Our sources
We only publish numbers we can trace to a primary source: the original study, official statistics, or the organization's own reporting. Secondary retellings, influencer polls, and unattributed "studies show" claims are rejected at the fact-gate.
Primary sources currently cited
No primary sources are cited yet — the fact gate is empty. Every source we rely on will be listed here with its year and method.
Works we cite by name
These pages carry no statistics, but they do lean on a body of research when they explain why the pull toward an ex behaves the way it does. Where that happens, the work is named in the sentence and linked here. Each link below was opened and checked on 2026-09-05; we link the publisher or the record for the paper itself, never an article about it.
- Attachment (Attachment and Loss, Vol. 1) (1969 (2nd ed. 1983))John Bowlby · Basic Books
- Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process (1987)Cindy Hazan & Phillip R. Shaver · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
- Marital processes predictive of later dissolution (1992)John M. Gottman & Robert W. Levenson · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
- An attachment perspective on psychopathology (2012)Mario Mikulincer & Phillip R. Shaver · World Psychiatry (open access)
Naming a work is not the same as claiming it proves a point about your relationship. These are the origins of the ideas, cited so you can read them rather than take our word for it.
What we rejected, and why
This list matters as much as the one above. These are figures that circulate widely in writing about breakups and that we could not trace to a primary source, so they do not appear anywhere on this site.
Nothing has been rejected yet. When a widely-repeated figure fails verification, it gets named here so it never creeps back in.
The rules
- Named source in the same sentence as the number, with the year.
- Primary source only — we link the origin, not an article about it.
- Dated verification: every statistic carries its verification date on this page.
- Unverifiable → unpublished. No exceptions.