If your significant other is a woman, be aware: you’re more likely to get dumped.
A reader, frustrated after another break-up, pointed this out to me. I didn’t believe him, and fairly fresh from a break-up myself, I looked it up.
He’s right. Studies show that while pretty much most of us have been sent packing at some point, women are more likely than men to initiate a breakup.
One study showed 70% of divorces were initiated by women but made a distinction between marriages and long-term relationships.
Another study dismissed that distinction, reporting women are twice as likely as men to say they have never been broken up with, with men conversely being twice as likely to say they’ve never been the one to end a relationship.
In that same study, 76% of women said they’d been the one to end it, while only 62% of men said the same thing.
And what may be surprising: this isn’t new. As far back as 1867, as mentioned in the study linked above, women were initiating 62% of divorces.
What does us knowing that women are more likely than men to end a relationship tell us about marriage and long-term commitment?
Follow the Money
It’s no secret that the institution of marriage is not exactly rooted in love. As high as divorce rates are, we can assume that, historically, they would have been higher had no-fault divorces been introduced earlier — not to mention had equal professional and property opportunities been more available to half the population.
More than ever, marriage is a choice, especially for women with financial independence. In the study referenced above showing that women initiate 70% of divorces, the rate is even higher — 90%! — for college-educated women.
(Complicating things, however, is that marriages between college-educated partners tend to last longer than marriages between high-school-educated partners. This too is likely a socioeconomic issue, as college-educated partners are more likely to be financially stable and able to raise a family more comfortably.)
It makes sense, doesn’t it? If a woman isn’t dependent on someone else for financial considerations, why stay in a relationship that isn’t working for you or isn’t fulfilling?
That dynamic becomes further complicated in relationships where the woman is the primary breadwinner. In fact, those relationships are more likely to end in divorce.
If men see their role as providers, and they aren’t the ones providing, then men can feel lost, unneeded, and unappreciated. One way out of that is to contribute to the relationship in other ways: more child care, more household labor, more emotional labor.
But no.
Even then, men often avoid that work and foist it off on their partners. Even when men do more, they still do less than women, and on top of that, while men overall are doing more, they aren’t doing as much as they think they are.
Needless to say, with partners like these, who needs one?
Can We Talk?
If you’re a woman who has been in a relationship, I’d bet at one point you’ve asked the question, “Can we talk?” And if you’re a man who’s been in a relationship, I’d bet you’ve heard that question…and had the same feeling you get at the top of a roller coaster’s first climb, right before the big drop.
(I wonder if men in homosexual relationships ever ask their partners this.)
The ability to honestly, proactively and tenderly communicate with your significant other, in a way that is helpful and supportive, is one of the most important ingredients in a long-term relationship.
It’s also a skill that is incredibly difficult to foster and to develop — and frequently is unique to each relationship dynamic, like a fingerprint. Like physical or sexual chemistry, communication chemistry with a significant other is the lubricant that keeps the relationship machine running.
So as much as financial independence is a factor in women being freer to seek a life outside the bounds of a relationship, it’s not everything. Far from it.
In fact, with financial concerns for many women lower on the list of priorities of things needed out of a relationship, emotional connections — as well as physical — become all that more central to creating and sustaining a relationship.
And on this front, men may be at a disadvantage.
From a young age, boys are taught or influenced to shut down the way they express themselves and communicate. They are socialized to not share or openly discuss their feelings, and they are taught to limit the way they relate to other people, especially other boys. This stunts a boy’s emotional growth — and is a disaster later in life, especially when it comes to relationships of all kinds.
It can limit their ability to form and sustain friendships with other men, which can make men even more emotionally dependent on their significant other. That puts way too much emotional strain on that relationship — and is not sustainable.
If men are unable to talk about their feelings, how can they possibly be equipped to be emotionally supportive and vulnerable with their partners?
And if women, in addition to performing the majority of household and child-care-related labor, as indicated above, have to also carry the bulk of emotional labor as well, being a listener, being empathetic, being the one to initiate difficult conversations — you know, being the one to say, “can we talk?” — then it’s no surprise that many might find solo life more appealing.
At some point, any person would reasonably ask, what’s in it for me? Why am I the one doing all this work?
It’s well documented that men experience significant advantages from marriage and long-term relationships, especially in comparison to single men. Why wouldn’t they, when someone else is there to do so much heavy lifting, including providing emotional support?
But for women, it is often the opposite. Women outside of marriage often report greater levels of happiness, and post-divorce, women are almost exuberant compared to the emotional despair men experience.
The Other Side of the Coin
If women are the ones initiating divorce, that consequently must mean men are more willing to stay in troubled relationships and/or less eager for marriages or relationships to dissolve.
Think about the difference between men and women when a relationship ends. Many women who initiate divorce grieve their marriage before it ends — that’s one reason why they are able to bounce back so soon, one reason why they are able to take the difficult step of ending it, to begin with.
Men, on the other hand, are either blind-sided by the divorce or are unprepared mentally or psychologically to face what is now ahead of them.
And what they have waiting for them is not a pretty picture. Men’s social circles have shrunk over the years, and that, combined with the lack of relational skills mentioned above, brews a toxic mix of despair and sadness.
Speaking for myself, however honest with themselves men may or may not be about a forthcoming dissolution of a relationship, we intuitively know what we are facing. It’s daunting, overwhelming, and intimidating. It’s a long road, with no end in sight.
The truth is, and I’ve been there, is that as bad as a relationship might get, it seems better than the alternative.
There are times, admittedly, when I still wonder — especially in those moments when the loneliness becomes overwhelming, when I just want to touch and be touched, to talk to the person who was my best friend — if maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.
But it was. All relationships end for a reason.
It just seems women are less willing to endure an unfulfilling relationship and all its troubles, slights, grievances, and failures than men are. Speaking personally again, as much as it hurt and still sometimes does, part of me respects that.
Picking Up the Pieces
So now we know. (Or now I know.) What to do with this reality? Heartache is a bitch. So too is loneliness — and a sexless, touchless existence. Companionship matters.
No one person can be all things to another person. Just like in our financial portfolios, we need to diversify where we source our emotional, social, and psychological support and sustenance.
We also need to evolve as people and as partners, and we must be able to identify — and communicate — our preferences, needs, and desires.
We also must remember that relationships are a choice (or should be). We mustn’t ever take another person for granted.
The door is always right there.
I can still recall one ex leaving, literally leaving our condo, and falling to pieces on the other side of the door. I can also recall hearing an ex locking her front door behind me as I left her house for the last time, our relationship over for good.
To try again, or to try again under different circumstances and expectations, is also a choice. All relationships, one way or the other, end.
But that means little about whether or not new ones can begin.
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Previously Published on Medium
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