
Why Divorce is Harder for Men Than Women
Scrolling down into the wormholes of online forums about divorce, it’s not hard to notice a pattern: While there are many tales of woe from both women and men, men especially seem to experience the event as a soul-crushing shock. “If it wasn’t for my son, I honestly don’t know what I’d do,” one anonymous Reddit user, who identified himself on the site as a man, recently lamented. “I just feel worthless.” He explained that he had “barely held it together” after learning his soon-to-be-ex-wife, who had separated from him, was dating someone else. “Not even divorced yet and she’s with someone new,” he said. “It hurts. A lot.” Social research into opposite-sex couples suggests that men are often more traumatized by divorce than women, at least in the short-term. Their sense of well-being often plunges, they may pick up unhealthy habits like binge drinking, and they are likely to suffer from loneliness and isolation, according to a 2018 study. Disturbingly, men may be eight times as likely as women to commit suicide following divorce. Men often react with “self-hatred and confusion” when a marriage ends and their behavior can become “pretty toxic,” said Steve Horsmon, founder of Goodguys2Greatmen.com, and a life coach who helps men work through relationship problems. Horsmon, who is also divorced, employs strategies in his coaching practice that he used to overcome his own demons. Why all this happens is still subject to debate, but there are some likely culprits (with rigid masculine stereotypes being one possible ingredient). Here are some of the biggest factors that can make divorce a tougher for men to handle than women, according to experts. Women file for divorce more than men This October, when football star Tom Brady and supermodel Gisele Bündchen called it quits, at least one aspect of