Men are more affected by breakups than women, study finds

Who would've thought?

While common belief and tired gender stereotypes paint women as the more emotionally attached partners and therefore the ones most devastated by breakups, new research suggests it might actually be men sobbing into a tub of ice cream while watching a soppy romcom.

The study, which was published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships last month, examined the outcome of romantic hardships by analysing responses from over 184,000 volunteers who opened up about their relationship struggles in an anonymous survey.

Focusing mainly on the language used by respondents, researchers based in the UK and Switzerland analysed the responses for recurring psychological themes, building a picture of the most common relationship struggles.

As many might expect, the patterns were fairly familiar, with communication issues, trust, and time investment consistently emerging as key relationship stressors.

However, when researchers broke the responses down by gender, they uncovered some challenges to traditional stereotypes. Notably, expressions of heartache, regret, and post-breakup tears were more pronounced among men, appearing “significantly more” often in male responses than in female ones, per The Inside Hook.

“The fact that the heartache theme was more commonly discussed by men emphasises how men are at least as emotionally affected by relationship problems as women,” said lead author Charlotte Entwistle in a statement.

While the findings may appear to challenge traditional relationship stereotypes, the idea that men struggle more with breakups than women is not entirely surprising and may, in fact, be shaped by those very same expectations.

Due to the idea that men are stoic and unemotional, lots of men have less experience in healthily processing negative emotions and are also less likely to reach out to emotional support networks.

So it’s not hard to understand that getting over a breakup can be more difficult when someone doesn’t feel they have the space or support to fully express and process the emotions that come with it.