'Tis the season to be splitting

The pattern is magnified in Hollywood, where breakups are tabloid fodder.
By ADRIAN McCOY
SCRIPPS HOWARD
When poet T.S. Eliot wrote that April is the cruelest month, he probably wasn't thinking about January -- which these days is being dubbed the official breakup month.
Sandwiched uncomfortably between the December holiday season and Valentine's Day, it's the time of year when more couples tend to call it quits.
These holidays and all they symbolize can be tough on relationships. For many people, January is a time for new beginnings and fresh starts -- which can mean getting out of a bad relationship.
The pattern is magnified in Hollywood, where breakup news is a mainstay of supermarket tabloid headlines. Actors Hilary Swank and Chad Lowe just split. Last January, it was Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. Tom Cruise and Ben Affleck are serial January breaker-uppers -- Cruise with Nicole Kidman (2001) and Penelope Cruz (2004), Affleck with Gwyneth Paltrow (1999) and Jennifer Lopez (2004).
And the rest of us tend to follow the same pattern: According to a Yahoo survey conducted in the United Kingdom, twice as many breakups happen in January than in any other month. In the U.K., they recently observed National Breakup Day on Jan. 12.
The January freeze can affect relationships of all kinds.
Holiday waiting
Some people want out of a relationship, but don't want to be dateless over the holidays. Others don't want to ruin the season's celebrations with a painful breakup. For college students, winter break can turn into winter breakup when newly hatched fall romances don't survive the lengthy absence in December. Married couples planning to separate or divorce may decide to stay together so the family can have one last traditional Christmas together. Some singles want to secure a date for New Year's Eve, but don't want to hang around for Valentine's Day.
People who responded to the Yahoo survey shed some new light on the chilling effect of January on relationships. Younger respondents said their partners' bad behavior at Christmas and New Year's parties was a factor. One third of the men surveyed blamed conflicts with in-laws over the holidays. And 23 percent of those surveyed bought their soon-to-be ex a present out of guilt, knowing that a breakup was imminent.
Good for business
Advice columns are filled with breakup horror stories around this time of year. For dating services that specialize in introducing couples, January can be good for business. Some dating and introduction services see a spike in new clients in January, although there are more factors at work than people on the rebound and people looking for new relationships.
Cheryl Altmere, director of The Right One, a dating service with offices in Green Tree and Monroeville, Pa., says they've been getting more calls than usual in recent weeks. Often, it can be motivated by a New Year's resolution to improve one's personal life. "They reflect on the last year, and they're not satisfied," she says.
Sometimes the calls are from singles who just went through Christmas and New Year's alone. "They say, 'It's going to be the last year I'm alone.'"
"The holidays are probably one of our busiest times of the year," says Jim Irwin, director of a Pittsburgh office of It's Just Lunch, a national agency that arranges casual first dates only -- introducing potential mates in a low-pressure situation like lunch or coffee, rather than committing to the traditional evening out.
Irwin says January is busy, but sees it as more of a positive, fresh start to a new year. "People don't come in and say they've just broken up with someone; often, they're busy professionals who've made a resolution to focus more on their personal life in the new year."
The next holiday on the horizon -- Valentine's Day -- is one with which many people have a love-hate relationship. The Valentine's pressure can be so great that more than a third of single men avoid being in a relationship between Thanksgiving and February just to escape it, according to a survey done by It's Just Lunch, Irwin says. And 38 percent of the male respondents who were considering dumping a partner said they would rather forgo the entire holiday season and get the breakup over before Thanksgiving.
While January is a good time to meet someone new, the rest of the year doesn't exactly drop off. "It's recession-proof," The Right One's Altmere says. "Even in bad times, people want to meet someone."