While men are still portrayed as stoic in our culture, they experience heartbreak just as deeply as women do. Sometimes even more
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One of the biggest problems with love is that sometimes it doesn’t last. When love comes to an end, the effects of losing that person can be devastating. There’s nothing more painful than losing the person you love and then having to pick up the pieces and function in the world without them again (besides, perhaps, losing a limb. I hear that can hurt like hell, too). Whether you call it heartbreak or lovesickness, it still means the same thing: something is missing, and that something isn’t coming back.
A recent survey by Elite Singles found that when it came to being lovesick, it’s the guys who suffer the most. Of the 95 percent of those surveyed who admitted to being lovesick at some point in their lives, 25 percent more men suffer from lovesickness than women during a relationship’s demise. But why?
According to psychologist, Dr. Wiebke Neberich, the cause could be due to the fact that “women are more often the one to break off the relationship, and men have a propensity to overestimate a woman’s interest, meaning that they also get brushed off and suffer from unrequited love more often.”
What Hurts Us The Most?
Men and women may suffer differently, but we can all agree that when it comes to a breakup, nothing cuts as deep as the pain inflicted by or from another person. Eighty percent of those polled cite that reason as the most painful cause of heartbreaks, followed by 29 percent who feel that being placed second to their partner’s life is the worst, with family disapproval and issues in the bedroom coming up in third and fourth place, respectively.
How Men and Women Deal
Lovesickness is a legitimate ache that can cause both emotional and physical issues. It’s not just a breakup, but a loss that can take weeks, months and sometimes even years to recover from. While stereotypically, we might think of a woman on her couch making love to a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, each person deals with their despair in their own way and surprisingly, drowning in carbs isn’t on the top of the list for men or women.
Roughly 61 percent of men and 76 percent of women turn to their friends to get through their sadness. It may be exhausting if you’re on the receiving end of that call, but don’t worry, you’ll be up to bat at some point too. It’s inevitable.
For women who’d rather not burden their friends, their top choice is to grieve alone (54 percent), while men choose to keep their head down and get back to the grindstone (44 percent.) Trying to eat your weight in mac ‘n’ cheese didn’t even come up as coping mechanism until after grieving alone, working, and treating yourself.
The point is, whether you’re suffering from a breakup now, have in the past, or your next one is right around the corner, we’ve all been there. Not a single person will be able to go through the entirety of their life without experiencing it at least once. Isn’t it nice to know you’re not alone? The truth is, people are dealing with it the same way you are, even if it appears otherwise.
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image credit: Flickr/sobermusings
Appeared originally in Your Tango
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I hate the feeling, I mean really really hate it, silly really as when it happens time and time again it feels like the first time all over. I am upset because I was seeing the guy for 3 months, prior to that he was enormously kind to me and i thought wow this could work…until he confessed that he wasn’t single, he had been married for 15 years but separated and stayed in his son’s room…then I guess my demands for an honest life made him confess the rest…he actually lives with his girlfriend of 4 years and it… Read more »
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Men always have much more trouble adjusting after a breakup which many women Can handle it a lot better.
False! This is such a sexist generalization. Men think they are in pain when they try to go around screwing as many people as possible and thinking it is okay for them to use people for sex? If a woman does that even after the man broke her heart-that guy would try to break her even more. Women are expected to be perfect while men are allowed to be pigs. No way men suffer more.
This is a special kind of funny.
You accuse TheTruth of making a generalization and then literally in the next sentence you generalize men as screwing as many people as possible.
Wow ! Really?!!!
I don’t think they suffer equally. I’ve somehow been on the receiving end more often than not. Very recently, my fiancee dumped me when I was going through a low phase (and almost out of it ). I was blindsided. Worst is, he told me he’d been dating someone else. It is heartbreaking to know that you’ve been cheated on. I feel like I could cry for years and that horrible gut wrenching feeling won’t lessen.
know the feeling, feel your pain only thing I can suggest is to get stuck into an interest until it pulls you away…not easy but what else can one do?
Unless they are narcissistic unconscious and utterly selfish sadistic psychopaths
I think it depends on who initiates the break up and why.
Looking at reasons why breakups are harder on men, I have read that men are less likely to listen to their partners complaints, which may be related to the point above that men can be overconfident about the relationship. So there is that element of surprise or shock. And then after a break up it might be easier for women to talk about their emotions with their friends since women are allowed to express more emotions.
Or potentially women are far worse than men at communicating their problems. Too often I see comments where men tell women that men are not mind-readers, possibly women rely too much on hints, body language and other ambiguous signs vs the typical straight-out, upfront and direct speech methods men tend to use more.
I don’t think it’s about man or a woman. It’s about who’s on the recieving end. I broke up with my ex after more than a nine year relation. I took the step. It was hard on me as well since it’s my first relation. But for past 1.5 years I was not happy in the relation and have fallen out of love. When I tried to convey him my problems he brushed it aside and never took it seriously. In worst cases he will take me on a guilt trip and threaten to sue me for taking his 9… Read more »
Women do most of the breakups (the statistics on divorce show that).
They can recover easier because they get approached by new men more often and easily than men do.
” They can recover easier because they get approached by new men more often and easily than men do.”
This is one of the most important things to highlight here. The men have to be far more pro-active to find a new partner which is very difficult especially when confidence is much more highly desired in men vs women when confidence is so low after a breakup.
So you just use unsuspecting women as band-aids then toss them aside when you “feel better” about yourself. That’s incredibly selfish.
That’s not using women as band-aids. That’s called moving on. It doesn’t surprise me you would try to make it sound so callous because a man is doing it. I guess you would rather men just stay broken into pieces while women move on.
Most men never see it coming.
It is women who do the breakups most of the time. Hence, I think it has a greater impact on the men. Since the woman is initiating the breakup, she is already mentally and emotionally prepared.
JMO
I have experienced men not to “see it coming” because of ignoring (spelled out) relationship problems, since they often dont take the same responsibility when it comes to working on a relationship according to the stereotype its the womans duty to take care after the emotional stuff, right?) On the other hand, guess many women also dont see it coming when being left for a younger one.
Jules:
Definitely not true. I’ve had guys bail all of a suddent, right into the arms of someone else.
When women do the breaking up, usually they give plenty of warning. Men are more likely to dump compulsively.
My boyfriend dumped me 2 years ago, 10 days before we were going to move and start a new life. He got over it in a matter of days and I have only recently been able to move on. I would say that men and women get equally hurt. I’m sure my story is not an exception, many women have been in my shoes.
Not necessarily. When you are the one to end the relationship, in particular after having been together for a long time, it means that you have basically done the griefing work before the breakup act. I seperated from my first girlfriend after we had been together for 5 years. I was not happy in the relationship, but still it took me a whole year full of misery and struggle until I could finally tell her. Afterwards I felt relief, but don’t tell me I did not suffer on the whole! Anyway, what you perceived as him being over it within… Read more »
I am too scared to do that but would love to!