
Men View Their Ex-Partners More Favorably Than Women Do: Study - Indirector
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550619876633
======
throwaway66920
> Second, there may be gender differences in the perceived causes of breakups.
> Women blame their male partners more often for breakups than men blame their
> female partners (Choo et al., 1996). In addition, women more frequently
> report problematic partner behaviors as the reason for a breakup, such as
> infidelity, substance abuse, and mental or physical abuse (Amato & Previti,
> 2003; Morris, Reiber, & Roman, 2015). Men, in contrast, are more likely to
> claim that they do not know what caused their past breakups (Amato &
> Previti, 2003).

This feels like the important bit to me. People view their ex’s less favorably
if they blame them for the breakup; and women blame men more than men blame
women. Women also reported receiving less support from their partners than
men. Reading between the lines, men in average like the women more because the
women put in more effort to the relationship.

~~~
scarmig
Alternatively, society ascribes agency to men in a way it doesn't to women,
and so men are less likely to blame external factors or expect support.

~~~
kls
Right, they just need to man up. I say that in jest but you hit on an
important part of it. While some may not admit fault in the open, Men (I know
I am generalizing) do internalize failure, it is a core part of their ego and
identity. So it would seem natural for them to internalize the failure of a
relationship.

~~~
postsantum
>>they just need to man up

This is exactly what men are told.

One good example where the difference can be demonstrated clearly is forums
devoted to dating questions. A lot of people come there to whine and they get
very different responses depending on gender. Guys almost always get something
along the lines of "be more confident, go to gym, be more interesting, etc",
while girls gets reassured that they are totally fine, just not lucky yet

------
IceWreck
Linked Paper instead of
article:-[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/19485506198766...](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550619876633)

~~~
thex10
Thank you. I looked at the paper initially wondering whether their sample
acknowledges the disproportionate number of men who murder their ex-female-
partner, and, while not resolving that, I ended up finding that while the
researchers record the type of breakup (substance abuse, personal problems,
infidelity, etc), none of their quantified metrics appear to use this as a
variable. I'd be curious to see how the outcome varies based on type of
breakup.

Anyway I found this quote telling:

> there may be gender differences in the perceived causes of breakups. Women
> blame their male partners more often for breakups than men blame their
> female partners (Choo et al., 1996). In addition, women more frequently
> report problematic partner behaviors as the reason for a breakup, such as
> infidelity, substance abuse, and mental or physical abuse (Amato & Previti,
> 2003; Morris, Reiber, & Roman, 2015). Men, in contrast, are more likely to
> claim that they do not know what caused their past breakups (Amato &
> Previti, 2003).

~~~
louisswiss
> wondering whether their sample acknowledges the disproportionate number of
> men who murder their ex-female-partner

Curious how this is relevant to the study?

Roughly 0.001% of women are killed by a male partner each year in the US and -
while terrible in of itself - I can't see it affecting the results of this
study in any significant way.

~~~
floatingatoll
Among US women, fear/wariness-of and preparedness-for attempts at bodily harm
and abusive behavior by men appears to be near-universal.

EDIT: Removed bad pre-coffee math. See replies below for better math.

I hope this helps you see why such a consideration could be considered
relevant to the study.

~~~
louisswiss
> 0.001% of US women is somewhere in the six-figures territory (125,000 per
> year if I do my math right)

No - you're off by two orders of magnitude. Much closer to ~1500 women/year.

That's still ~1500 too many, no question. But is it likely to impact this
study in any meaningful way? Seems unlikely to me (to put it mildly).

> Among US women, fear/wariness-of and preparedness-for attempts at bodily
> harm and abusive behavior by men appears to be near-universal.

That sounds like a reasonable assumption and not one I'd argue against (as
someone with no real insight here).

But the question was explicitly regarding murder. Not more general
violence/abuse.

I welcome the well-meaning comment and think your contribution was valuable in
its own right, but please don't move the goalposts.

~~~
floatingatoll
I apologize that my reply does not meet your standards. It is not my intent to
"move the goalposts", but simply to convey a mindset you seemed not to
recognize, in order to help you understand why they might have included that
concern. You now grasp that mindset, even if my construction was terrible. I
am grateful that you were able to discern my intent regardless.

------
jevgeni
My bet is that men tend not to have emotional support or positive attention in
their lives, unless it's from a mate, hence they value it more.

~~~
psv1
Also, (since we're speculating) from an evolutionary perspective it's
advantageous for men to have positive view of and attraction to as many women
as possible, while at the same time it's advantageous for women to be as
sceptical and critical of men as possible.

