How To Get Over A Split?

London: If you’re finding hard to get over a failed love interest, then here’s something that can help you: Stick your disappointment in a box or envelope and you’ll feel better.

According to a study from the Rotman School of Management, the physical act of enclosing materials related to an unpleasant experience, such as a written recollection about it, improves people’s negative feelings towards the event and created psychological closure. Enclosing materials unrelated to the experience did not work as well.


"If you tell people, ‘You’ve got to move on,’ that doesn’t work," said Dilip Soman, who holds the Corus Chair in Communication Strategy at the Rotman School and is also a professor of marketing, who co-wrote the paper with colleagues Xiuping Li from the National University of Singapore and Liyuan Wei from City University of Hong Kong.

"What works is when people enclose materials that are relevant to the negative memories they have. It works because people aren’t trying to explicitly control their emotions."
Prof. Soman believes the findings point to new angles on such things as fast pick-up courier services and pre-paid mortgage deals that relieve people’s sense of debt burden. If people realize that the memory of past events or tasks can be distracting, perhaps there is a market for products and services that can enclose or take away memories of that task.