Sex, Drugs & Scotland's Health- Feeling rules in youth break up cultures: Implications for health promotion

MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow
Feeling Rules In Youth Breakup Cultures: Implications for
Health Promotion
Raquel Boso Perez, Ruth Lewis, Kirstin Mitchell

What is a break up?
(Boelen and Reijntjes 2009; Fleury, Sullivan, & Bybee, 2000; Rhoades, Kamp Dush,
Atkins, Stanley, & Markman, 2011; Simon & Barrett, 2010; Tashiro & Frazier, 2003;
Umberson, Crosnoe, & Reczek, 2010; Umberson & Karas Montez, 2010)
What are young people’s
break up cultures?

Theoretical framework (Hochschild 1979, 2003)
Feeling rules
Strength, duration and
direction
Emotion work
Evocation
Expressive, embodied, and
cognitive
Suppression
Expressive, embodied, and
cognitive

Study design
• Recruited:
• Young people (ages 16-25)
• Living in Scotland.
• Methods:
• Activity-based focus group
• Brief participant
questionnaire
Image designed by pikisuperstar / Freepik

Data collection
July and August of 2019
Focus groups lasted between 1-1.5 hours
Conducted within youth work organisation by a facilitator and an
observer
Thanked with a takeaway meal to share during or after the focus group
Four focus groups and one paired interview

Sample
Age 15-24
Gender
Women: 11
Men: 10
Non-binary: 4
Neutral: 1
Questioning: 1
Sexual
orientation
LGBQ+: 15
Heterosexual: 12
NA: 1
Young people were asked to give yes or no
responses to a series of statements regarding
break ups. Out of the 28 young people who took
part in the research:
• 23 people had broken up with someone
• 19 had been broken up with
• 22 had experiences a good break up
• 15 had a bad break up
• 17 usually stayed friends with their exes
• 19 would not feel confident breaking up with
someone

Defining a break up
A
deliberate
ending
“you cannot break
up with somebody
if you are not
exclusively
together”
Kathryn

Feeling Rules of Breaking Up
One should
no longer be
in love with
their ex
One should
not cause
unnecessary
hurt during a
break up
One should
be
appropriatelly
distressed
during a
break up

Feeling Rules of Breaking Up
One should
no longer be
in love with
their ex
One should
not cause
unnecessary
hurt during a
break up
One should
be
appropriatelly
distressed
during a
break up
“There’s no such thing as an easy break up”
(Oak, asexual panromantic non-binary person, LGBT Group 1)

One should be appropriately distressed during a break up
Appropriate
distress
Initiator
status
Relationship
status
Relationship
length
Time since
the break up

Appropriate
distress
Initiator
status
Relationship
status
Relationship
length
Time since
the break up
Matt : It [mutual break ups] would
make things better because yous
can’t moan.
Chloe: Yeah.
Declan: Oh no, they can.
Matt: They can but they have no
right to.
(General Group 1)

Appropriate
distress
Initiator
status
Relationship
status
Relationship
length
Time since
the break up
Hazel: Like some friends with benefits get
attached right, it’s usually one person will
get attached to the other and then they’re
like oh shit.
Declan: Yeah, but that’s their fault. That’s
their fault for getting attached.
Matt: […] There’s no way to make a friends
with benefits a break up unless you’re an
absolute dumb ass.
(General Group 1)

Actions taken to attempt to minimise unnecessary hurt
You don’t want to leave them sitting there
like, “What did I do wrong? Did I do
something that they didn’t like? What have I
done here?” They might go into the next
relationship thinking that they did
something wrong and then trying to do
everything differently and wreck that
relationship as well.
(Andy, demisexual person, LGBT Group 3)
1. Certainty
2. Break up medium
3. Reasons

Balancing needs
Jules: Speaking from personal experience, like if you are going through a
tough time then you should try and like wait it out with them, and at least
wait until they are not in such a bad time to try and break up with them.
Tim: […] I get like mental health is like troublesome for people, but
wouldn’t you feel like you would be leading that person on staying with
them a little bit longer?
Andy: It is a bit of a difficult thing to think about, because like you don’t
want to make anything worse for them, but you don’t want to keep going
with this as a charade.
(LGBT Group 3)

Rule exceptions
“Cheating”
“it’s quite easy to get rid of
someone for cheating”
Charlie
Violence

