Are you a college student? Have you been dumped recently? Do you intend, for the purposes of healing your shattered, bleeding heart, to go out and just get good and sweaty with the first person to tap you on the shoulder? If you do, you’re in good company, according to a study out of the University of Missouri: As many as 35% of college students reported engaging in “rebound sex” to soothe their loveless souls.

Additionally, 25% admitted to having “revenge” sex as a means of getting back at the former lover who scorned them. The study does not examine how or why this would affect the person who dumped them in the first place. Not surprisingly, those who were dumped were much more likely to engage in either behavior than those who severed the relationship.

For the study, researchers Lynne Cooper and Lindsay Barber rounded up 170 college students who had experienced a breakup in the last eight months. The participants filled out weekly surveys over ten to 12 weeks, reporting on their emotional status, secual activity, and motivations behind said activity.

“I’ve always been interested in how people cope with adverse events in their lives, and how the ways they choose to cope with these adverse events affects their recovery and, ultimately, their well-being,” Cooper said.

Though the study didn’t examine whether or not the sexual strategizing actually helped alleviate emotional pain, the researchers found that reactive sexual activity waned at about five months post-breakup, with the dump-ees no more likely to use sex as a coping mechanism than the dumpers. Intentions (or effectiveness) aside, Cooper didn’t find the results particularly encouraging.

“It suggests that people who are using these strategies are, in fact, more likely to take sexual risks, and that they may be having greater difficulty in moving on and establishing a new relationship,” Cooper said.

Sexual healing? Maybe not, but at least we now know that “going on the rebound” doesn’t just exist in movies and lad mags.