Have you ever known a man that had an ex-girlfriend, or ex-wife that he just COULDN’T get over?

The relationship may have been in the distant past, WAY too long ago, yet he still seems heartbroken.

Even if he hasn’t seen the woman in years.

Such a man still talks about the past relationship often, pining over his lost love.

Friends and family that care about him, if he is fortunate enough to have them, worry that he is taking much longer to rebound than seems “normal”, or even healthy.

Time Marches On

The years pass.

However, for the forlorn lover, it’s as if time has stood still.

He dates and sleeps with other women, but he’s stuck on the “girl that got away”.

He can’t move on.

If you’re nodding in agreement right now, it’s because many of us reading this know a guy like that.

Many of us reading this ARE a guy like that.

The Cold Bed

The end of a relationship is difficult for everyone involved.

The human animal is highly resistant to change, and the break up of a romantic relationship brings sudden, massive change to all areas of someone’s life.

Comforting daily routines are upended as, all of sudden, the house is empty when you return home from work.

You make dinner alone, then sink into the couch to zone out in front of a movie, with no soft body to cuddle.

At night, the bed is cold and unwelcoming, instead of filled with the familiar warmth of a lover.

Broken Heart = Broken Bone

While both men and women can feel sad, regretful, and hurt when a relationship ends, men tend experience break ups as much more emotionally damaging than women.

A break up cuts men much more deeply, leaving wounds that last longer, and heal more slowly, than those of our female counterparts.

In fact, researchers found that rejection is painful, because the experience of getting rejected lights up the same areas of the human brain as physical injury.

Your brain can’t tell the difference between a broken heart, and a broken bone.

A study at the University of British Columbia found that participants who took aspirin before being asked to recall a painful rejection experienced significantly less emotional pain, than those that didn’t.

Pain killers to numb the emotional suffering of heartbreak. This explains why so many of men succumb to abusing alcohol and drugs.

We are self-medicating to cope with the distress of the end of a romantic relationship.

5 Reasons Why Break Ups Are Harder On Men

Men Have Fewer Friends Than Women
I’m always amazed at women’s ability to maintain a dizzying array of social connections, over the course of years, even decades.
I’ve dated women that were still close friends with women whom they’d been kindergarten classmates, co-workers at a high school job, or neighbors in a college apartment complex, ten years earlier.
Women are inherently more social than men.
They have a higher capacity for social interactions, as well as a greater desire to both share, and hear, the juicy and sordid details of their own lives, and the dirty laundry of others.
On the other hand, men, especially introverts, are more likely to keep our emotions to ourselves, a topic I explored in the first episode of the Solitary Beast podcast, “Do You Need Friends As An Introvert?”.

2. Men Are More Emotionally Reliant on Female Partners

More than one quarter of men under age 30 report having “no close social connections”.

When men do have friendships, they tend to be more circumstantial, an example would be neighbors or co-workers who occasionally grab a drink together.

Such relationships are often superficial, with conversation centering around sports and work, avoiding deep conversations about their lives’ challenges.

When one of the men changes jobs, or moves, the friendship fizzles out.

Men in general aren’t experienced in expressing our feelings, especially when such revelations may make them seem “weak” to their peers.

Social expectations of men to be tough, independent, rational, and stoic, leave no space for men to be vulnerable about challenges we might be experiencing with a difficult boss, their health, or in their romantic relationship.

Since men don’t typically seek out therapy, tend to have only shallow friendships, if any, we tend to become over reliant on wives and girlfriends for emotional support.

Wives and girlfriends become a man’s “best friend, lover, career advisor, social secretary, emotional cheerleader, mom” .

When that only source of support vanishes, men feel like their legs have been swept from beneath them.

3. The Break Up Was The Woman’s Idea

Another reason why break ups are so distressing for men is, it wasn’t his idea.

In the US, 70% of relationship splits, and 80% of divorces are initiated by the female partner.

Men often feel blindsided by the dissolution of a relationship.

