Men experience more emotional pain during a breakup

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New relationship research shows , that men tend to experience more emotional pain than women when their relationships deteriorate.

An international group of psychologists led by researchers from Lancaster University has for the first time conducted a “big data” analysis of relationship problems.

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The study began as an attempt to map the most common relationship problems people face outside of clinical and counseling settings.

“Much of what we know about relationship problems comes from studies of people in couples therapy, which includes a fairly specific subset of people — people who have the time, money, and motivation to work on their relationship problems,” she said. Charlotte Entwistle, lead author of the study. “We wanted to understand not only what relationship problems the general public faces most often, but also who experiences what problems the most.”

Using natural language processing techniques, the team analyzed the demographic and psychological characteristics of more than 184 000 people who posted their relationship problems in an anonymous forum. The researchers were then able to statistically identify the most common themes that emerged in each post, creating a “map” of the most common relationship problems.

The analysis showed that most often people who talked about relationship problems mentioned emotional pain, caused by problems, not the problems themselves. The most common theme was about “heartache” and included words such as regret, breakup, crying and “heartbreak”.

Contrary to their expectations, the study found that men discussed “heartbreak” much more often. than women. These data suggest that the stereotype that men are less emotionally involved in relationships than women may be incorrect.