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Emotional state after breakup; differences between male and female.


NeoCortex

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I have been wondering about something today. The way males and females deal with breakups is quite different. To me it seems that woman deal with it ''straight away'', feeling concentrated crappiness for short periods. Males tend to hold in their feelings for a longer period, dealing with it much later. I have several anecdotal stories were this was the case, including myself.

I googled it and I gained some inklings, but I am curious what your thoughts are. 

 

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Sure.  Currently relationships are hardly healthy (considering childhood unresolved issues, insecurities, etc.)  Considering that most relationships are largely based on pure attraction, it might be much clearer to see why it is a probable case.  All a woman needs to "get over" is to find another attractive male (for her that is), which in our society is much easier for women to do.  Well thats my thoughts on it, I can be wrong of course since I do come in to conversation with the male perspective. 

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The most dangerous emotional effects of my last breakup were the changes in my psychological disposition which were not directly related to the breakup, but aftershock effects; namely paranoia. I felt a period of near-debilitating grief for a few days after our relationship ended. Crying, lethargy, feelings that I'd never find anybody like her, and many more which I cannot remember now. After about two weeks, things settled down to feelings of moderate sadness whenever I thought about her, and gradually lower levels of sadness as time passed. That was roughly 5 months ago, but I have since chalked the relationship as a thing of the past. I do feel a small tinge of sadness when recounting our times together, however.

 

I think a big reason why I was able to "heal" from the damage caused by the breakup was because of the fact that I really allowed myself to feel the full brunt of the pain, rather than covering it up with substances and false narratives. Otherwise I would have just dragged out the trauma for years.

 

I did notice that I felt a heightened level of paranoia about a month after the breakup. I was fearing financial collapse and apocalypse at any moment (perhaps not a totally irrational feeling), started to consider purchasing a firearm, bought gold and silver, and withdrew most of my cash deposits from the bank. That paranoia has since subsided and I am back to baseline levels to how I felt before I started dating her.

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That's really interesting Waleed and I can certainly testify to experiencing something quite similar in my younger days. For myself at least it was an interesting topic that came up during therapy that I later discovered this to be about and neglect and abandonment issues from my childhood.

 

Regarding the OP's question I think Slavic makes a very useful point about females not having much trouble finding a suitable replacement much more quickly than a the guy. The scarcity plays some part in how men recover from break up. That said, I've known some women go to pieces for several months when a high quality/status guy dumped them too. Anecdotaly though, this was much rarer amongst women than with men.

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