I was browsing AskMen, and someone asked an interesting question about the best mathematical function to model the time needed to heal after a breakup. I thought I'd post my response here:

This is not a function dependent solely on the length of your relationship. It is also a function dependent on how many breakups you experienced in the past (or how many women you've slept with as well). Let's go over it:

  • H = amount of time (in days) you experience heartbreak
  • t = duration of the relationship (in months), nonnegative real
  • n = how many women you slept with, positive integer

A fairly accurate model seems to be the following (constants chosen to fit my own experience):

*H(t,n) = 60 / [ (2+15e<sup>-t/2</sup>) log(1+n<sup>2</sup> ) ]**

Suppose n=1 (so virgin, first relationship). Then evaluated at t=0 (just met a girl and got rejected), this yields a 11 day heartache, meaning the guy will be devastated by a simple rejection for over a week! He will think about her constantly, and wonder if she was the one...

For virgins, H(infinity, 1) tends to 100 days, so most inexperienced guys will suffer for over 3 months (I'm talking from experience here) bawling over their first breakup. This is pretty standard.

Now let's see what happens as you bag more women and become more experienced. Naturally log(1+n<sup>2</sup> ) tends to infinity for large n, so having it in the denominator brings H down to zero. YES, that is right - the more experienced you get, the less you give a shit about breakups! For example, let's say you bagged 10 girls in your life, pretty average:

H(0, 10) = 1.8 roughly, so if you get rejected, it may hurt your ego for a couple of days max. But what about long term breakups? H(infinity, 10) is about 14, which means you can easily get over chicks in around 14 days and start dating again like nothing happened!

What if you're James Bond? Well this is where the model gets a little inaccurate but then again I came up with this in about 10 minutes, so give me a break. Anyway, for fun, H(0, 100) gives us a little over half a day. Not true. Super studs don't give a fuck about rejection. Long term? H(infinity, 100) tends to a little over 7 days, which may or may not be accurate depending on the person. Could it be that even a stone cold James Bond feels a bit of heartache? Like I said, the model gets a little inaccurate here.

The point is, the more experienced you get, the less heartache you experience. So go out there and start breaking up with some random girls! Once you get some breakups under your belt, you'll be cured!