He acknowledged that the relationship may have had it’s challenges, but he wasn’t unhappy enough to write it off.

On the other hand, modern feminist “You Go Girl!” propaganda encourages women to demand complete happiness, in a fairy tale life, and to jump ship the split second her delusional demands aren’t met.

Additionally, average, and even below average looking women have more options for relationships, dating, and sex, than wealthy, handsome successful men like Leonardo DiCaprio and Ryan Gosling can dream about.

Any woman under age 80, no matter what she looks like, or how much she weighs, is constantly barraged by thirsty male attention.

As a result, women have the ultimate abundance mentality concerning relationships.

If her current love interest isn’t cutting it, a simple DM to any one of the dozens of guys in her inbox, or texts will call up a replacement quicker than the ex she rejected can warm up a Hot Pocket.

This explains why women keep unsuspecting simps- I mean, unsuspecting men, in the dreaded Friend Zone.

The smitten, but clueless men, in her orbit are insurance for the day she gets tired of her actual boyfriend, and decides to leave.

The orbiters fill the role of showering her with attention and valuable male energy, as well as move her furniture and boxes of belongings into her new place, hoping that will win them a sniff of her sexual interest.

Most men lack the foresight, not to mention the ability, to keep a lonely woman at their beck and call in case of emergency.

4. Men In Relationships Let Themselves Go

Most men only invest time into weight training, grooming, and fashion to get sex from women.

Once they have it “locked down” (they think), many men stop working out, get fat, and stop caring about their appearance.

This popular blog post explains why men tend to get fat in relationships, especially when they live with the woman, “A Girlfriend Is Better Than A Wife”.

It’s well known that only the top 80% of men get attention and sexual intimacy with women.

In a relationship, many men let themselves slip into the lower 80% of men who are physically unappealing to women.

Once their girlfriend leaves, they have to get back on track to even dream of competing for another one.

Which leads me to my next point:

5. It’s 100X Harder For Men To Replace A Woman

We all understand that women, even those you might consider unattractive, or downright ugly, are receiving constant male attention, probably from men better looking, richer, and more famous than you!

Regular girls often gloat about the rappers and celebrities that slide in their DMs.

A close friend of my family is in her 60s.

Even at that age, she brags about men that take her on dates, lavish her with vacations, and spoil her with gifts and money.

My own mother, well past retirement age, will often come home from the grocery store, blushing, as she recounts the story of an older gentleman who complimented her outfit, and asked her for her phone number.

As far as I’m concerned, “The Wall” that many vengeful Red Pillers (myself included) have fantasized about, doesn’t exist.

See my posts, “5 Signs A Woman Has Hit The Wall” and “5 Biggest Red Pill Copes”.

As long as a woman has a warm, wet, gash between her thighs, there will be a man SOMEWHERE, willing to simp to get access to it.

The only thing that changes is that the line of men gets less attractive as she ages.

Women that could once command the attention of tall, successful executives, find themselves entertaining shorter, less affluent, less accomplished men.

It may be a slight blow to their inflated female ego, but the men are still there.

By stark contrast, 80% of men live without female attention.

Most men get fewer than 3 matches on dating apps in a month.

When they do, the women are unappealing at best.

See my post, “Why You Only Match With Fat Girls On Tinder”.

A 2020 study at Indiana University showed 31% of men ages 18- 24 reported no sexual contact with a woman in the previous YEAR, up from 19% in 2018.

Social restrictions related to the COVID pandemic, widespread pornography addiction, and ruthless female hypergamy, have annihilated most men’s sexual options like a zombie apocalypse.

Women, conniving strategists that they are, won’t exit a relationship until she has the next guy lined up, for a seamless transition.

On the other hand, it takes an average man YEARS to replace a consistent source of reliable sexual and emotional intimacy, and he knows it.

This is the single biggest reason why break ups are so damaging for men.

It is men who have to pick up the pieces of our lives, often without support from friends.

Alone, we venture back out on the hostile, tortuous dating landscape, searching for a way to fulfill our innate biological need for human relationships.

