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Breakups may hit men
harder
The image of men as suck-it-up survivors
of emotional trauma just took another knock.
A new Statistics Canada study on marital
breakdown, released Tuesday, shows that men are more likely than women to
suffer from depression in the two years following the end of a marriage or
common-law relationship.
The study, based on data from the
National Population Health Survey (NPHS), which collects information about
the health of Canadians, showed that while both men and women suffer a
period of depression more often than people who remain with their spouses,
men who have been divorced or separated fare worse than women in similar
circumstances.
Newly single men, aged 20 to 64, were six
times more likely to report an episode of the blues than men who stayed
married.
By comparison, women who had undergone a
marital breakdown were only 3.5 times more likely to report feelings of
despair than their counterparts who remained in marriages.
Interestingly, the study found that the
breakup itself caused depression.
Other factors often associated with the
trauma of divorce – such as loss of shared income, social support or the
number of children in the household – did not alone account for the
feelings of despair.
Men feel loss, just as women do, but
their problem, according to psychotherapists and marriage counsellors, is
that they don't know how to process the emotion.
Rather than talk about their feelings,
they sink into a funk.
“It's still true that men are raised to
be proud of their introversion, and they're socialized to keep it together,
but that formula doesn't work any more,” says Deborah Mecklinger, a
Toronto lawyer and social worker who runs a marriage and divorce therapy
practice called Walk the Talk Coaching.
“They reach out less than women do,”
she says. “Women engage in discussion with their girlfriends. They seek
out therapists more than men do. But men are far more isolated.”
People grieve by discussing their
feelings, says Debra Rodrigues, a registered socialworker with Peel
Counselling and Consulting who works with couples undergoing divorce and
separation. “Crying is so taboo for men. But they need to grieve the loss
of a marriage. It's right up there with death. And they need time to
realign. They need to move on. But part of moving on is grieving, and
grieving is talking about responsibility for what went wrong.”
The process often takes two years, most
therapists note. But according to the Statscan study, most people who
experienced depression in the post-relationship realignment phase didn't
feel free of it until four years after the split.
If men don't seek professional help, they
are often pushed into it. One therapist tells the story of a male client who
came to talk to her after his divorce lawyer recommended he see a
professional to help him with his feelings of sadness.
“His lawyer was mopping him off the
floor,” she says.
The man, who is 44 and had been married
for 14 years, was so depressed he had to take a leave of absence from work.
“He was apologizing for crying in my office,” the therapist adds.
Harvey Steinberg, a Toronto therapist,
runs support groups for divorced men. “I walk into these groups, and
initially the men are silent. … But by the end, it's all I can do to get
them to stop. They take a tremendous amount of comfort in knowing they are
not alone and that what they are feeling is normal.”
The cause of the sadness is that “men
are raised to be fixers,” Mr. Steinberg says. “They feel that if they
are competent partners or spouses, then they should be able to fix things,
to make things better. Assuming that they weren't the ones to pull the
trigger [of divorce], they feel helpless and they often blame themselves.”
But even when men are the initiators of
divorce, some therapists feel that men are unprepared and often naive about
what to expect in the aftermath.
“Marriage is a structure that sets up a
lot of power and privilege for men,” says Ms. Mecklinger. “There's a lot
they get out of it, and a lot of loss that flies under the radar when they
lose it.”
The good news is that addressing the
issue of depression is increasingly part of modern divorce proceedings.
Victoria Smith is what is called a “collaborative lawyer” who often
brings in mental health practitioners to help during the mediation and
arbitration process of divorces that take place outside of the courts.
“It's an interdisciplinary process,”
the Toronto professional says. “We know that emotion gets in the way of
negotiating a good separation. It affects people's capacity to sit down and
resolve issues. Any psychologist will tell you that the part of our brains
that makes decisions shuts down when emotions are running high. And yet
divorce and separation require a lot of decisions.”
Being open about the emotional trauma of
divorce allows couples to be better parents for their children and to make
the transition to single life with less anger, Ms. Smith adds.
Working through the emotions of divorce
also helps to prevent repeat dysfunctional relationships, Mr. Steinberg
adds. “If the learning doesn't take place in the wake of divorce or
separation, then the mistakes are going to be repeated. I have seen many
people who divorce, then quickly get into new relationships. Ten years
later, I feel that I have exactly the same couple in my office. It's the
same partner, the same issues, just a different name.
- by Sarah Hampson Globe
and Mail May 23, 2007
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