Going through a breakup is probably one of the greatest hardships in life. After investing some time into a relationship, it becomes addicting. Your body and mind gets used to this person’s presence so when the relationship ends and you are forced to part ways, you become deprived.
It sucks. No matter how OK someone may seem after a breakup, he or she is hurting inside. And if you deny it, you’re a liar.
Binghamton University conducted a study on relationships and the effects it has on men and women and the results were interesting.
They found that women go through more emotional and physical pain when dealing with a breakup but also recover more fully.
Women are emotional creatures. We make ourselves vulnerable and let our emotions out. We don’t have as strong of a poker face as men do, typically.
Men try to make it seem like it is so easy to move on, and for a lot of them, it may be… at first.
The Binghamton University study revealed:
"Put simply, women are evolved to invest far more in a relationship than a man…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, over evolutionary time, has made women choosier about selecting a high-quality mate. Hence, the loss of a relationship with a high-quality mate ‘hurts’ more for a woman."
Women will take the time needed to grieve and will most likely suffer a decreased quality of life over several months’ time. But after that initial grieving period, things start looking better. Being emotional is actually a good thing in this case.
On the flipside, men try to move past feelings as quickly as possible. They may be out the next day with their ‘boys’ being single and mingling. But when they do this, they are really just suppressing their emotions. It’s not that men don’t feel as much as women, they just try harder not to show it. And in the end, it only ends up hurting them more.
Men will feel the loss deeply and over a longer period of time as the pain settles in and they come to realize what they’ve lost out of that relationship.
To put this simply, men never fully heal. They just move on. Women on the other hand, become emotionally stronger and more capable of handling these types of situations better.
A prime example is when my ex cheated on me and broke up with me one month after he gave me a promise ring. I was obviously devastated for over a year and grieved for a long time. I dedicated a lot of time and effort into our relationship only to have it thrown in my face. But after letting the tears roll out (excessively, I might add), I am glad I went through it. I am thankful that I was able to grieve, as painful as it was. Because if I didn’t get as emotional as I had after our breakup, I would still be hurting.
He, on the other hand, jumped right back into a relationship to suppress his pain. He didn’t want to deal with the fact that he had completely ruined something valuable to the both of us (and I know this because he texted me saying how badly he felt then tried to add me on Facebook…ha!)
I grieved much more heavily than he did but I got over it. He simply suppressed his pain by ignoring it, attempted to move on, and then dealt with the pain when it was too late to mend. He will never get over what he did and I can feel it in his words through the messages he sent.
As much as some women wish they could suppress emotions as easily as men, not being ignorant of these feelings makes women emotionally stronger. And that’s something to be proud of.