~~~
magduf
>while at the same time it's advantageous for women to be as sceptical and
critical of men as possible.

I don't know about this. These days, I've seen and met many women who have
numerous male friends. Sure, ultra-conservative and religious women don't, but
lots of women aren't conservative any more.

~~~
reroute1
He's talking about evolution though, and it definitely seems to hold up for
our past as a species.

~~~
magduf
I wouldn't be so sure. This line of thought seems to reflect a bias towards
modern-day societies and how they operate ("modern" being the last couple
thousand years or more). In ancient hunter-gatherer societies, people most
likely lived in small tribes, so this idea that women have to be skeptical or
critical of men doesn't really hold up. Men who are a real problem would have
been cast out of the tribe or killed, and marriage probably didn't exist back
then at all. We've seen in other primitive societies that monogamy is not the
norm for humans at all.

~~~
psv1
> people most likely lived in small tribes, so this idea that women have to be
> skeptical or critical of men doesn't really hold up.

This premise and your thoughts on polygamy can coexist with my suggestion
about women being selective. If you can have only a handful of pregnancies in
your lifetime each of them carrying the very real risk of death for both
yourself and the baby, as well as the burden of taking care of any children
that survive, then you really need to make sure that your shots count and
you're choosing the best mates from the tribe. Men don't have the same burden
of pregnancy and childcare - additional partners only increase their chances
of passing along their genes, so as a result they become far less selective.

------
elicash
Is this true for same-sex couples, too? (Meaning, for example, that two gay
men will on average have more positive attitudes towards ex-partners than two
women, on average?)

~~~
klyrs
Anecdotes: [https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/zngjgw/lesbians-
friends-e...](https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/zngjgw/lesbians-friends-exes-
relationships-narcissist-psychopath)

------
myrandomcomment
I love my wife completely. She is perfect for me. I cannot see my life without
her. When I travel for work, everyday I am away I miss her and she is never
far from my mind. We have been together for 20 years. There was a whole set of
women before her. There was one for 5 years. The other day it was her (5 year
relationship) birthday and I remembered randomly after noticing the date and
dropped her a short note wishing her a happy birthday. So as a proof point for
me at least, I guess this is true. Looking back at all the relationships from
the past, with the exception of one, I generally still have a positive view to
all of them. In some way the things I learned from those relationships have
made my marriage so much stronger. It is strange because as I write this I
think back to how I handled my relationships and breakups when I was younger
and I cannot understand my behavior at that time anymore. I wonder if it is
just time that removes any negative view? It would be interesting to know if
the positive attitude has a time component.

~~~
burtonator
This is my perspective as well... only 1-2 women I've dated do I have negative
feelings for and it's mostly a "do not ever talk to them, ever" kind of
feeling, not an "I have to get revenge" feeling.

I've been with my girl for 5 years now and there's no other girl for me. If
we're apart for more than a day it feels like I've lost a limb or half of my
soul.

------
mikelyons
I have had some amazing relationships with amazing women, and looking back, I
didn't always understand at the time the exact cause of the breakup, but knew
it was my fault.

Now I understand that it was always my immaturity and selfishness that was
causing it.

I still have a lot of Love for all those women who put up with me while I was
growing (and continue to).

Some will never speak to me again though ...

~~~
koheripbal
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that men and women are wired differently
when it comes to sex and relationships.

The instinctual influence over men to have sex with multiple partners, I
believe influences their desire to still "feel good" about prior partners.

...whereas a woman's instinctual desire to find a man to protect her offspring
influences her desire to "feel bad" about prior partners who didn't stick
around.

Of course, we're above these instincts cognitively, but it's folly to think
they have no influence on our emotional association to past partners.

~~~
mikelyons
Is it possible that it's folly to think we're above these instincts
cognitively?

~~~
krapp
I think we're capable of rising above our instincts as a sentient species, and
as a result human relationship desires are far more diverse than they would be
for any other species of great ape, but instinct is not the only source of
selection pressure involved, since those instincts are often reinforced by
culture and society, religion and sometimes by law.

------
vinceguidry
I'd put it down to privilege. Women in traditional relationships are expected
to perform more emotional labor over the course of the relationship and so the
experience of being in a relationship is generally better for men, so they'll
have more positive feelings afterward.

~~~
vraivroo
> expected to perform more emotional labor

Can you explain what you mean by this?

> the experience of being in a relationship is generally better for men

Seems wildly speculative.

~~~
vinceguidry
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_labor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_labor)

------
tony
Internet is inverted therapy, beware the negativity please!

