Don't Let Her Haunt You

The right way to make a clean break from the wrong woman.

- Jeff Vrabel

Chalk up another thing that women do better than men: break up. At least, that’s according to Craig Eric Morris, a Penn State University anthropologist who studies heartbreak. Like the incoming asteroid that will wipe out life on Earth, women burn hot and fast. When a relationship is over, they cry, invest in red wine, watch Nicholas Sparks movies, logon to Bumble, turn to Ellen for spiritual strength, and then get on with it – and come out in a better emotional place, where they greet the next guy.

Men, on the other hand, slice their suffering into long, dull, onerous chapters, dragging out our obsessive retelling, recalling one more thing, investigating all the emotional forensics, and Facebook-stalking her for months, if not longer. We do not recover; we simply grind on.

What’s more, a break-up can trigger an actual condition. It’s called abandonment rage, a term coined by Dr. Reid Meloy, a psychologist at the University of California (San Diego). This anger is the flip side of the lunacy that happened when you liked her more than she liked you. Now that she’s gone, you’re devastated. Like a tornado survivor, you’re wondering what the hell just happened. If you’re old enough to drink, chances are you’ve already been through this kind of thing; most men have endured three serious break-ups by the time they hit their 30s, according to Morris’s studies.

But are those sad experiences universal? Does one break fit all? Or, just as there are many different kinds of women, are there many different ways of breaking up with them? While no two splits are exactly alike, of course, they do tend to follow patterns. Read on to move on.

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