Generation Break Up Then Make Up

From ELLE

There’s a certain kind of masochistic pleasure that comes from reading The New York Times Vows column. If this is your typical post-brunch fare, you’re in for a lot of cute-the type of material more often found in saccharine romantic comedy plots. But the pages, as David Brooks taught us more than a decade ago, are fertile ground for anthropological observation. And if you’ve been paying attention to the couples featured over the past several years, you may notice a trend: Lots of couples are breaking up and making up before finally saying “I do.”

After meeting at ages 13 and 15 respectively, it took New York City Ballet principal dancers Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild 14 years of ons and offs to finally walk down the aisle in 2014. Video and film editor Anne-Marie Hess met surgeon David Rabkin in 2002, but it wasn’t until 2010, after eight years of casual and then official dating, that the couple wed. Although finance director Alexander Arzoumanov and news producer Abigail Crutchfield immediately hit it off during their freshman year at Harvard in 2006, Crutchfield needed three more years before she could comfortably settle down with her best friend; they tied the knot in 2014.

More than ever before, the recipe for a modern-day commitment involves equal parts right person and right time, and millennials have a more expansive concept of “right time” than seemingly any generation before them. According to Art Markman, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, Austin, millennials are “willing to play the field” in many aspects of their lives. Psychologists call this newly prolonged “growing up” period, from age 18 through the late twenties, “emerging adulthood.” During this time, young adults are establishing long-term career goals, racking up life experiences, moving in and out of their parents’ places, and orienting themselves on the road to financial independence-all of which affects their long-term relationships.

"Boomers had more social pressure to find a career and to settle into a relationship. Gen X-ers did tend to marry a bit later and have children a bit later than boomers-but still followed a relatively straightforward trajectory from college to career,” Markman says. “Millennials are taking longer to settle into careers and are more likely to switch career paths. [This affects the decision] to settle down into a long-term relationship and to commit to marriage.”

It’s tough to get exact statistics on the break-up-and-make-up sequence, but a 2013 study of 792 people ages 17 to 24 published in the Journal of Adolescent Research showed that 44 percent of participants had reunited with an ex within the previous two years. Markman suggests we’re likely seeing an uptick due to the delayed age of first marriage, as well as the fact that breakups aren’t nearly as firm as they were in the past. “On top of that,” Markman says, “social platforms have made it easier for couples to stay in touch, even after they break up.… Emails, Facebook messages, and texts provide a way for couples that have broken up to stay in touch in a low-commitment way-which provides opportunities for them to get back together when circumstances change.”

This was the case with one couple I spoke with, Kelli* and her college boyfriend, Cameron. The two quickly became inseparable when they met in spring 2008 at the age of 19. But the next year, Cameron graduated and fled for the West Coast for a job while Kelli remained on the East Coast. He felt the distance and stress of his work would be more than their relationship could bear, so he decided to cut ties with his college sweetheart.

Kelli was devastated, but she quickly began building her solo life. She finished school, started working in New York City, lived alone, and even began dating someone new. So when Cameron called her in 2012 to say he’d never stopped caring for her, Kelli was fully entrenched in her new adult life. And shocked.

Cameron continued to check in with Kelli roughly once every few months with a phone call or email. Kelli refused to stay in regular touch, but eventually an “ever-present nagging feeling” that she could be happier with Cameron won out. “Sort of like when you wonder, Would I be happier in another city? With another career?”

She agreed to meet up with Cameron in 2014, and then try dating again. The two married in 2015. Kelli says that a weeks- or months-long gap would not have been enough time for her to realize her relationship with Cameron was worth a second chance. “The problems would not have resolved,” she explains. Years later, though? She had a sense of perspective as the time passed. “He was the standard to which I compared every other guy,” she says. “With him, I was happy, engaged, compatible, and challenged [intellectually].”

