If A Man Is Secretly Heartbroken, These 4 Behaviors Are Hard To Hide
Ivan S | Pexels How do guys deal with heartbreak, and what do they do when they're secretly heartbroken? Unfortunately, men aren’t great when it comes to the aftermath of a breakup, and science backs that up.
Researchers from Binghamton University polled over 5,000 participants in a study that asked them to rate their emotional and physical pain following the end of a romantic relationship. The results showed that women feel pain more intensely immediately following a breakup, but men have a much harder time recovering from heartbreak in the long term.
What does heartbreak feel like for a man? To quote one of the researchers, “The man will likely feel the loss deeply and for a very long period of time as it ‘sinks in’ that he must ‘start competing’ all over again to replace what he has lost — or worse still, come to the realization that the loss is irreplaceable.” Why do men take so long to recover from a bad breakup? Probably because they’re doing it wrong.
Not to generalize, but as marriage and family therapist William Meleney mentioned, many men aren’t comfortable talking about their emotions with other men, and that kind of peer-to-peer “OMG, I can’t believe it hurts so much” conversation plays a big role in getting over losing someone you loved. So, because men don’t talk, they invent other “manly” ways of behaving to cope with the pain of a breakup.
If a man is secretly heartbroken, these behaviors are hard to hide:
1. They sleep — a lot
When a man is secretly heartbroken, it awakens his inner “bear.” What I mean is that, when men are in pain, they like to hibernate. So they sleep all the time. They want to spend as much time unconscious as possible because, when they’re sleeping, they don’t feel any pain.
And who knows? Maybe they’ll fall into a Rip Van Winkle situation where they sleep so long that, one day, they wake up in a whole new world — a world where they can’t remember what broke their heart in the first place. (Not likely.)
2. Secretly heartbroken men play video games all the time
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Video games can be oddly therapeutic for men. Video games give men a world to retreat into, a world where they can try to accomplish things and, if they fail, at the worst, they’ll have to start over at a nearby checkpoint. The game world is a safe space for them.
Now, that can sound odd when you recognize how violent some video games are. You may ask yourself, “Is it healthy that he’s dealing with his breakup by shooting strangers in Call of Duty all day?”
But venting aggression aside, the behaviors that men exhibit with video games tend to remain the same whether they’re playing a first-person shooter or a Super Mario game.
After a devastating breakup, they want to retreat into a world where things make sense, where things have rules. The video game “reality” allows them to access that without having to change out of their pajamas. In their minds, it’s a win-win.
3. They try to get back out there immediately
This is a coping technique that some men attempt, even though, typically, it’s a bad idea. But men are taught from an early age that they’re supposed to fix things, they’re always supposed to be moving forward. So, if their previous relationship is unfixable, the male mindset tells them, “You need to get back out there and try again.”
The problems occur when men attempt to try again way too soon. On the surface, flirting lessens the pain of heartbreak, but that doesn’t mean that the heartbreak wounds have completely healed yet. This becomes a problem when that flirting escalates to anything more serious.
Suddenly, the cutie who was smiling at him at the bar becomes an inadvertent surrogate for the man’s ex. This can cause the man to lash out at the new fling in strange, unexpected, and unfair ways. It’s just not healthy for anyone. This pattern is commonly seen by therapists who specialize in these kinds of rebound dynamics.
"Rebounding from one relationship to the next may offer a temporary distraction from negative feelings, but like most things of that nature, you will soon have to face the issues that ended your relationship, as well as the negative feelings you attempted to avoid by jumping into a new one," explained marriage and family therapist Dr. Tarra Bates-Duford.
4. Secretly heartbroken men go silent
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This might be the least healthy way that men deal with breakups. Sometimes, when a man is hurting, he just retreats from the world. He stops seeing his friends, he stops going out, and he just cuts himself off from everyone else.
One reason this happens is that men don’t often have the friendship infrastructures to help them cope with loss. Women have enough experience with helping friends deal with breakups that they even have their own clichés — eating a gallon of ice cream, drinking wine, dancing around tables while singing into the back of a hairbrush.
But men don’t have much experience (or many role models) when it comes to talking to their close dude friends about pain and heartbreak. So, not knowing what to do, they clam up. They isolate themselves. And, suddenly, they’re not only dealing with the breakup, but they’re also dealing with a pervasive sense of loneliness, too.
"Loneliness is often unrecognized, unexpressed, and denied by men. It rises as a biological response to an absence of connection and has ramifications for emotional, mental, and physical health, self, and familial solidarity. Men's friendships tend to be 'side by side' rather than 'face to face,' built around shared activities like work, sports, or problem-solving rather than emotional intimacy. This structure means male friendships are often less emotionally resilient over time," noted Meleney.
As I mentioned, men like to think that they can “fix” heartbreak or, at the very least, put their heads down and wait out the pain. Unfortunately, that might explain why men take longer to recover from a breakup than women. They’re avoiding coping with the loss and not allowing themselves to heal.
If you know a guy who’s trying to “man up” his way through his post-breakup sadness, encourage him to talk to his friends, speak honestly, and get out of the house sometimes. Remind him that he doesn’t have to endure the pain alone and that things will get better faster if he checks his man pride at the door and accepts the help of others.
Elizabeth Ayers-Callahan is a writer focusing on love and relationship issues and is a frequent contributor to YourTango.
