A group of friends and I went out for a beer drinking spree last week when a thought-provoking albeit controversial discussion came up. Amy had actually said that ladies get heart-broken a gazillion times but are mostly still hopeful but a guy gets dumped once and all hell breaks loose.

“Like it’s Armageddon right in our faces,” she buttressed.

Surprisingly Dan agreed with her after we had had a good laugh. “Women's emotional support network includes their boyfriend, friends, mother, sisters, close co-workers and all. While for the men, it’s just one person, their girlfriend.

 After a breakup, a man not only loses his girlfriend, he loses his emotional support. Not that he loses support entirely, but his remaining support is more oriented towards distracting him from his trouble, than helping him work through it,” Dan said and then he went further to explain, “Women have an intricate network of support woven behind them like a safety net. When a couple breaks up, the woman has a sea of people that talk to her, comfort her, and justify her words and actions. She also usually has suitors waiting or people that are interested. She is told that the man is an asshole, she deserves better, etcetera.

Men, however, are different. We usually walk through it alone, and if we are lucky we have a friend take us out for a beer and awkwardly tell us that it's a damned shame and things will get better.

We don't often have women lined up waiting to date us afterwards, and you go through a depressed period of time where you are quite alone and don't really have anyone to talk to as you try to scrape your life back together.

I'm not saying breakups aren't hard for both sexes. It's just that they are dealt with in a very different way.

Basically, men suffer the additional torture of trying to maintain their dignity, broken-hearted women have a permission to be pathetic.."

Cole however disagreed, “Ladies are the ones that throw in the towel after a heartbreak, although they still fall like a pack of cards for the next guy.

Guys, however, rub it off more easily and quickly too and give themselves another chance to love, but they will always guard their heart to not fall stupidly for another woman.

That said, if a woman gets heartbroken, other men have the opportunity to mend it. If a man gets heartbroken, other women will have to deal with his paranoia for a very long time."

Jerry however says it’s nothing of the sorts. Hear him, “Love. Heartbreaks. And handling all that gizmo. It's like the heavenly race, very personal. One person wants to sob for a year, another wants to fuck the next John or Sandra he or she finds... Now who's more emotional? Guys? Chics? Women are more expressive of their emotions. It doesn't mean they feel more deeply.”

Finally I played the patriarchy card, “Men are not free to express their feelings without being tagged 'feminine or gay'. That Is probably one of the reasons why its so difficult for them to get over  heart break.

I do agree with somethings that have been said. As a lady, I can easily talk to my sister, my best friend, my friends while being offered a box of tissue and chocolates.

Men on the other hand have been put on a pedestal by patriarchy. They have a 'reputation' to maintain.”

As much as we like to think we are an evolved society, a twenty-first century one so to say, a lot of our behavior and how we express our emotions have been programmed by a society deeply rooted in patriarchy. One that expects men to be strong, to bottle up their emotions, to “man up” and not grieve publicly and allows women to be as weak and as emotionally expressive as possible. At the end of the day, we only do ourselves a world of harm by sticking to principles that are so archaic they have no place in a progressive world.

Learn to do, be you, let out your hurt and grievances however you feel irrespective of gender, race or other societal determinants. Because when you don’t let out all that toxicity but continue to heap more unto it, it eventually becomes putrid and break you down.

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(images courtesy of pixabay)