{"id":789676,"date":"2026-05-11T22:25:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T22:25:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/789676\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T22:25:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T22:25:16","slug":"if-a-man-is-secretly-heartbroken-these-4-behaviors-are-hard-to-hide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/789676\/","title":{"rendered":"If A Man Is Secretly Heartbroken, These 4 Behaviors Are Hard To Hide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Researchers from Binghamton University<\/a> polled over 5,000 participants in a study that asked them to rate their emotional and physical pain following the end of a romantic relationship. The results showed that women feel pain more intensely immediately following a breakup, but men have a much harder time recovering<\/a> from heartbreak in the long term.<\/p>\n

What does heartbreak feel like for a man? To quote one of the researchers, \u201cThe man will likely feel the loss deeply and for a very long period of time as it \u2018sinks in\u2019 that he must \u2018start competing\u2019 all over again to replace what he has lost \u2014 or worse still, come to the realization that the loss is irreplaceable.\u201d Why do men take so long to recover from a bad breakup? Probably because they\u2019re doing it wrong.<\/p>\n

Not to generalize, but as marriage and family therapist William Meleney<\/a> mentioned, many men aren\u2019t comfortable talking about their emotions with other men, and that kind of peer-to-peer \u201cOMG, I can\u2019t believe it hurts so much\u201d conversation plays a big role in getting over losing someone you loved. So, because men don\u2019t talk, they invent other \u201cmanly\u201d ways of behaving to cope with the pain of a breakup.<\/p>\n

If a man is secretly heartbroken, these behaviors are hard to hide:1. They sleep \u2014 a lot<\/p>\n

When a man is secretly heartbroken, it awakens his inner \u201cbear.\u201d What I mean is that, when men are in pain, they like to hibernate. So they sleep all the time. They want to spend as much time unconscious as possible because, when they\u2019re sleeping, they don\u2019t feel any pain.<\/p>\n

And who knows? Maybe they\u2019ll fall into a Rip Van Winkle situation where they sleep so long that, one day, they wake up in a whole new world \u2014 a world where they can\u2019t remember what broke their heart in the first place. (Not likely.)<\/p>\n

2. Secretly heartbroken men play video games all the time<\/p>\n

\"heartbroken Erik Mclean \/ Unsplash<\/p>\n

Video games can be oddly therapeutic for men<\/a>. Video games give men a world to retreat into, a world where they can try to accomplish things and, if they fail, at the worst, they\u2019ll have to start over at a nearby checkpoint. The game world is a safe space for them.<\/p>\n

Now, that can sound odd when you recognize how violent some video games are. You may ask yourself, \u201cIs it healthy that he\u2019s dealing with his breakup by shooting strangers in Call of Duty all day?\u201d<\/p>\n

But venting aggression aside, the behaviors that men exhibit with video games tend to remain the same whether they\u2019re playing a first-person shooter or a Super Mario game.<\/p>\n

After a devastating breakup, they want to retreat into a world where things make sense, where things have rules. The video game \u201creality\u201d allows them to access that without having to change out of their pajamas. In their minds, it\u2019s a win-win.<\/p>\n

RELATED: 5 Unique Traits Of Men Who Heal From Breakups And Learn From Their Past Mistakes<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

3. They try to get back out there immediately<\/p>\n

This is a coping technique that some men attempt, even though, typically, it\u2019s a bad idea. But men are taught from an early age<\/a> that they\u2019re supposed to fix things, they\u2019re always supposed to be moving forward. So, if their previous relationship is unfixable, the male mindset tells them, \u201cYou need to get back out there and try again.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problems occur when men attempt to try again way too soon. On the surface, flirting lessens the pain of heartbreak, but that doesn\u2019t mean that the heartbreak wounds have completely healed yet. This becomes a problem when that flirting escalates to anything more serious.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, the cutie who was smiling at him at the bar becomes an inadvertent surrogate for the man\u2019s ex. This can cause the man to lash out at the new fling in strange, unexpected, and unfair ways. It\u2019s just not healthy for anyone. This pattern is commonly seen by therapists who specialize in these kinds of rebound dynamics.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

“Rebounding from one relationship to the next may offer a temporary distraction from negative feelings, but like most things of that nature, you will soon have to face the issues that ended your relationship, as well as the negative feelings you attempted to avoid by jumping into a new one,” explained marriage and family therapist Dr. Tarra Bates-Duford<\/a>.<\/p>\n

RELATED: 10 Things Heartbroken Men Do That Mean They’re Not Ready To Fall In Love Again<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

4. Secretly heartbroken men go silent<\/p>\n

\"heartbroken Michael Odelberth \/ Unsplash<\/p>\n

This might be the least healthy way that men deal with breakups. Sometimes, when a man is hurting, he just retreats from the world. He stops seeing his friends, he stops going out, and he just cuts himself off from everyone else.<\/p>\n

One reason this happens is that men don\u2019t often have the friendship infrastructures to help them cope with loss. Women have enough experience with helping friends deal with breakups that they even have their own clich\u00e9s \u2014 eating a gallon of ice cream, drinking wine, dancing around tables while singing into the back of a hairbrush.<\/p>\n

But men don\u2019t have much experience (or many role models) when it comes to talking to their close dude friends about pain and heartbreak. So, not knowing what to do, they clam up. They isolate themselves. And, suddenly, they\u2019re not only dealing with the breakup, but they\u2019re also dealing with a pervasive sense of loneliness, too.<\/p>\n

“Loneliness is often unrecognized, unexpressed, and denied by men. It rises as a biological response to an absence of connection and has ramifications for emotional, mental, and physical health, self, and familial solidarity. Men’s friendships tend to be ‘side by side’ rather than ‘face to face,’ built around shared activities like work, sports, or problem-solving rather than emotional intimacy. This structure means male friendships are often less emotionally resilient over time,” noted Meleney.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

As I mentioned, men like to think that they can \u201cfix\u201d heartbreak or, at the very least, put their heads down and wait out the pain. Unfortunately, that might explain why men take longer to recover from a breakup than women. They\u2019re avoiding coping with the loss and not allowing themselves to heal.<\/p>\n

If you know a guy who\u2019s trying to \u201cman up\u201d his way through his post-breakup sadness, encourage him to talk to his friends<\/a>, speak honestly, and get out of the house sometimes. Remind him that he doesn\u2019t have to endure the pain alone and that things will get better faster if he checks his man pride at the door and accepts the help of others.<\/p>\n

RELATED: The Key Difference In How Men And Women Process Breakups, According To Research<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Elizabeth Ayers-Callahan is a writer focusing on love and relationship issues and is a frequent contributor to YourTango.<\/p>\n

Related Stories From YourTango:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Researchers from Binghamton University polled over 5,000 participants in a study that asked them to rate their emotional…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":789677,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8],"tags":[86355,182733,41783,4818,5976,159,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-789676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-breakup","tag-broken-heart","tag-heartbreak","tag-love","tag-men","tag-science","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116558294770546149","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/789677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}