Today’s twenty- and thirtysomethings also want the “best of everything,” says counselor Karla Ivankovich, PhD, also an adjunct professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, Springfield. And this, too, can factor into the break-up-and-make-up pattern; compared to earlier generations, millennials aren’t ready to settle down until they’re fully confident of their choice and believe the timing is right. Ivankovich cites 2015 Pew Research Center data comparing millennials to their grandparents: According to the study, 65 percent of never-married millennials want to marry someday. Roughly a quarter of that group say they haven’t met their match yet, but more than half cite a timing issue-30 percent say they aren’t financially set yet, and another 26 percent believe themselves still “too young and not ready to settle down”-which could drive exes apart and then back together again down the road.

Neither Danielle nor Richard, who broke up two years ago at the ages of 22 and 23, was ready for a serious commitment when they called it quits. Richard was finishing his master’s program, and Danielle was employed at a “lackluster” first job. “While we both wanted to spend time together, our life pursuits were taking up the majority of our time and caused friction within our relationship,” she says.

“We both hoped that we would find one another in the future, following a sense of security of our individual selves-and following the breakup, I did in fact find independence,” she says. It took a full year before they rerouted their life plans separately, meeting back in the middle. (Danielle and Richard have now been back on and fully committed for a year.)

According to relationship expert and coach Susan Walsh, founder of the popular dating site Hooking Up Smart, more and more relationships with a break-up-and-make-up pattern are ending in strong commitments-especially after periods of transition, like college, starting a new job, or moving to a new city, have passed. “Those are all times of big change for people,” Walsh says. “People want to settle into a new job and place before committing to a relationship.”

For the twenty- and thirtysomething set, hallmarks of maturity are also being expanded (and delayed) by an appetite for diverse experience. “This is another sign of the current generation shift,” Ivankovich says. “Previously, you were seen as mature when you coupled up-even if you were only semi-committed in your relationship”-meaning no ring or long-term plan. Now you’re seen as mature if you’ve lived on your own, dated, traveled, and started your own career. Research from 2013 by the Boston Consulting Group, for instance, revealed that millennials are 23 percent more interested in traveling abroad than any generation before them.

Jodi and Chad’s long-term relationship was affected by this dynamic. Although the two had been friends for five years and then dated for four years, Jodi got the itch to travel just months before graduating college. Three years her senior, Chad already had a full-time job that he wasn’t keen on leaving.

The pair broke up, and Jodi jetted off to Europe as a single woman, spending months in London, Dublin, Paris, Florence, Venice, and Rome. "It was so, so hard, because we loved each other so much-but we just couldn’t agree on the next big steps in life,” Jodi explains. “We were at completely different places in our lives. We spent five years apart.… If we had tried to get back together before the moment we actually did, I don’t think we’d be the couple we are today.” The pair married in 2012; they have one daughter and a wedding-planning business together.

Walsh says that if a couple separates simply because of a timing issue, there may be good reason to try again. “If circumstances keep apart two people who are compatible, it’s reasonable to pick up again if circumstances change,” she says. Fittingly, Walsh’s 29-year-old son just married his high-school sweetheart. He and his now-wife endured a five-year breakup during their college years, which ended when they landed in the same town after college. “If it was just bad timing when two people met, there’s nothing wrong with getting back in touch later on or picking things up if you run into one another at a better time,” Walsh insists.

Now 27 and married to her college beau, Kelli thinks their current relationship works because they’ve grown into their adult selves. “All college kids think of themselves as adults, and I can see now just how young we were,” Kelli explains. “When he was 21 and I was 19, I was just so flattered by the interest of this older guy…. When we got back together, I was self-sufficient and living on my own in New York. Today, our relationship feels like a real partnership.”

At a time where the average marriage age is inching closer to 30 for college grads, it’s not always realistic that you’ll meet Mr. or Ms. Right and be with that person till death do you part without needing to break up in the middle. So maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised if serendipity boomerangs an ex back at just the right moment-all grown up and ready for commitment. If it’s a cute enough reunion, you might even make it into Vows.

*Name has been changed.