Men often experience intense loneliness and stress after a breakup, highlighting the need for emotional support Image: freepik
Breaking up with someone you love can be difficult to do, and new evidence suggests men may sometimes have more emotional fallout from their breakup than women do.
Research shows that men often depend on their partners for support. So when a breakup occurs, men tend to feel a greater degree of sadness, loneliness and stress.
Research also indicates that women tend to have broader emotional support than men as they are more likely to communicate about their feelings with family and friends than men do. Thus, understanding how the nature of relationships impacts men's mental health should be taken into account when providing mental health services and community programmes, especially for men who have less support outside of their romantic relationships.
People generally agree that a romantic partnership provides many emotional health benefits: companionship, stability, and a sense of purpose. Studies show that men who are in a romantic relationship gain many benefits both physically and psychologically (e.g., decreased rates of depression and stress) as compared to single men.
In contrast, when a romantic relationship ends, both men and women experience significant emotional distress; however, women are far more likely to initiate the end of the relationship or marriage, and men tend to experience far more negative consequences of the breakup than women do.
For those dealing with emotional distress, social support from outside the relationship can be extremely useful; women often have a lot more of this than men. Because men are generally dependent upon their partners for much of their emotional support, they are at a much greater risk for negative outcomes, which include a higher risk of suicide as a result of the loss of a partner.
Researchers Iris V. Wahring and colleagues (2024) conducted a study demonstrating that men have much greater emotional attachment to their significant others than women do; thus, if a relationship ends, men have more difficulty recovering from that loss and will suffer from chronic feelings of loneliness and low levels of life satisfaction, while women are typically better able to draw upon many sources of support to cope with this type of loss.
As Dr. Rebecca Fletcher (clinical psychologist; University of Edinburgh) states, "By being aware of these differences in men's and women's responses to relationship losses, practitioners can provide more appropriately targeted types of support."
Additionally, developing non-romantic relationships and coping mechanisms can help to mitigate the effects of a relationship loss on men.
Individual and collective levels of society can use this information to positively impact their own lives. For example, men should be encouraged to build relationships with people other than those they are romantically involved with to improve their own lives.
In addition, men would likely benefit from mental health programmes that have been designed specifically for them (counselling/peer support/education). At the public policy level, consideration should be given to current research creating services designed to encourage men to improve their emotional well-being through social connection, reduce their risk of being isolated socially, and improve their overall health.
Because men’s emotional and health outcomes are strongly influenced by their romantic relationships, mental health services need to include social context to support men after a breakup and decrease the likelihood of long-term effects.
References
Wahring, I. V., Simpson, J. A., & Van Lange, P. A. M. (2024). Romantic relationships matter more to men than to women. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X24001365
Fernandes, J. G., Santos, C., & Martins, M. V. (2025). Psychosocial effects of romantic breakups during emerging adulthood: A systematic review. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpp.70139
Image: freepik