This ordeal entails withstanding emotional bruises in every form imaginable.

Starting with not getting matches at all, being ghosted on dates, and rejected over and over, in the quest to find a suitable female companion.

Read my post, “When Women Ghost You: 8 Immediate Actions To Make You Feel Better”.

This is why “The Wall”, and widespread internet slander against single mothers is invalid.

Men do not have enough options to turn down an available source of intimacy.

An unattractive, overweight, “post-Wall” woman, that will give him a chance, is still an oasis to a lonely guy suffering in the desert of constant rejection.

I Get It

If you’re a man experiencing painful feelings after a lost love, no matter how long it has been, I understand.

The end of my last significant relationship was over 5 years ago.

I still think about my former girlfriend every day.

The author with former girlfriend, 2017.

For years, I compared every other woman I dated, to her.

I judged all subsequent flings against my idealized memories of my previous love, and found each of them lacking.

Sitting across the table at a first date, trying to appear interested, I would be sneering internally:

“[My ex-girlfriend] would never have worn that/

Would have had better make up/

Would have known about that obscure book”

To this day, I still have to stop myself from comparing other women to this one relationship in my past.

Recently, I spent the weekend with a beautiful, bubbly, sexually insatiable woman, who I met on Seeking.com.

(Check out Solitary Beast podcast episode, “Dating Sugar Babies” to hear my experiences dating on Seeking.)

We ravished each other for hours.

I fucked her all over my house, in every position I’ve ever dreamed about.

I woke up the next day, my pelvis sore, with a model gorgeous sugar baby wrapped around me.

Still, I found myself thinking, "…Wow, I haven’t had this much fun in bed since [my ex-girlfriend]”

In spite of the fact that I haven’t spoken to my former girlfriend in nearly a year, and we haven’t been together for more than 5 years, I’m still haunted by her ghost.

The end of that relationship is the most significant emotional event of my adult life.

I’m still impacted by the loss of that relationship to this day.

Five years since we were together, I still wonder if I’ll ever really be “over it”.

Conclusion

The end of a romantic relationship wreaks havoc on men’s emotional, and even physical health.

While researching this post, I was surprised to find Danish research which showed that “middle aged men who have experienced multiple breakups and lived alone for many years” were at slightly higher risk of systemic inflammation which could potentially cause cancer.

Men are also more likely to engage in damaging behavior, to cope with the pain of a relationship ending, like excessive drinking, smoking, or using drugs.

Like all hard things, the only way out is through.

If you think you need to speak to a mental health professional, contact one immediately.

Don’t try to “tough it out” if you’re hurting, and end up doing something stupid.

Check out my post, “How Men Can Overcome Depression”

How To Deal With A Break Up

I’ve addressed the subject of dealing with depression, rejection, and loneliness in several previous posts on the blog.

In fact, this blog started as a way for me to process the turmoil I was, and am, feeling, as I work through all the emotions of losing a woman I loved.

For more information on how to handle the complicated emotions following a break up, check out the posts below:

“Women Don’t Understand Rejection”

“Why Millennials Are So Lonely”

“Treat Your Life Like An Experiment”

Get Busy Living

The best way to get over your wounded heart, is to get busy living.

Take control of your emotional state by focusing your energy toward creating an amazing life for yourself, filled with success, passion, and adventure.

To get a guide on making the most of your life as a man, check out the first Solitary Beast book, 30 Dangerous Ideas For Men In Their 30s, now available on Amazon Kindle.

30 Dangerous Ideas For Men In Their 30s will grab you by the scruff of your neck, shaking off the cobwebs of boredom and routine from your life.

Modern life is too cushy, and too easy.

The comfortable, climate controlled world lulls your edge off.

It’s hard to feel the energy and excitement of being a man when you take it too easy.

For motivation to kick your life into gear, get to work, and take your mind off your girl problems- get 30 Dangerous Ideas For Men on Amazon Kindle.

Promise yourself you will never give up.

-Solitary Beast

5 Reasons Why Break Ups Are Harder For Men