Applied Bayes' Theorem: Calculating the probability that she's over me. Could somebody check my work? TT_TT

I just recently went through a break-up (SO broke up with me, it was a long-term relationship).

To be frank, this is not at all what you should be doing (i.e., doing a Bayesian calculation re the probability that she's over you, or calling her and analyzing why she hasn't called back), regardless of whether your goal is to get back together with her or to move on as quickly as possible.

The best possible piece of advice I could give you is to start a reflection document. Document your feelings, your emotions, everything. It will help, I promise. What also helps is to write down every single negative you can think of about your relationship/ex. (You will be tempted to idealize the relationship/ex, and writing down negatives that you may have looked past while in the relationship will help you.)

Standard break-up advice: do not contact her under any circumstances (No Contact), remove anything that reminds you of her (includes things like unfriending ex on FB), go to the gym (or engage in other activities that'll keep you busy), and talk to friends and family.

Think of a break-up as going through withdrawal: every time you break No Contact, you're relapsing and making it much harder for your brain to get used to being without her. Another way to think about it is that your break-up is a wound, and each time you break No Contact, you're ripping up the forming scab and peeking under it. No Contact is also ideal for getting back together with her (distance makes the heart grow fonder, etc.), if you truly still want that .

Take the Outside View. Lots of people have gone through break-ups thinking that they'll feel crappy forever and then are fine just a few months later. Time really does help.

If you're anything like me, going through a break-up will really make explicit the disconnect between your reptilian, System 1 self and your more deliberative/rational System 2 self.

One final piece of advice: closure does not help in the vast majority of cases. Often, a desire for closure is just your subconscious justifying a desire to talk to her again.

EDIT: If it helps at all, given that it was a 3-year relationship and that the break-up seems pretty recent, she's probably not over you. She may be trying to maintain distance to avoid feeling guilty and confused, and so that she won't feel tempted to second-guess her decision. Also, usually the dumper has been considering this for a while, so even if you feel like she doesn't care or isn't hurting, it may just be that she started the grieving/moving on process earlier than you did (for some insight into how many dumpers think: http://np.reddit.com/r/BreakUps/comments/1htfcn/is_it_true_that_dumper_check_out_of_the/).

I'm inclined to say that this belongs in an Open Thread, especially as they're posted more often now.

You could try autoaruspicy...

The math is correct, but I don't know if those priors are realistic. Particularly the "10%" one. I miss like 50% of calls in general, having nothing to do with who's calling me. And remember that the "probability that she's over me," should be probability that she got over you since the last time you checked.

Correct, at least as far as the math goes. I prefer to use odds ratios.

Prior odds that she's over me: 3:7

Evidence ratio of her missing my call: 90%:10% = 9:1

Posterior odds that she's over me: 39:71 = 27:7 = 3.86:1

Posterior probability that she's over me: (27/7)/(27/7+1) = (27/7)/(34/7) = (27/34) = 79.4%

bummer, man :) cute post.

I don't feel that "she's over me" is a sufficiently well-defined outcome to be meaningful. I mean, there isn't an experimental test which could confirm or disconfirm her state of over-you-ness.

The error bars on the result make this result meaningless. You should, at minimum, also consider how hot/successful she is relative to you (can she do better?) and whether she and you have shared goals (what are her dreams/expectations? are they compatible with yours, and are you both making progress?). It would be extraordinarily improbable for her to forget you overnight, but if she broke up with you she has likely wanted to do better for some time. The usual post-breakup advice is to focus on your own goals for awhile.