When we have a internalized, skeptical view on something, we have a tendency
to seek confirmation of it and ignore clues that can open our minds.

There are other, more accepted perspectives we can use to understand
relationships. I hope this can be helpful to people!

Attachment Theory:
[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1d36/ac75d7081fcd86d467f6d2...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1d36/ac75d7081fcd86d467f6d2ef408d60c8ffca.pdf),
[http://www.psychology.sunysb.edu/attachment/online/inge_orig...](http://www.psychology.sunysb.edu/attachment/online/inge_origins.pdf)

Schema Therapy:
[https://www.guilford.com/excerpts/young.pdf](https://www.guilford.com/excerpts/young.pdf)

Also I recently found some nice study notes relationships:

[http://fiupsychology.com/ch.6.htm](http://fiupsychology.com/ch.6.htm),
[http://fiupsychology.com/ch.7.htm](http://fiupsychology.com/ch.7.htm),
[http://fiupsychology.com/ch.8.htm](http://fiupsychology.com/ch.8.htm)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgWnadSi91s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgWnadSi91s)

------
valenciarose
Yet it's common for lesbian women to be friends with ex-partners.

------
aphextim
Anecdotal, however I find that in my lifetime I was/am able to 'move on' and
forget about things such as minor disagreements between partners where they
(female partners) have tended to dwell on things longer than my male friends.
Could have been the same if I had male partners I suppose, although that isn't
my personal taste.

Not just in relationships but even among co-workers I notice there is a lot
more gossip between the biological females and they tend to bring up things
like, "Do you remember when so and so did [Insert minor issue from 2 months
ago]?"

To repeat this is just my observations from 20 years of office work and a half
dozen or so relationships I had before settling down with the current love of
my life.

The point of all of this, I feel is that to many people, the epiphany the
article is making was quite obvious, although it is neat to see this
quantified.

~~~
Spooky23
Relationships are more "loaded" with negative personal consequences for women.
Less so than in the past, but it's there.

There's often a negative interpretation of a woman having more relationships
or ending one that isn't really a factor with men. IMO, this creates a bias to
justify ending a relationship for cause.

With a man, there's no threshold where your next girlfriend will lead to you
being categorized negatively. If anything, you get more respect in some
circles.

~~~
malvosenior
It seems to me the negative consequences are about the same for men and women.
Lots of women speak poorly of their exes and get their friend groups turned
against them...

~~~
Spooky23
I mentioned to a group of friends that I had run into a female acquinatance
from 20+ years ago, who is now a judge.

The reaction: "Lol. She was quite the party girl." Not the reaction that you'd
get re: a dude.

~~~
qaq
? Why that's a pretty common reaction for a dude too

------
Simulacra
Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned?

------
adultSwim
It's probably because men are trash.

------
hacknat
Social Psychology has one of the worst reproducibility problems in all of
academia. Claims like this make is easy to see why. Simple scientific inquiry
into this claim leads me to the question, “Okay, but why?

That women potentially harbor worse feelings of their ex partners on average
than men is one of the most interesting but useless things I’ve heard. The
confounding explanations for this type of research are mind boggling. Does
this research hold cross-culturally, are there any other psychological
variables that explain this phenomena? Is it possible that the current nature
of modern relationships is a confounding variable and sex has little to do
with it? These are the more interesting questions to answer than whatever
question this dubious result is trying to answer.

~~~
dahart
> The confounding explanations for this type of research are mind boggling.

Yes! This is very true, your questions are good questions to ask of any study
of genders & attitudes. It’s even more important to ask of studies that try to
factor out cultural issues, because confounding explanations are _extremely_
difficult to remove.

> Social Psychology has one of the worst reproducibility problems in all of
> academia.

This is true, but it’s not scientifically fair to imply this study isn’t
reproducible just because others weren’t.

> Simple scientific inquiry into this claim leads me to the question, “Okay,
> but why?

Science doesn’t necessarily answer why. Physics has one of the better
reproducibility rates, and we’d love to know why, but we don’t truly know why
yet. We don’t know why gravity exists, we know it’s a force that’s there, and
we can predict what it’ll do, we know it happens in proportion to mass and
inverse squared distance, but why? Science hasn’t answered that.

~~~
K0SM0S
Just a few remarks, notwithstanding your/my opinions.

Physics has not "one of the better reproducibility rates" but 100%; per the
Scientific Method any _valid_ theory must:

\- be reproducible (verifiable empirically)

\- have predictive power

\- not negate existing theories

This constitutes 'acceptable proof'.

