The stereotype that men are not as emotionally involved as women and that they are the ones who feel more pain during the breakup of the couple may not be true. A study by the University of Lancaster (United Kingdom) has revealed that it would be men who suffer the most emotionally at the end of the relationship.
1 in 5 people had difficulty discussing problems and 1 in 8 had a lack of trust in their partner
The research, published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, has analyzed the online relationships of more than 184,000 people who posted their relationship problems in an anonymous forum. Natural language processing methods were used, in addition to the psychological and demographic characteristics of the participants, and a map of the most common problems in love relationships was created.
The findings indicated that communication problems were the most frequent, since 1 in 5 people had difficulty discussing problems and 1 in 8 had a lack of trust in their relationships. The most common topic discussed in these forums was emotional pain, rather than the actions themselves, the anguish generated by these breakups, and the most common words were crying, breakup, regret, and broken heart.
Men more likely to ask for help
“In particular, the fact that men discussed the topic of distress more often emphasizes how men are at least as emotionally affected by relationship problems as women,” explains Charlottle Entwistle, lead author of the study.
On the other hand, men were found to be more likely to seek help than women in online settings. Dr. Ryan Boyd, another of the authors clarifies that “traditionally, women are more likely to identify relationship problems, consider therapy and seek therapy than men. However, when traditional social stigmas against men for seeking help and sharing their emotions are removed, they seem just as interested in getting through rough patches in their relationships as women.”
With these results, the researchers intend to develop a more precise image of the problems that occur in relationships in order to identify when they are not going well, in addition to promoting the destigmatization of seeking help, since men have the same probabilities as women from requiring this type of therapy.
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