You can die of a broken heart — it’s scientific fact. Yet have you ever thought how breakups affect genders differently? Men and women have unique ways of dealing with heartbreak, according to a new research published in the journal Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences.
How the end of love affects you
If you have you ever felt lack of focus at work, depressive symptoms and social withdrawal following a breakup, well, you are not alone. More than 85 percent of people will experience a major emotional apocalypse at some point in their lives and most people have about three before they are 30. At least one end of a romantic relationship will affect us strongly enough to alter our quality of life. The goal of the study was to understand how “PRG,” or post-relationship grief, affects the genders differently, researchers from Binghamton University and University College London explained.
Relationships and breakups
They asked 5,705 participants in 96 countries to rate the emotional and physical pain of a breakup on a scale of one to 10. The higher the number, the more unbearable the breakup. Breakups reportedly hit women the hardest yet the fair sex tends to recover more fully and abides by the mantra “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Men, on the other hand, never full recover — they simply move on.
Men vs. Women
According to lead author Craig Morris, the differences come down to biology. Women have more to lose by dating the “wrong person”. “Put simply, women are evolved to invest far more in a relationship than a man,” Morris said. “A brief romantic encounter could lead to nine months of pregnancy followed by many years of lactation for an ancestral woman, while the man may have ‘left the scene’ literally minutes after the encounter, with no further biological investment.” It is this ‘risk’ of “higher biological investment” that has turned women into romantic creatures more likely to get hurt following breakups with potential high-quality mates. Contrariwise, men have evolved to compete for the loving attention of women, and getting over a breakup involves a different emotional process. “The man will likely feel the loss deeply and for a very long period of time as it ‘sinks in’ that he must ‘start competing’ all over again to replace what he has lost — or worse still, come to the realization that the loss is irreplaceable,” Morris said.
It’s time to move on
Basically, at some point, clearly, women get over a breakup, yet when you talk to a man about the end of love “you can see he is still there” Morris told HealthDay. “The anger. The disappointment. There was never any end to this for him. Most men never use the phrase, ‘I got over it.” Morris believes that it is important to understand post-relationship grief in order to control the most extreme negative and self-destructive manifestations of it.
What were the worst breakups you’ve ever experienced? Share your stories in the comments section below.
Breakups and Gender: When Your Heart Breaks – Literally
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