London - Over the past few months I’ve had three intense talks with people I know - unhappy souls whose partners walked out on them after a long marriage.
One break-up was five years ago, one 12 months ago, one eight weeks ago. Each was still heartbroken, as well as consumed by moments of bitterness and the terror of a future without companionship.
All thought it impossible to “get over” such a shocking life change. Two were women and one a man - but expressed themselves in very similar ways. That was no surprise to me. My years as an advice columnist have taught me that heartache has no gender.
Yet a new report seems to disagree. Researchers at Binghamton University, New York, and at University College London, found when a relationship ends, women suffer more emotional pain than men.
They asked 5 705 people in 96 countries to rate the hurt of a break-up on a scale of zero to ten. The average result was 6.84 for women, compared to 6.58 for men - that doesn’t look like a huge difference, but it is statistically.
As well as feeling worse, women suffer more physically; they’re more likely to panic, lose sleep, and put on weight.
But what is the report actually for. The findings may appear in distinguished journal Evolutionary Behavioural Sciences, but they don’t tell me anything new. How can these anthropologists draw sensible conclusions by asking people to rate their pain?
Such methods reduce human feelings to a faulty set of stereotypes when we are all so different. You don’t experience pain - mental or physical - in the same way I do, or my heartbroken friends.
I once made a programme about childbirth for Channel 4, and interviews with midwives showed women have very different pain thresholds. Some are very stoical, others screaming wimps.
Why should feelings be any different?
When my ex-husband ended our 35-year marriage, friends called me “brave” and “dignified” as I chose not to wail and cut the sleeves off his suits (as if!). At the time, I thought reticence necessary for self-protection.
But if I’d been asked to rate my feelings on a scale of zero to ten, what would I have put? Would I have rated my emotional agony as lower than that of the male friend I saw last week - still full of anger, after a year? Probably.
My point is that the difference between us is not down to our gender, but our personality type. I move on, telling myself I must.
My old friend harbours unhappy feelings for years. The research calls this male behaviour “self-destructive”. But, male or female, it doesn’t help anyone to cling to misery.
The survey also found men don’t express a clear “I’m over that” sentiment as clearly as women. Hmmm... really? Doesn’t it depend on who we are?
This certainly does not apply to a young soldier I know who was dumped by letter, while serving in Afghanistan, by the girlfriend he thought he might marry.
He was devastated, but what did he do? “I went for a run,” he told me, “and when I came back I felt better.” He’s not an unfeeling person - but that response shows how a robust personality can help you take heartache in your stride.
Inevitably, we all make comparisons, like comparing the pain of a twisted ankle to that of a broken leg, but rating emotional pain in a survey is quite a different matter.
I know a woman who, when newly married, went through agonies when her husband was away on business for a long time - and thought (wrongly) he was getting too close to a female colleague.
She might have registered her misery at 5.5 on the graph then. But years on, that loving couple had a stillborn child (a ten?) which would probably make her now rate that past loneliness at a three.
This is what I hate about surveys. It’s as if the very process of bringing statistics into what writer C. S. Lewis called the Problem of Pain diminishes the complexity of feelings.
Interestingly, the researchers report that although women hurt more, they also recover more quickly after a split. Surely most people recover if they find another partner, but if they don’t it takes longer.
Yet my own experience does bear out what the scientists found; that if women bawl, then bounce back, their recovery is helped because they talk to family and friends more. Women do discuss feelings.
A long time ago I had a business lunch with a powerful female TV executive. We’d never met before, but by the first course I’d learned that she had a young son, that juggling a demanding job and home life was nearly killing her and that the father of her child had just left.
Underneath her sharp suit she was a mess. And that’s what we discussed, throughout our meal. I listened to her outpouring of pain, and made the odd remark - and when we said goodbye she said I’d made her feel “much better”. Of course, I hadn’t. She felt better through talking and feeling someone cared.
When I told my husband later, he remarked: “Men and women are so different. A male producer would never, ever talk about his feelings!”
Both men and women write to me asking for advice about heartache after a relationship ends and there is little difference in the way they express their pain.
After all, questions like, “Will I ever be happy again?” and “Do you think I will ever find a new love?” don’t come with gender labels. I refuse to believe cliches like “all men are unfeeling” and “women are the more caring sex”.
Nevertheless, it will come as no surprise that many more letters to my column come from women. Just as the researchers found females more easily turn to a support network, I find they more readily write in with their problems.
You could attribute that to the fact that men tend to think of problem pages as women’s domain. But the number of letters I get from unhappy wives who want to go to couple’s counselling, only to have their husbands flatly refuse, shows men are far less articulate about feelings - and tend to regard talking about them as weakness.
Is this to do with gender or conditioning? All I know is I raised a boy and a girl who grew up thinking it was fine (a) to talk about how you feel and (b) as a result, to feel empathy for others. I’m so proud of them as emotionally intelligent adults.
But sadly “boys don’t cry” still echoes in homes and schools, and does very real damage.
Unless boys are taught by their parents it’s good to discuss their feelings and to consider those of others, they may develop into the kind of buttoned-up men whose miserable wives write to me. And the kind of guys who make themselves utterly miserable – because (as the American research showed) their resentment can simmer for years.
Of course, all children need to learn self-protection, for the rough and tumble of the playground and of life. But school lessons that involve talking about relationships can counteract homes where damaging old sexist attitudes still prevail. Big boys do cry - and young people need to learn that “it’s good to talk”.
For you’d be amazed how many couples fail to communicate. Their heart-breaking letters sometimes reveal a lack of the most basic information about each other.
Try asking your partner, “What makes you most unhappy?” Then the more positive, “What makes you most happy?” The results may surprise - and (with luck) start a valuable conversation.
Whatever the surveys say, heartbreak is part of the human condition and the small rejections we suffer as children (“I don’t want to be your friend”) are a rehearsal for the jolting shock when a partner announces: “I don’t really love you any more.”
And that personal tragedy is but another variety of loss, the greatest of which leads to the grave. That is why it is vital to learn strategies for coping with the pain that will come along, as surely as rain in a British summer.
How can we cope? Since it’s not my job to tell fibs, I reply: “With difficulty.” Pain must be endured by walking through the dark valley until you see a glimmer of light.
I just do not believe that in the end it’s gender that makes the difference. However, other things - your ability to talk about it, your support network, if you are lucky enough to meet someone else - will help you through.
But I see no alternative than to bow your head under the heartache, but be unfailingly brave.
I have lost count of the number of times I have held somebody’s hand (literally or at a distance) and assured them quietly that in time pain does pass.
You don’t “get over” it, you absorb it into your being and grow. This is such a hard thing to believe when you are miserable, but in most cases it is true.
Daily Mail