Go ahead and dump her

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Despite the laments of pining pop stars and sad sack poets, U.S. researchers now think breaking up may not be so hard to do.

"We underestimate our ability to survive heartbreak," said Eli Finkel, an assistant professor of psychology at Northwestern University, whose study appears online in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Finkel and colleague Paul Eastwick studied young lovers -- especially those who profess ardent affection -- to see if their predictions of devastation matched their actual angst when that love was lost.

"On average, people overestimate how distressed they will be following a breakup," Finkel said in a telephone interview.