I read an interesting quote the other day by Oscar Wilde who said: "When a love comes to an end, weaklings cry, efficient ones instantly find another love, and the wise already have one in reserve.”
After news of Brian McFadden’s break-up with Aussie songstress Delta Goodrem, the media had a field day when he was spotted out on the town posing with two hot models. He was subsequently dubbed an "unemotional playboy" and berated for not mourning the relationship the way he was supposed to. (By laying low? Publicly crying? Never talking to another woman again?)
Nevertheless his behaviour is exactly in-line with the way many men I’ve recently polled seem to deal with their break-ups. They simply hang up the phone, delete her number and head straight out the door to go and drink their weight in beer, have sex with as many women as they can find and throw themselves into their work, all the while quashing any emotions that may surface. Instead of wondering "what if?", they simply say “next!”And they actually mean it. At least at the time.
On the other hand women deal with things entirely differently. While many are an indomitable force in every other aspect of their lives, the hurt and emotions associated with a break-up somehow seem to crush women in ways we never dreamt could hurt so much.
We cry, complain to our girlfriends, watch sappy DVDs, eat ice cream and refuse to leave the house for weeks on end. We question why it happened, berate ourselves about whether it was our fault, talk, talk and talk it out with our girlfriends and still come to no resolution whatsoever.
Instead of moving on, we look to the past and run through every last memory of the time we had together before shamelessly attempting to contact him, to beg him, cry to him and generally annoy the heck out of him.
Why do so many women do this? Because according to Robin W. Simon, a sociology professor at Wake Forest University, in North Carolina, who recently carried out a study on break-ups, a woman’s self-worth is directly connected to her relationship status.
“It’s a little bit pathetic,” Simon told the New York Times. “Even though there’s been so much social change in this area, women’s self-worth is still so much tied up with having a boyfriend. It’s unfortunate.”
It might seem unfortunate and rather pathetic, but biology plays a huge role in why we react this way. You see, women have only a certain amount of eggs, and a certain amount of time to reproduce. Dating a man long-term and then breaking up means she’s wasted valuable time and therefore the pain is exacerbated by the belief that she might never get her chance again.
Or so says relationships guru Helen Fisher in the Times.
“Because women can only reproduce so many times, they have dramatic time constraints that men don’t have. A breakup means the loss of very valuable reproductive time.”
But three months on, a dumped femme becomes an entirely different woman. Once we’ve spent a quarter of the year crying, whining, whinging, eating and reconnecting with our feelings, we manage to eventually move on. And that’s when it hits the blokes. Suddenly the men finally have their (somewhat delayed) emotional reaction.
Case in point is the tale of my mate Jed, who six months after his break-up began to wonder why the heck he ended things with his girlfriend of two years in the first place. In his head, he began to reminisce about all the great times they had together, the regular sex that he was no longer getting and the emotional support she provided for him that he was now without.
He hadn’t heard from her in a while and so he decided to make contact and see where she was at, hoping things could perhaps be rekindled. No such luck.
“I’m over it Jed,” she told him on the phone. “You’re too late. I’ve met someone else and we’re moving to Melbourne. Please don’t call me again.” Suddenly it was his turn to mourn the relationship, and he had no idea how to do it.
“That’s why it’s always good to have another guy on the side,” a girlfriend recently told me. “Unless you’re going to marry the guy, you just never know. And in the end they show no remorse. Or at least not initially. So you’ve got to have someone in the wings to take the pressure off when things go bust.”
That might not be such a sympathetic way to enter a relationship, but as Oscar Wilde would say, amen to that ...
After news of Brian McFadden’s break-up with Aussie songstress Delta Goodrem, the media had a field day when he was spotted out on the town posing with two hot models. He was subsequently dubbed an "unemotional playboy" and berated for not mourning the relationship the way he was supposed to. (By laying low? Publicly crying? Never talking to another woman again?)
Nevertheless his behaviour is exactly in-line with the way many men I’ve recently polled seem to deal with their break-ups. They simply hang up the phone, delete her number and head straight out the door to go and drink their weight in beer, have sex with as many women as they can find and throw themselves into their work, all the while quashing any emotions that may surface. Instead of wondering "what if?", they simply say “next!”And they actually mean it. At least at the time.
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On the other hand women deal with things entirely differently. While many are an indomitable force in every other aspect of their lives, the hurt and emotions associated with a break-up somehow seem to crush women in ways we never dreamt could hurt so much.
We cry, complain to our girlfriends, watch sappy DVDs, eat ice cream and refuse to leave the house for weeks on end. We question why it happened, berate ourselves about whether it was our fault, talk, talk and talk it out with our girlfriends and still come to no resolution whatsoever.
Instead of moving on, we look to the past and run through every last memory of the time we had together before shamelessly attempting to contact him, to beg him, cry to him and generally annoy the heck out of him.
Why do so many women do this? Because according to Robin W. Simon, a sociology professor at Wake Forest University, in North Carolina, who recently carried out a study on break-ups, a woman’s self-worth is directly connected to her relationship status.
“It’s a little bit pathetic,” Simon told the New York Times. “Even though there’s been so much social change in this area, women’s self-worth is still so much tied up with having a boyfriend. It’s unfortunate.”
It might seem unfortunate and rather pathetic, but biology plays a huge role in why we react this way. You see, women have only a certain amount of eggs, and a certain amount of time to reproduce. Dating a man long-term and then breaking up means she’s wasted valuable time and therefore the pain is exacerbated by the belief that she might never get her chance again.
Or so says relationships guru Helen Fisher in the Times.
“Because women can only reproduce so many times, they have dramatic time constraints that men don’t have. A breakup means the loss of very valuable reproductive time.”
But three months on, a dumped femme becomes an entirely different woman. Once we’ve spent a quarter of the year crying, whining, whinging, eating and reconnecting with our feelings, we manage to eventually move on. And that’s when it hits the blokes. Suddenly the men finally have their (somewhat delayed) emotional reaction.
Case in point is the tale of my mate Jed, who six months after his break-up began to wonder why the heck he ended things with his girlfriend of two years in the first place. In his head, he began to reminisce about all the great times they had together, the regular sex that he was no longer getting and the emotional support she provided for him that he was now without.
He hadn’t heard from her in a while and so he decided to make contact and see where she was at, hoping things could perhaps be rekindled. No such luck.
“I’m over it Jed,” she told him on the phone. “You’re too late. I’ve met someone else and we’re moving to Melbourne. Please don’t call me again.” Suddenly it was his turn to mourn the relationship, and he had no idea how to do it.
“That’s why it’s always good to have another guy on the side,” a girlfriend recently told me. “Unless you’re going to marry the guy, you just never know. And in the end they show no remorse. Or at least not initially. So you’ve got to have someone in the wings to take the pressure off when things go bust.”
That might not be such a sympathetic way to enter a relationship, but as Oscar Wilde would say, amen to that ...
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