In a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, it stated that the motivation to have a breakup is a little more selfless than we think it could be. The study was conducted over 500 couples, from half of the couple were still trying to be in the relationship and half were considering to break up!

The people who consider breaking up said that the core reason for them not backing up or breaking the relationship with their partner was the partner’s dependency on the relationship!

Many people who believe that their partner is emotionally dependent on the relationship, couldn’t muster the courage to break up because they didn’t want to break their partner’s heart!

 The more dependent people believed their partner was on the relationship, the less likely they were to initiate a breakup

The research was led by Samantha Joel, she stated: “When people perceived that the partner was highly committed to the relationship they were less likely to initiate a breakup, This is true even for people who weren’t really committed to the relationship themselves or who were personally unsatisfied with the relationship. Generally, we don’t want to hurt our partners and we care about what they want.”

Another study by researchers from the University of Minho, Portugal, where talked about the Sunk Cost in a relationship. Sunk cost fallacy, which means that people are more likely to stay in a relationship in which they’ve invested time, effort, or money.

The likelihood of participants staying in the relationship was higher when money and effort, but not time, had been previously invested in that relationship.” A similar study stated that: “participants were willing to invest more time in a relationship in which more time had already been invested.”