"He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong."
- W.H. Auden
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong."
- W.H. Auden
I have to admit, immediately after I posted my "love" inspired blog I started to feel very negative about the whole idea. I started thinking about the rising divorce rate and all of the unhappiness I've seen in relationships lately and I started to think, 'Okay why do I love love? Am I a MASOCHIST?!" Then I had a conversation with my dear friend from school Alexis and she brought up oxytocin and I said that I hated it (as if it was an actual physical thing I could touch) and I wanted to punch oxytocin in the face.
Haha. Okay, so I need to calm down and realize that my urge to punch an intangible neurotransmitter is not going to satisfy my frustration toward love. In my effort to do that I'm going to write about the love that doesn’t conclude with a happy ending.
We are all aware that sometimes love just isn't enough. Sometimes love ends....it fades, people lose interest, they don't see one another in their future, or infidelity exists. Unfortunately sometimes when love ends we feel like it is a waste of time to love at all.
Sometimes frankly, love sucks the royal weenie.
Males and females experience life differently so it's only rational that they experience and deal with break-ups differently. Of course, there are certain universal coping mechanisms we all employ to get through breakups, but how are they manifested between the two sexes?
The first thing that came to mind is that women definitely take break-ups harder than men do. I guess this is a generalization from my own experience and what I've seen from friends. Women tend to deal with it emotionally - crying, eating, spending time to vent with girlfriends and many bottles of wine, sitting at home in sweats eating ice cream from the container (or better yet, getting a giant bag peanut butter M&M's while watching re-runs of Sex and The City!!!). On the contrary, it seems that the men I know have dealt with their breakups by not talking about it all, hitting the bar with friends and picking up "chicks," or pretending nothing happened and not expressing their emotions on the break-up.
This is even a concept that is shown in the media with breakups - You rarely ever see a man on TV shows or movies in his pjs cuddled up in bed with food eating his feelings, right? It’s always a woman doing that!
So I started searching and I found over 10 articles saying that men suffer more after breakups than women do. Say WHAT?
Research was done by sociologists at Wake Forest University and the University of Florida based on 1,600 responses from unmarried men and women between the ages of 18 to 23. They found that break-ups hurt men's self-esteem more than women's self-esteem because men don't talk to their friends as much as women do, which leads to a sense of isolation and more loneliness.
Research was done by sociologists at Wake Forest University and the University of Florida based on 1,600 responses from unmarried men and women between the ages of 18 to 23. They found that break-ups hurt men's self-esteem more than women's self-esteem because men don't talk to their friends as much as women do, which leads to a sense of isolation and more loneliness.
The researchers also found that while young men are more affected by the quality of a current relationship, young women are more emotionally affected by whether or not they are in a relationship (Read More).
So arguments for this? I mean men out there, do you feel like break-ups were hard for you but you had no one to talk about them to?
Why does it seem like so many men have no emotions when it comes to break-ups but some have ALL these emotions? I guess it goes the same with women.....
I think that – as I always say, it’s partially the way our society is and the way we are genetically constructed. Men are not encouraged cry to each other or talk about their feelings or emotions because if they do it’s crossing a boundary of “manliness” that must NOT BE CROSSED! And don’t deny it men, because I have seen it first-hand.
I just want men out there to know – hey you can talk about it. It’s OKAY to feel sometimes. And if you can’t talk to your guy friends, talk to a girl because they’ll understand. I hope.
So lend me your thoughts, who do you think break-ups are harder on, males or females?
