Although the phrase “Let’s remain friends” is extremely popular for ending a relationship softly, there is a belief that it is mainly people with a mental disorder who are capable of friendship with an ex-partner. We checked whether this is actually true.
Women's magazines And Media warn that friendship with an ex-partner Maybe be a sign of a mental disorder. Life.ru even immediately puts accurate diagnosis: “Are you friends with your exes? Most likely, you are a narcissist, manipulator and psychopath!” Psychologies Magazine puts readers face a dilemma: “Are you really ready to sacrifice yourself for the sake of a relationship with someone who means a lot to you, but has deceived and betrayed you more than once? And vice versa: do you seriously think that you can be friends with a person who loves you and take advantage of your superiority?” Similar posts were also published by the Telegram channel “Ax +18"(2.1 million views) and popular psychologist Mikhail Labkovsky. Most of these publications say that American scientists came to the conclusion about the connection between psychopathy and friendship with exes, publishing article in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.
To begin with, it is worth noting that the very concept of “psychopathy” was excluded from medical manuals back in the 60s of the 20th century. There is no mention of psychopathy as a diagnosis in the International Classification of Diseases, 10th revision (ICD-10), nor 11th (ICD-11), nor in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th revision (DSM-5). Instead, there is dissocial (or antisocial) personality disorder (DPD). DRL characterized such personality traits as ignoring social norms, impulsiveness, aloofness, difficulty communicating with people, sometimes combined with aggressiveness and an extremely limited ability to form attachments. The move away from the term “psychopathy” was due to the fact that to make this diagnosis, experts assessed not behavior, but the moral character of a person. This deprived the diagnosis of objectivity and led to stigmatization of patients.
However, the terms “psychopathy” and “psychopath” are still meet, for example, in judicial psychiatry to indicate the type of personality of the offender - this is how they describe those who are not ready to take into account the opinions of others, but at the same time know how to please others and are inclined to manipulate them. Also, the word “psychopathy” can describe a component term from psychology - the dark triad. The dark triad refers to three personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. Although narcissistic personality disorder and dissocial personality disorder are separate psychiatric diagnoses, people with the dark triad are not psychiatrically ill and do not require treatment, and these terms refer only to their personality traits. On the Internet you can find many tests and questionnaires to determine the traits of the dark triad, but strict scientific research methods do not confirm their diagnostic accuracy.
When all the necessary reservations have been made, you can proceed to studying the scientific articles, which formed the basis of these statements. The study was conducted in 2017 at the Department of Psychology at the University of Auckland (USA). Scientists note that although many scientific publications are devoted to the motivation of intergender friendship, before this specialists were not interested in the reasons for friendship between people who were previously in a romantic relationship. To study this topic, experts conducted two experiments.
The first included 348 participants, mostly women (243), average age 22 years, most heterosexual (96%) and white (77.6%). About half of them were in a relationship at the time of the survey. They were all asked to think of a time when they or someone they knew had remained friends with their ex-partner, and then to write down at least five reasons why people might remain friends after a breakup. Finally, these participants noted whether and how often they remained in friendships for each of the reasons mentioned.
513 people took part in the second part of the experiment. Again, the majority were female (358), subjects were predominantly white (78.6%), heterosexual (96.3%), in a relationship (62.4%), had experienced at least one breakup, and did not participate in the first experiment. They were presented with 153 reasons to stay in relationships with their exes, obtained by surveying people in the first sample, and asked to rate on a scale of five the importance of these reasons as a personal motivation to maintain friendships. These 153 reasons were grouped into seven categories: "reliability/sentimentality", "pragmatism", "ongoing romantic attraction", "children and shared resources", "decreased romantic attraction", "maintaining social relationships" and "friendly sex". The same people from the second sample took two personality tests: PID-5-SF And HEXACO-60. As stated in the instructions for them, none of them can be used to diagnose any personality disorders, that is, they are not suitable for diagnosing DID.
So, out of all 153 reasons, the most popular was “he/she was a great listener.” Next, in decreasing order of importance, were: “we had children together,” “I/my partner was pregnant,” “I realized that I no longer loved her/him,” “he/she supported my goals.” That is, the most popular reasons had nothing to do with how psychopaths look in the mass consciousness (in any interpretation of this concept).
Where did the interpretation of the study come from that people with psychopathic tendencies tend to be friends with exes? Probably from the rather obvious conclusion of scientists that for pragmatic (not psychopathic) reasons, those people who score high on the pragmatism scale in psychological tests maintain friendships. And, accordingly, those who showed more sentimental and altruistic traits in these personality tests were guided by factors from the “reliability / sentimentality” group.
In addition, scientists noted that men are generally more pragmatic and choose appropriate reasons for friendship, and they are also more likely to maintain friendships for the opportunity to have sex with their ex. In other categories, there were almost no gender differences.
One should also understand a number of limitations of the study, the scientists emphasize. First, participants did not describe their experience of maintaining friendships, but rather assessed the importance of a particular reason in theory. Second, they write, future research is needed to determine whether a person actually stayed in a particular relationship for the reason stated. Finally, nowhere was the real value of the partners for each other assessed (for example, material or emotional).
Another limitation that the scientists did not mention is that the reason for the separation was not discussed anywhere. Maintaining a friendship after prolonged infidelity or domestic violence is less likely than after a breakup by mutual consent or due to the forced relocation of one of the partners.
This limitation was taken into account by other scientists who researched Factors that promote friendship after the end of a romantic relationship. In their work, the biggest predictor of whether a romantic relationship would develop into a friendship after it ended was friendship before the romance began. There is another observation that was missing from the Oakland experiment: after a traumatic breakup, the chances of friendship were lower than after a gentle breakup.
Thus, you should not suspect your partner of psychopathy if he suggests remaining friends, especially if there were no “red flags” during the romantic relationship. The main reasons for friendship after a relationship are the reliability of the partner, common goals, or raising children together. Scientists did not talk about psychopaths (neither in the psychiatric nor in the psychological sense), they only showed that pragmatic people choose pragmatic reasons for maintaining friendship. Journalists created the image of former psychopathic partners by misinterpreting the findings of scientists.
Cover image: Perplexity
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