If you're in a relationship, beware of the month of January. Along with unwanted pounds, bad habits and gifts that don't fit, people often mark the beginning of a new year by jettisoning less-than-ideal romantic partners.
After the winter holidays and before the big lovefest of Valentine's Day, January presents an opportune, if cold and dreary, window for a fresh start.
Among some therapists, sociologists and advisers to the lovelorn, it's known as breakup month.
"You would not believe the huge influx of letters I get in January," said Lisa Daily, a syndicated online dating and relationships columnist based in Sarasota, Fla.
The people writing in, she says, are both recently dumped and completely surprised. "They say everything was going great over the holidays. This came out of the blue."
The season of heartbreak affects the ordinary and the famous. Brad and Jen dropped the bombshell of their breakup last January. Ben Affleck saw two very public relationships go south after the holidays -- with Gwyneth Paltrow in January 1999 and Jennifer Lopez at the dawn of 2004.
Tom Cruise got out of his relationship with Nicole Kidman a week before Valentine's Day in 2001, then broke up with Penelope Cruz in January 2004. Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger? Chris Evert Lloyd and her fellow tennis star, John Lloyd? Splitsville in January.
It happens in fictional worlds, too. On one episode of Homicide: Life on the Street, the long-running television series filmed in Baltimore, the female medical examiner breaks up with a detective she's been dating right after New Year's. Asked for an explanation, she tells him that the holidays are over.
Daily blames the phenomenon on "relationship freeze" she says takes place between Thanksgiving and New Year's. By the time the holidays start, she points out, you may have long-laid plans to travel with your now-not-so sweetie. You've put down money you'd rather not lose. And if you broke up before the end of the year you -- and your ex -- would be suddenly alone while everyone else made merry.
"I think what it speaks to is that romance has its practical and even Machiavellian and manipulative nature," said Pepper Schwartz, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington who studies relationships. "People look out for their own welfare, and they'll do things that make it easier for them."