Tensions between rules and exceptions
Declan: There’s always going to be a reason and you have to tell them that.
Matt: Also, like 99.9% of the time, even if you refuse to give a reason, they will like nag
you basically in-person. Because they’re more likely to know where you live and that.
Hazel: Yeah, they just like harass you. They’ll like just to harass you. I’m telling you
they’re like …
Matt: Until you give them at least a reason they’ll stalk you, so.
Declan: Straight up stalk you.
Researcher: So, does someone who’s being broken up with have a right to hearing why?
Declan: Yeah, they do.
Matt: Yeah, because they need to know what they’ve done wrong.
(General Group 2)

“it actually is quite good to tell people
because […] you might feel quite
crap to start with, but then eventually
you kind of start to move on”.
(Max, gay non-binary person, LGBT
Group 3)
Kathryn: That’s the first thing
you do is delete them [photos].
They’re going through your
social media and then that’s
how people know “oh, they’ve
broke up because…”
Emily: “…The pictures are
gone”.
(General Group 2)
Communicating the break up to others

Max: Of course, they [exes] can [stay friends].
Olga: I’m friends with my ex.
Tim: Yes.
Violet: Yes
Skylar: Yes. Like just because you don’t love each other
doesn’t mean you don’t like each other. Or you can like
platonically love someone even if you don’t romantically
love them. You can still be close because of that.
Researcher: See, in other spaces this has been a
controversial statement…
Andy: Really?
(LGBT Group 3)
Friendship with an ex

“An ex is, well somebody must have
loved that person, so. Obviously if
they’re still seeing her then they had
feelings for that person. So, if they keep
on speaking to them, they feel it could
come back, so. You never know […] It
would be hard for me knowing I’m going
out with somebody who is best pals
with somebody they used to go out
with”
(Patrick, heterosexual man, General
Group 2)
Friendship with an ex

Sex and emotional intimacy with an ex
“I've had sex many of my exes
and it's been meaningless sex,
like we just needed the relief
and we both understood that. If
one of us started to catch
feelings or anything we
would've talked about it.”
(Charlie, likes men, non-binary
person, LGBT Group 1)

1. Heartbreak is not reserved for break
uppees or to the end of romantic
relationships
2. Young people lack confidence in navigating
the break up process
3. Breaking up is an issue of consent
4. We need to tackle normalised violence
within youth break up cultures
In conclusion

Thank you!

Bibliography
Boelen, Paul A., and Albert Reijntjes. 2009. ‘Negative Cognitions in Emotional Problems Following Romantic Relationship Break-Ups’.
Stress and Health 25 (1): 11–19. https://doi.org/10.1002/smi.1219.
Fleury, Ruth E., Chris M. Sullivan, and Deborah L. Bybee. 2000. ‘When Ending the Relationship Does Not End the Violence: Women’s
Experiences of Violence by Former Partners’. Violence Against Women 6 (12): 1363–83. https://doi.org/10.1177/10778010022183695.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 1979. ‘Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure’. American Journal of Sociology 85 (3): 551–75.
https://doi.org/10.1086/227049.
———. 2003. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. 20th anniversary ed. Berkeley, Calif: University of California
Press.
Rhoades, Galena K., Claire M. Kamp Dush, David C. Atkins, Scott M. Stanley, and Howard J. Markman. 2011. ‘Breaking up Is Hard to
Do: The Impact of Unmarried Relationship Dissolution on Mental Health and Life Satisfaction.’ Journal of Family Psychology 25 (3):
366–74. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023627.
Simon, Robin W., and Anne E. Barrett. 2010. ‘Nonmarital Romantic Relationships and Mental Health in Early Adulthood: Does the
Association Differ for Women and Men?’ Journal of Health and Social Behavior 51 (2): 168–82.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146510372343.
Tashiro, Ty, and Patricia Frazier. 2003. ‘“I’ll Never Be in a Relationship like That Again”: Personal Growth Following Romantic
Relationship Breakups’. Personal Relationships 10 (1): 113–28. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6811.00039.
Umberson, Debra, Robert Crosnoe, and Corinne Reczek. 2010. ‘Social Relationships and Health Behavior Across the Life Course’.
Annual Review of Sociology 36 (1): 139–57. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-070308-120011.
Umberson, Debra, and Jennifer Karas Montez. 2010. ‘Social Relationships and Health: A Flashpoint for Health Policy’. Journal of Health
and Social Behavior 51 (1_suppl): S54–66. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146510383501.

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