It yields a 'compound effect' to theoretical research: for instance, Newton's
Laws were never wrong, just narrower in scope than Einstein's. No future valid
theory will ever prove any of these two wrong, it can only generalize more,
because we know these two to be true. True is true forever, barring a
fundamental change in this universe itself. So we keep the theoretical
foundations forever, they're solid.

Their interpretation, however, may change as we widen the scope, and that is
the 'human' part in science, the art of it, to produce valid representations
linking the math with the experience of reality. That changes a lot, in time,
and even from person to person.

The 'why' things are is another matter entirely and not a concern for physics
nor science in general; we search for the root causes to explain 'how' things
work the way they do. We stop there _in theory_ for beyond is mere
interpretation, opinion, belief.

Now this would exclude all social sciences and biology and countless others
from the realm of 'science' and that's not fair; these fields yield very
usable results despite the nigh impossible search for pure theory. I like the
19-20th century view that 'empirical sciences' gain value when we try _to the
best of our ability_ to apply the Scientific Method and mathematical tools to
account for fuzziness.

Deep learning is certainly a formidable upgrade to the tooling of empirical
sciences, brute-forcing 'how' things work for lack of a better truth than
retrospective.

Just don't compare it to e.g. physics, don't ask for predictability (as you
wouldn't ask a fish to fly), it's pointless and only serves to undermine the
value of empirical sciences, while overemphasizing that of theory.

Because you know, in theory, practice and theory are the same, but in practice
they're not... ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
dahart
I think you might have misunderstood? Academic physics publications do not
have perfect reproduction rates. Especially theoretical physics. The criteria
for a valid theory doesn’t prevent human mistakes.

Everything you said applies to social sciences too. Per the scientific method
any valid theory must be reproducible and predictive. It’s an unfortunate fact
of life that the academic research and publication process allows results that
turn out to be untrue, both in social sciences and hard sciences.

Maybe have a gander at
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_theories_in_scien...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_theories_in_science)

~~~
K0SM0S
Perhaps you can help shed some light on my apparent misunderstanding? See this
other comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21365183](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21365183)

~~~
dahart
I’ll give it a try. I can’t speak to the downvotes, but from my perspective
you started talking about physics itself being repeatable. That is a separate
topic from whether academic publications are repeatable. The thread’s context
was the top comment suggesting the research linked at the very top is
questionable because of it’s conclusion and it’s category (social science). My
argument is that neither the conclusion nor the category can be used to assume
the linked article is less than scientific, and that no sciences are designed
to tell us why things are the way they are. When you add that physics itself
is 100% repeatable, while true, it isn’t relevant to the topic nor does it
help reflect on the article’s validity.

------
k__
I'm living mit multiple partners and they are also dating multiple people.

Since they tell me about their dating experience, I got more insight of how
other men behave to women, then when I lived monogamous.

What I wanted to say is, after what I heared from my partners about men they
dated, I totally understand these results.

~~~
ambicapter
Men are the WORST! BLEGH!

------
hsnewman
What about trans people?

~~~
captainredbeard
Outliers

------
dang
Url changed from [https://sciencebeta.com/mens-ex-
attitude/](https://sciencebeta.com/mens-ex-attitude/), which points to this.

------
rpmisms
Oh boy, research showing differences between biological genders. This is going
to either be ignored or absolutely explode.

~~~
pintable
>biological genders

The word you're looking for is "sex." There's no such thing as a "biological
gender."

~~~
throw1234651234
"a term for a grammatical subclass to join sex in referring to either of the
two primary biological forms of a species"

Don't try to rewrite grammar to fit trends.

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gender](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/gender)

~~~
manifestsilence
It's not a trend, it's an increase in scientific understanding.

Language is fluid, or we would all be speaking some variant of old German on
this forum (try reading Beowulf in the original).

It's not grammar, it's semantics.

Words are social. When one person tries to rewrite the meaning of a word,
unless they have significant social clout they are just going to be
misunderstood. When many people rewrite the meaning of a word, they change the
meaning of that word.

~~~
astine
The problem with this argument is that you are using descriptivist reasoning
("Language is fluid", "Words are social.") to support a prescriptivist
conclusion ("There's no such thing as a 'biological gender.'") If historically
'gender' and 'sex' were mostly synonymous but recently people have decided to
use the words differently then that's fine, but it doesn't make it wrong for
people to still use the words the old way.

~~~
dragonwriter
> If historically 'gender' and 'sex' were mostly synonymous but recently
> people have decided to use the words differently then that's fine, but it
> doesn't make it wrong for people to still use the words the old way.

But using the phrase “biological gender” isn't using them in the old way: the
way in which they were synonymous is in reference to a idea which conflated
sex, gender identity, and socially ascribed gender. If one wants to refer to
that meaning, there's really no reason to prefer one or the other, though
_either_ will be unclear to many modern audiences without additional
explanation referencing the outmoded concept being invoked, because the
concept being referred to has lost currency.

But if one is discussing the separated concepts, then one cannot honestly use
“sex” for the sociological or psychological components or “gender” for the
biological component and say it is the “old way”, as the old way doesn't
recognize the there being separate components.

