JOIN NOW, EARN 50% OF OUR TOTAL REVENUE MONTHLY

A couple of years back, I had a business lunch
with a powerful female executive of a textile
firm. We’d never met before but by the first
course, I’d learned that she had a young son,
that juggling a demanding job and home life
was nearly killing her and that the father of
her child had just left. Underneath her
designer clothes she was a mess. And that’s
what we discussed throughout our meal. I
listened to her outpouring of pain and made
odd remarks – and when we said goodbye,
she said I’d made her feel ‘much better’. Of
course I hadn’t, she felt better through talking
and feeling someone cared.
As an agony aunt, both men and women write
to me asking for advice about heartache after
a relationship ends, and there’s little difference
in the way they express their pain. After all,
questions like, “will I ever be happy again?”
and “Do you think I will ever find a new love?”
don’t come with gender labels. I refuse to
believe cliches like “all men are unfeeling and
women are the more caring s*x.” However, it
will come as no surprise that many more
letters to my column come from women. You
would attribute this to the fact that men tend
to think of problem pages as women’s
domain. But the number of letters I get from
unhappy wives who want to seek couple’s
counselling, only to have their husbands flatly
refuse, shows men are far less articulate
about feelings – and tend to regard talking
about them as weakness.
Over the past few months, I’ve had three
intense talks with people who I know –
unhappy souls whose partners walked out on
them after a long marriage. One break-up was
five years ago, one 12 months ago, one eight
weeks ago. Each was still heartbroken, as well
as consumed by moments of bitterness and
the terror of a future without companionship.
All thought it impossible to ‘get over’ such a
shocking life change. Two were women and
one a man – but expressed themselves in very
similar ways. That was no surprise to me. My
years as an advice columnist for this
newspaper have taught me that heartache has
no gender.
But a new report seems to disagree.
Researchers at Binghamton University, New
York, and at University College, London, found
that when a relationship ends, women suffer
more emotional pain than men. They asked
5,705 people in 96 countries to rate the hurt of
a break-up on a scale of zero to ten. The
average result was 6.84 for women, compared
to 6.58 for men – that doesn’t look like a
huge-difference, but it is statistically. As well
as feeling worse, women suffer more
physically; they’re more likely to panic, lose
sleep, and put on weight.
The big question here is: How can these
‘experts’ draw sensible conclusion by asking
people to rate their pain? “You don’t
experience pain – mental or physical – in the
same way I do, or my heartbroken friends,”
said Clara, a relationship counsellor . “Why
should feelings be any different? When my ex-
husband ended our 29-year,marriage, friends
called me ‘brave’ and ‘dignified’ as I chose not
to wail and cut the sleeves off his suits! At
the time, I thought reticence necessary for
self-protection. But if I’d been asked to rate
my feelings on a scale of zero to ten, what
would I have put? Would I have rated my
emotional agony as lower than that of a male
friend I saw last week – still full of anger after
a year? Maybe. But my point is that the
difference between us is not down to our
gender, but our personality type. I move on,
convincing myself I must.
“It’s amazing how many couples fail to
communicate. Their heart-breaking letters
sometimes reveal a lack of the most basic
information about each other. Try asking your
partner, “what makes you unhappy?” Then the
more positive, “What makes you most happy?”
The results may surprise
– and (with luck) start a valuable
conversation. Whatever the surveys say,
heartbreak is part of the human condition, and
the small rejections we suffer as children are
a rehearsal for the jolting shock when a
partner announces: “I don’t really love you any
more.”
“Pain must be endorsed by walking through
the dark valley until you see a glimmer of
light. I just don’t believe that in the end, it is
gender that makes the difference. Other things
– like your ability to talk about it, your support
network, if you are lucky enough to meet
someone else – will help you through.
“I have lost count of the number of items I
have held somebody’s hand and assured them
that in time, pain does pass. You don’t “get
over” it, you absorb it into your being and
grow. This is such a hard thing to believe
when you are miserable, but in most cases, it
is true.”
Get rid of that cheat and net a better man!
It may be little comfort, but women whose
partners cheat on them are likely to be better
off in the long run. The largest study of break-
ups caused by infidelity found that the lessons
learned helped women pick a better partner.
The heartbreak of unfaithfulness left them with
a ‘higher mating intelligence’ that helped them
avoid cheaters. It seems they become better
at spotting clues that suggest their partner
may cheat, and are better at sensing when he
is going to be ‘poached’ by someone else.
But the’ other woman’ gets a partner with a
track record of being deceptive. In an
anonymous on-line survey of 5,705 adults in 96
countries, reported in the Oxford Handbook of
Women and Competition, teams from
Binghamton University in the US and University
College, London looked at how happy men and
women were before, during and after a break-
up. Professor Craig Morris, of Binghamton
University in New York, said more women than
men claimed to be ‘better off” after they were
cheated on. He added: ‘Women report that
they are more attuned to cues of infidelity,
dishonesty, and other “low mate value” signals
following having their mate “poached” by
another woman.
“Our thesis is that the woman who “loses” her
mate to another woman will go through a
period of grief and betrayal, but come out of
the experience with higher mating intelligence
that allows her to better detect cues in future
mates that may indicate low mate value.
‘Hence, in the long term
she “wins”. ‘The “other woman”, conversely, is
now in a relationship with a partner who has a
demonstrated history of deception. Thus, in
the long term she “loses”.’