C
Chalk up another thing that
women do better than men:
break up. At least that’s
according to Craig Eric Morris,
a Penn State University
anthropologist who studies
heartbreak.
Like the incoming asteroid
that will wipe out life on Earth,
women burn hot and fast.
When a relationship is over,
they cry, invest in red wine,
watch Nicholas Sparks movies,
log on to Bumble, turn to Ellen
for spiritual strength, and then
get on with it – and come out
in a better emotional place,
where they greet the next guy.
Men, on the other hand, slice
their suffering into long, dull,
onerous chapters, dragging out
our obsessive retelling, recalling
one more thing, investigating
all the emotional forensics,
and Facebook-stalking her for
months, if not longer.
We do not recover; we simply
grind on. And on. Once you saw
her, now you don’t, then you see
her everywhere. Madness.
What’s more, a break-up can
THE RIGHT WAY TO MAKE A CLEAN
BREAK FROM THE WRONG WOMAN.Don’t Let
Her Haunt You
trigger an actual condition. It’s
called abandonment rage, a
term coined by Reid Meloy, a
psychologist at the University
of California at San Diego. This
anger is the flip side of the
lunacy that happened when you
liked her more than she liked
you. Now that she’s gone, you’re
devastated. Like a typhoon
survivor, you’re wondering what
the heck just happened.
If you’re old enough to drink,
chances are you’ve already
been through this kind of thing.
Most men have endured three
serious break-ups by the time
they hit their 30s, according to
Craig’s studies.
But are those sad experiences
universal? Does one break fit
all? Or just as there are many
different kinds of women, are
there many different ways of
breaking up with them?
While no two splits are
exactly alike, of course they do
tend to follow patterns.
Read on to move on.THE FIRST LOVE YOU
THOUGHT YOU WERE
DESTINED TO MARRY
This could be the girl you fell
hard for in your teens, and the
girl you’ll be Googling well into
your 80s. It’s a lifelong ache.
According to Lauren Howe ofStanford University, who studies
responses to rejection (in case
you thought your job was
depressing), these stand out
because we may see them not
only as encounters that didn’t
work out but as something
bitterly damning about who we
really, truly are.
Meanwhile, Craig says, the
anguish over losing a quality
woman may come from the
grim realisation that you have to
start competing (not to mention
bathing) all over again. Plus if
you two were really close, you
might have thought you let her
frighteningly near your true self- a self that you yourself may
have never met until you met
her. So you might feel a need to
shoulder all the blame.
` THE EX-ORCISM Crush that
impulse as soon as you can. “If
you’re always thinking, ‘I was too
clingy’ or ‘I was too sensitive,’
question the story you’re telling
yourself about the relationship,”
Lauren says.
“A lot of factors determine
whether a relationship fails.
Maybe it was timing, or the
person wasn’t ready for
something that mature.”
If your sad, crushed brain
is clinging to a narrative that
puts you at fault, you may be
trying to control the chaos, so
changing that narrative will
speed your comeback.
For help, ask members of
the former potential wedding
party for their help and
insight: “Others often provide
more charitable explanations
than we provide for ourselves,”
says Lauren.THE MOTHER
OF YOUR CHILDREN
Going cold turkey isn’t
exactly practical when you’reSOURCE: EVOLUTIONARY BEHAVIORAL SCIENCESAverage emotional
pain rating for men
after a break-up
6.58 (10=unbearable)
JUNE 2017 29