek Ghosting Might Not Translate to Kansas
Let’s acknowledge that this was a Greek sample—one steeped in Mediterranean social scripts, where honor and harmony often outweigh blunt truth.
It’s not clear how breakup strategies vary across cultures, generations, or TikTok subcultures.
Also: self-report bias. What people say they’d do in a hypothetical breakup may not match what they actually do when the Wi-Fi is down and the dog just threw up on the rug.
Future research might cross-tabulate breakup styles with attachment styles, conflict styles, or even financial interdependence.
What happens when your lease ends in February, but your breakup starts in October?
Therapist’s Takeaway: Breakups as a Litmus Test for Growth
Apostolou’s study offers something rare: a map of how people intend to leave. That matters.
Because even in endings, we reveal who we’ve become—and what we’re still afraid of.
Couples therapists know this well.
Breakups are often the final exam in emotional maturity.
And whether your clients soften, stall, or vanish, our job is to help them leave—or stay—with a sense of coherence, self-respect, and perhaps even a little grace.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Apostolou, M., & Kagialis, A. (2024). Soften the blow, avoid confrontation, take a break: Three strategies that people use to terminate an intimate relationship. Personality and Individual Differences, 216, 112127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2023.112127
Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (1999). The seven principles for making marriage work. Crown Publishers.
Johnson, S. (2008). Hold me tight: Seven conversations for a lifetime of love. Little, Brown Spark.
Perel, E. (2017). The state of affairs: Rethinking infidelity. Harper.
Tatkin, S. (2012). Wired for love: How understanding your partner’s brain and attachment style can help you defuse conflict and build a secure relationship. New Harbinger Publications.