The Asymmetry of Breakups

Most things that happen in the relationship domain are basically just a constant negotiation constantly happening. You look to your partner for volatility, little games, some fun, some serious.

But there is something serious that could happen in a relationship that would effect your life tremendously. Breaking Up. This risk is not discussed very much.

Is It Real?

When you take a look at your life, what are the great risks you see? The risks that really scare you.

You have three great risks to look out for: the first is physical. You don't want to get shot and killed or run over by a car. Most of us live in a civilized society so the risk of that happening is low, but obviously not zero. 

The second is financial. You don’t want to be broke. America is a bad place for being broke. Being broke in America is entering a world of pain. A world of violence, drug addiction, racial strife and hardship. This is not a country to be poor in. But that’s a known risk. I know how much is my bank account, my skills in the marketplace. I can mentally process this risk.

The third risk is how to deal with a breakup. Not much is discussed or known about this risk. Some men really lose their marbles and go off the deep end when a breakup happens. It leads to a chain reaction that affects every other part of your life. 

I am going to put forward the proposition that Men handle breakups much worse than Women.

As a man, you are much, much more deeply affected by a breakup. So much so that there is a risk of ruin attached to a real breakup. What does ruin mean? Depression, Suicide, Addiction, making decision where you go broke, changing your personality, and just basically going off the rails. Women, meanwhile, handle breakups much better and their risk of breakups isn’t in the same category. There is no risk of ruin.

How Do You Prove Human Nature?

How do I prove this to you? Well, first I tell you from personal experience. When I remember the few *serious* breakups I was involved in it hit me like a Mack truck. I spiraled into depression. I had to hold on the rails of life, like find sanctuary at my job or with a friend. It was an abyss. And it didn’t feel like a choice. It just came over me. A fever. Like an alien invasion from the inside.

Secondly, I can tell you about experiences from friends and acquaintances. I saw grown men crumble. Men with a lot of money and their own companies acting very weird. I saw men who’s personality changed as they exited relationship domain and entered single domain. I saw strange decisions with money and a general sense there was an internal war going on inside of them. It was ugly. It didn’t end until they found another woman to be in a relationship with.

Thirdly, I can look up social psychology literature. I found a paper explaining the phenomenon I am describing:

or

We can also look at the Lindy Effect. While our knowledge of physics was not been available to the ancients, human nature was. So everything that hold in social science and psychology has to be Lindy-proof, that is, have an antecedent in the classics; otherwise it will not replicate or not generalize beyond the experiment. These ideas of human nature have survived the filter/disorder of time, for thousands of years.

Or, we can look at art. Specifically, how many songs about breakups are written by artists in the rock n roll genre of the 20th century that was sung by heterosexual males to an audience of mostly heterosexual males. It turns out there is a lot of breakup rock songs out there. Interestingly, not a lot of songs about working for a living at a job. I have noticed many artists (AC/DC, Kanye, Eminem, Boston) sing songs about working a job on their first album, get rich, and then never write those songs anymore. You forget what it’s like to be in the 4HL after you’ve “made it”. But you can always connect with your audience by singing about breakups. One risk or the other risk.

Enter Ovid

Ovid was a Roman poet a few thousand years ago. He is famous for writing poetry and a literal seduction manual called Ars Amatoria. He also wrote a lesser known work called, Remedia Amoris (“Cure of Love”). This poem proposes a cure for the love Ovid teaches in the Ars Amatoria, and is addressed to men. The poem criticizes suicide as a means for escaping love and, gives a step by step process for how a man can “get over” his former lover without killing himself. The poem throughout presents Ovid as a doctor and utilizes medical imagery. Because you’re a sick man. He knows it.

I did a short thread on it years ago. But the poem goes into greater detail and is worth a read.

Dating

During the last 25 years there has been a profound shift in how couples meet.

Internet Dating

I’ve always done terrible at internet dating. I’m a good looking man who is charismatic. Sometimes I wonder if internet dating is inherently better for women. I have always done better in the dating market with talking to women I never met before.

The attentional commons are different now in the age of cell phones and the internet

Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain had one of the best lives you can have in this world. At least from outside. He had millions in the bank, creative control over his own CNN show, street credibility, good looking, wrote books, did tours and just seemed like a good guy compared to the other monsters on the television set. I enjoyed watching his show and I hate television.

He started dating an italian actress named Asia Argento. She stepped out on his one day with a French reporter and the paparazzi published the photos. One day later, Bourdain unfollowed her on Instagram, and then hung himself from his hotel room. No drugs or alcohol in his system. Very sad ending.

We see this pattern sometimes with other celebrities

The Pen

Relationships are weird. They are entire worlds into themselves. But here is a general rule:

If you give the pen to your partner too long in the relationship they may write you as the villain in the shared narrative you live under in the relationship doman. And then maybe you'll start believing it, playing that role. Leads to bad things. Keep the pen in your hand. Don’t give up the narrative.

Why Relationships are Important Now

There is so much emphasis on relationships these days. So much attention to it. My suspicion is that as extended family and community networks broke down during the last 20-30 years and weakened, men and women have less people to turn to on a regular basis for emotional support.

This made the relationship and compatibility between modern married couples more important than before.

Like my grandma in rural Greece would've had all sorts of conversations with friends, family and neighbors in an average day. For a suburban mom maybe her husband was the only adult she might speak to many days

So where as in the past it would've been fine to just have gotten along with your spouse and just making sure it “works”. Now are entering some sort of expecting some sort of optimized situation with another person where every need and want is met. This seems…not healthy. And maybe we are changing the definition of what an intimate relationship is supposed to look like between a man and woman. And by changing the definition and expecting more, there is more reasons to feel unfulfilled and leave. And as I have shown in this newsletter, leaving effects one partner more than the other.

Chances of Breakup

If you’re a married man, the chances are that the woman will initiate divorce.

70 percent is a lot. But there’s more.

College-educated women initiate divorce at an even higher rate: 90%.

My impression is that the longer you are married the harder it is to separate from your wife. You’ve built a stable life, a breakup could torpedo it. You feel it way more than she does. So why play with ruin?

Of course…you can always have another woman ready so your life/business isn’t ruined by the divorce.