Posted on 06/10/2010 7:26:34 AM PDT by MetaThought
ScienceDaily (June 8, 2010) — Contrary to popular belief, the ups and downs of romantic relationships have a greater effect on the mental health of young men than women, according to a new study by a Wake Forest University sociology professor.
In the study of more than 1,000 unmarried young adults between the ages of 18 and 23, Wake Forest Professor of Sociology Robin Simon challenges the long-held assumption that women are more vulnerable to the emotional rollercoaster of relationships. Even though men sometimes try to present a tough face, unhappy romances take a greater emotional toll on men than women, Simon says. They just express their distress differently than women.
Simon's research is published in the June issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. Anne Barrett, associate professor of sociology at Florida State University, co-authored the article.
"Our paper sheds light on the association between non-marital romantic relationships and emotional well-being among men and women on the threshold of adulthood," Simon says. "Surprisingly, we found young men are more reactive to the quality of ongoing relationships."
That means the harmful stress of a rocky relationship is more closely associated with men's than women's mental health. The researchers also found that men get greater emotional benefits from the positive aspects of an ongoing romantic relationship. This contradicts the stereotypic image of stoic men who are unaffected by what happens in their romantic relationships.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
ping
Another brilliant study.
I also hear that teenage pregnancies taper off as people reach the age of 20.
Geesh.
Men just don’t like drama.
Men don’t know how to vent properly & they definitely don’t know how to handle a break up.
Women have it figured out—we consult our board of directors, we vent, we cry, we drink wine and/or eat Hagen Das while dissecting every word he says until we exhaust ourselves.
Problem solved.
Well duhh!!
Typically men don't have the types of friendships that women have. Women can get their "emotional support" and all that from friends, but men seem to rely on their wives (or significant others).
Please understand, I'm not casting aspersions on men here. God made us different for a reason. But we are definitely different.
Super duh.
Women, 50% of the population, own 100% of the < deleted >
Yep,believing that’s how I got pregnant the first time. (That’s a joke, people.)
Did they take into account the fact that if a guys acts like he doesn’t care then the girl will NEVER go away!!!
“oh....uh....yea, I’m TOTALLY in the dumps about my break up with Princess Letsjustcuddle!” I’m crying all day long!
bump
I believe this, with some modifiers:
There are many young men who are sweet and good and sincere, and they honestly fall in love with girls. They are capable of experiencing the most ghastly hurt, and after this happens once or twice it’s extremely hard for them to recover.
There are others who, because of some deficit in their rearing or something wrong in their heads, are far less empathic; from those first few dates, they treat girls as potential conquests, and they don’t fall sincerely in love. Probably somhe ething wrong with their relationships with their parents; it’s hard to generalize. But they aren’t hurt, or aren’t hurt much.
The former group of kind, sensitive men are far, far larger. The sad thing is that when an honest young man falls in love with rotten, manipulative women, or with women who are just unsuited for him and know it and break it off, repeated heartaches may make him cynical. After our wonderful IN-justice system gets done with him in “Family Court,” he may be bitter indeed and not want anything to do with relationships.
Lengthy abstinence involves greater physical suffering for a 20-year-old man (as compared to a woman of the same age), besides any emotional suffering (reduced self-esteem stemming from rejection, social isolation, etc.) he may likewise incur.
A rejected 20-year-old man is forced to resume fishing in a pool of potential partners made up of, say, all 18- to 22-year-old women - while a typical 20-year-old woman who is rejected will suddenly find herself attracting suitors ranging in age from, say, 20 years to 45 years; that's a much bigger pool! In other words, the 20-year-old man is competing with a very large group of competitors for the affection of a small number of females. Consequently, men in their early twenties will typically suffer long dry spells to a far greater extent than women of the same age.
This phenomenon was especially pronounced at the trailing edge of the so-called "Baby Boom," when men age 20-25 were forced to compete with a vast number of older men for the same female partners.
Of course, this situation reverses in middle age, when women then suffer a numeric / demographic disadvantage.
Regards,
But couldn't the same be said for the majority of sweet, good, and sincere young women (who fall for rotten bums)? Your observations don't explain why young men should necessarily be more hurt by the dissolution of a relationship than young women are hurt.
Your observation makes sense as an explanation only if you implicitly mean that the proportion of "nice" young men is greater than the proportion of "nice" young women.
Regards,
iow: no sex, no relationship.
ioow: drama queens need not apply
iooow: duh
no, not correct.
older ATTRACTIVE women tend to be used for a good time and dispossed. (see - don’t take home to mother)
Which of my several assertions was incorrect?
older ATTRACTIVE women tend to be used for a good time and dispossed [sic!]. (see - don’t take home to mother)
I'm sorry, I'm not sure of your meaning... dispossed? Do you mean "discarded," or "disposed of?"
In any event, in fact I did say that the situation was reversed for people in the 40+ age bracket: Then, men are in a privileged position, and women (whether "attractive," as you say, or not) are disadvantaged.
But any "attractive" woman in her 40s who allows herself to be "used" and then "discarded" has no one but herself to blame; an "older but wiser" woman should know better (i.e., should be able to "suss out" - as the British say - her suitor's true motives and gauge the reliability of his "honorable intentions").
On the other hand, men just out of their teens possess relatively little life experience. They thus don't really grasp how disadvantaged they are demographically and biologically - and so, in addition to being in a poor bargaining position, they often don't even realize that they've been dealt a bad hand, thus magnifying their frustration and compounding their woes.
Regards,
Yeah, I’m one of those folks.
Been hurt, many, many times by gals who just didn’t and don’t care. It’s kind of funny now because the same gals who treated me like dirt all want to find out how I am because somehow I’m one of the decent folks who hasn’t married.
Sorry hun, that ship sailed 5 years ago when I was interested and you were too preoccupied with ‘finding yourself’. You believed I would be the security blanket ‘just in case’ nothing else works. Unfortunately you were wrong.
Don’t get me wrong, I like gals, and I very much want to be married. Just not to the girls of this generation. I’ve had very bad luck with them.
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