Should breakups be treated like a bereavement?

UBC economics professor says little is known about how job performance suff ers — and it’s an issue that deserves a closer look

“Do you want ... the person who’s driving your children’s school bus in the morning, do you want them in there with a broken heart? Or the person who’s performing open- heart surgery on your mother?”

Most of us have — or know someone who has — slogged through a day at work while suffering the emotional turmoil of a breakup.

It happens all the time, yet there has been no research into the effects of this heartbreak on job performance, University of B. C. economics professor Marina Adshade said in a recent blog post for Time magazine.

The physiological effect is real, Adshade said in an interview Thursday. Levels of hormones including serotonin, which is produced by the body when people are in happy relationships, suddenly drop and people experience withdrawal symptoms. Studies have shown that the pain and trauma people experience after a bad breakup is second only to the death of an immediate family member.

“It can be quite devastating to people, especially now,” said Adshade, the author of Dollars and Sex: How economics influences sex, love and marriage. “So many people are living together ... ( these) just aren’t as likely to last as long as marriage and those ones are really hard to end.”

There is evidence that young adults are postponing marriage — and perhaps even relationships — because they want to focus on establishing careers. A recent U. S. study found that a third of single respondents aged 25 to 34 reported putting off marriage because they did not feel financially secure.

A few decades ago, when people were getting married at 19 or 20, they went through

relationship upheavals at a much younger age and relied on support systems such as parents and teachers, Adshade said.

“Now they’re dealing with heartbreak and turmoil in a very different kind of environment than anybody has before. I find that kind of interesting,” she said, adding that studies have found people complain about not receiving sympathy or support at work while going through a breakup.

This raises the question of whether companies should

offer something similar to bereavement leave when a relationship ends, Adshade said. She hasn’t taken sides, but said the issue needs further study.

Many companies give employees time off during life transitions such as the death of a loved one or a birth of a child. One company in Japan does offer days off for breakups, but only for women, and the number of days increases with the woman’s age, Adshade said.

There are some people we might not want working if they are distracted by emotional trauma, she added.

“Do you want ... the person who’s driving your children’s school bus in the morning, do you want them in there with a broken heart? Or the person who’s performing open- heart surgery on your mother?”

That said, Adshade does not give her economics students extensions when they say heartbreak prevented them from finishing an assignment.

“I’m not very sympathetic. If I gave every student who had a broken heart an extension on an assignment, nobody would ever submit their work.”

Adshade also speculated that such policies could lead to companies shying away from hiring people who date a lot.

“This is a very understudied area, which is interesting because it’s such a common human experience.”