Loneliness in Romantic Grief and its Relationship with Coping Strategies

Abstract

One of the emotions most frequently experienced during romantic grief is loneliness, which is experienced due to an imbalance between the feelings of having had a love relationship and not having it anymore. However, the scales measuring this construct were mainly designed to measure loneliness in general and not within a romantic relationship. On the other hand, the cognitive and emotional experiences derived from loneliness can impact the coping strategies that the individual deploys during this process, so the objectives of this research were: 1) to adapt and validate the Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale from DiTommaso & Spinner (1993) to the context of romantic grief and 2) explore the relationship between loneliness and coping strategies in romantic grief. The results indicated obtaining a version of said scale with robust psychometric qualities and with characteristic factors in the context of romantic grief. Likewise, it was observed that, when facing a breakup, having family networks and close friends allow people to use strategies such as sharing their problems, the use of humor, and understanding and adjusting their emotions to the new situation; while no longer being with a partner.