~~~
astine
" _But using the phrase “biological gender” isn 't using them in the old way:
the way in which they were synonymous is in reference to a idea which
conflated sex, gender identity, and socially ascribed gender._"

You just contradicted yourself. If the term 'gender' conflates several ideas,
and adding the term 'biological' distinguishes them, then the previous poster
hasn't changed the meaning of the word 'gender'. He's incorporated the new
understanding but adapted the older language. Either way, the mere fact that
nearly every person reading this understood his meaning shows that his
expression was adequate to express his meaning.

~~~
dragonwriter
> If the term 'gender' conflates several ideas

It doesn't. It, when used in the old sense for which sex was equivalently
used, refers to one idea which does not recognize the physical, psychological,
and social elements as distinct. It does not conflate different ideas, it
predates the idea of a distinction; the idea of the distinction is concurrent
with the terminology which incorporates it.

“Biological gender” is neither the new common usage (which labels the
biological element “sex") nor the old usage (which refers to an indivisible
trait.)

------
doctor_m
What sort of men? Cisgender men? Heterosexual men? Arabic men?

There's no such thing as a man -- "man" an abstract concept that needs
definition before any useful statement can be made about people in that
category.

~~~
davemp
If you need "men" defined for you, you're going to have trouble participating
in useful communication. Use a bit of intuition.

~~~
lwhi
It's absurd to group half the population into one group, and then try to work
out what makes that group as a whole tick.

~~~
psv1
It makes a lot of sense however, to separate people based on a criterion and
find out how the resulting groups differ from each other.

~~~
lwhi
I believe the criteria needs to be more nuanced that 'man' and 'woman' to be
able to elicit anything valuable about society.

~~~
psv1
It's enough for the criterion to be real in order to be of interest. And this
one is definitely real.

~~~
lwhi
Okay, this is where I leave you I'm afraid.

~~~
reroute1
You are essentially arguing that all gender studies are useless because there
is parity among individuals in each gender. It's true there is parity, but the
scientific division between male and female is very clear. It seems VERY
useful to study the differences. To throw them away because all men and women
aren't identical feels to me like a terribly short sighted perspective.

~~~
lwhi
I'm saying I believe the premise and criteria should be more nuanced. Men vs.
women suggests comparison of two binary absolutes.

------
Wh1skey
So women blame others and men take responsibility?

~~~
Wh1skey
Was it something I said?

------
blueadept111
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned (and dumped).

------
KaoruAoiShiho
My hot take: Women give and men take in relationships.

See life expectancy of married vs unmarried men and the same for women.

When a breakup happens women loses more as she committed more.

~~~
epx
Since when life expectancy is measure of a good and meaningful life? It is
more a measure of risk-avoidance.

~~~
shademaan
Cardiac health is correlated with mental health/happiness

------
Udo
Put another way, both men and women seem to agree that breakups are more
likely the man's fault than the woman's. What I found curious is that at the
same time, apparently the majority of "laypeople" when asked about it in an
online survey, expected no gender difference at all.

It's a strange disparity in the data, I wonder if it's due to sampling or if
people genuinely think their own experiences are atypical.

 _Edit: I 'd be interested in finding out what's so offensive about this
observation. I'll gladly take 100 more downvotes and flags, but please tell me
what caused so much consternation._

------
pintable
Can't help but wonder if maybe this is because violence towards women in
relationships is higher than it is towards men.

Edit: Before you dismiss my comment, feel free to look at the details. There
have been countless studies that confirm this.
[https://www.thehotline.org/resources/statistics/](https://www.thehotline.org/resources/statistics/)

~~~
p10_user
What percentage of relationships include violence? I doubt this is a strong
explanation for the difference stated in the article.

~~~
pintable
I hate to be dismissive, but literally google your own question. Start here
[https://www.thehotline.org/resources/statistics/](https://www.thehotline.org/resources/statistics/)

~~~
rat9988
Actually it was up to the original poster to give the numbers. He was right to
ask. You can't prove your point and hope that everyone will know the numbers
you are relying on to prove your point.

Moreover, you original question suggets that you didn't read the published
article.

