A Preliminary Test of the Comprehensive Model of Post‐Dissolution Distress: Predicting Initial and Over Time Changes in Distress Following Romantic Dissolution

This study provided a preliminary test of the Comprehensive Model of Post‐Dissolution Distress with longitudinal data. The model includes distal (static; e.g., breakup controllability, relational anxiety) and proximal (time‐varying; e.g., desiring reconciliation, coping, quality of alternatives) factors in predicting both initial distress and change in distress over time. Adults who had experienced a breakup in the past 30 days completed an initial survey and were invited to complete 5 monthly follow‐up surveys. Analyses ( N = 272) showed that a set of distal and proximal factors significantly contributed to explaining 66% of the variance in initial distress. Relational anxiety, desiring reconciliation, and self‐medicating coping more consistently predicted change in distress over time for those who remained single across the timepoints ( n = 143). This model can be utilized in theory‐building to understand how the factors work collectively to predict post‐dissolution distress and highlight proximal factors that can be altered to alleviate distress. With the limited statistical power, additional research replicating and extending these findings would be beneficial.