Navigating divorce and partner bereavement: Personality and trajectories of change in life satisfaction and mental health.

Dissolutions of romantic relationships can elicit diverse reactions across various aspects of well-being, but they also offer an opportunity to examine which factors promote resilience and identify individuals at risk. In this preregistered multi-sample longitudinal study, we examined the heterogeneity in life satisfaction and mental health changes around and during divorce or partner bereavement, and whether personality (i.e., traits and resilient versus nonresilient personality profiles) may explain individual differences in change trajectories. Data from 1,306 divorcees and 1,150 bereaved partners were drawn from nationally representative panel studies in the Netherlands (N = 12,551), Germany (N = 10,830), and China (N = 28,628), and analyzed using growth mixture modeling. Four life satisfaction trajectories and three mental health trajectories were identified for each event. Recovery and resilience emerged as the most common trajectories across events, outcomes, and samples. Among personality factors, neuroticism was the most consistent predictor of a lower likelihood of belonging to a resilience trajectory. This study advanced the generalizability of findings across diverse loss-based events, populations, and aspects of well-being. The findings further underscore the influence of neuroticism in shaping, and potentially complicating, psychological adjustment surrounding divorce and partner bereavement.