Who moves on and how

Women get more affected by broken relationships but recover sooner

NEW YORK: Women have more to lose by dating the wrong person but after a break up, they are the ones who recover more fully than men as time heals the wounds, an interesting study has revealed.

As men have evolved to compete for the romantic attention of women, the loss of a high-quality mate may not ‘hurt’ women as much as previously thought, said researchers from New York-based Binghamton University.

The man on the other hand will likely feel the loss deeply and for a very long period of time.“The feeling sinks in that he must start competing all over again to replace what he has lost — or worse still, come to the realisation that the loss is irreplaceable,” explained Craig Morris, research associate at Binghamton University and lead author on the study.

Read: Why some people don't choose equally good looking mates?

Women, however, experience more emotional pain following a breakup but they recover fully.

To reach this conclusion, the team from Binghamton University and University College London asked 5,705 participants in 96 countries to rate the emotional and physical pain of a break up.

They found that women tend to be more negatively affected by break ups, reporting higher levels of both physical and emotional pain.

While break ups hit women the hardest emotionally and physically, women tend to recover more fully and come out emotionally stronger.

Men, on the other hand, never fully recovered — they simply moved on. According to Morris, the differences boil down to biology. ”Put simply, women are evolved to invest far more in a relationship than a man,” Morris noted in a paper appeared in the journal Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences.

“It is the risk of higher biological investment, over evolutionary time, that has made women more selective about selecting a high-quality mate. Hence, the loss of a relationship with a high-quality mate hurts more for a woman,” the authors contended.

Read: With marriage out of favour, Iran turns to matchmaking

The break-ups are important because most of us will experience an average of three by age 30, with at least one affecting us strongly enough that it decreases our quality of life for weeks or months.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 9^th, 2015.

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