  We use public data from Twitter to study the breakups of the romantic
relationships of 661 couples. Couples are identified through profile references
such as @user1 writing "@user2 is the best boyfriend ever!!". Using this data
set we find evidence for a number of existing hypotheses describing
psychological processes including (i) pre-relationship closeness being
indicative of post-relationship closeness, (ii) "stonewalling", i.e., ignoring
messages by a partner, being indicative of a pending breakup, and (iii)
post-breakup depression. We also observe a previously undocumented phenomenon
of "batch un-friending and being un-friended" where users who break up
experience sudden drops of 15-20 followers and friends. Our work shows that
public Twitter data can be used to gain new insights into psychological
processes surrounding relationship dissolutions, something that most people go
through at least once in their lifetime.
