I Was Shocked By What Society Actually Tells Men About Divorce
Divorced men are four times more likely to die by suicide than divorced women. Not slightly more likely. four times.
That one number should be enough to end the conversation about who has it easier during divorce. It doesn't take a study to see that something is deeply wrong with the story we tell about men and relationships. It just takes a willingness to look.
I'm a divorce coach for men. Over the last six years I've interviewed well over a thousand men, all of them in the middle of an unwanted divorce. I went in with a hunch that the popular narrative, the one where men have it easy and women carry all the weight of a patriarchal, misogynistic system, wasn't the whole story. What I found in those conversations was worse than a gap in the narrative. It was a set of messages that men have absorbed so completely they don't even recognize them as messages anymore. And those messages are destroying the very relationships men are trying to hold onto.
The Story Society Tells Men
It shows up in a handful of instructions, repeated so often they stop sounding like instructions and start sounding like truth.
Don't cry. Tears are weak. Don't cry when your dog dies, when your dad dies, when your wife leaves after 40 years together. Cry, and you're a girl. Of the 36,000 men who died by suicide in the U.S. last year, how many of them ever felt safe enough to cry in front of another human being?
Your anger is dangerous. Anger has a purpose. It tells us a boundary has been crossed. It tells us we deserve better. It allows us to fight back. We know this, because we celebrate it in women and in minority groups as a sign of strength and self-respect. We don't extend men the same grace.
When a man's anger shows up, we call it violence. We call it toxic.
You are the problem. The patriarchy, misogyny, men in power, men in the home: the problem is always men. I've sat across from men who clearly love their families, who are desperately trying to understand what went wrong, and had them ask me, without being able to look me in the eye, whether they might just be monsters. If women were internalizing a story this dark about themselves, we'd call it what it is: abuse. Where's that same concern for men?
Your pain doesn't count. They're men. Things are easy for them. What could they possibly know about loss? Look at the suicide numbers again. That story is not just unkind, it's false and dangerous.
Your needs come second. Her needs are important. His are optional, especially in the bedroom, where his worth gets measured by how long he can perform for someone else's satisfaction. Men hear this constantly: what you need matters less than what everyone around you needs.
Be a man. Which, translated, means: deny your urges, deny your grief, deny your anger, and don't you dare be weak about it. Being a man, as society defines it, is really just a masterclass in suppression.
The Cost of Suppression
What makes this so much more tragic is the fact that men do it so well. They hear the instructions and they follow them to a T. They take real pride in their willpower, their ability to stay strong when everyone around them is falling apart. But that strength is only the strength of denial. And it comes at a cost nobody warns them about.
The way you relate to your own emotions becomes the way you relate to everyone else's. A man who treats his own grief with contempt cannot help but see his wife's grief as weakness. A man who's been told his anger is violence will read her anger the same way. Suppression doesn't make pain disappear when you bury it, it just relocates the pain. It shows up sideways as a built-in sense of inequality in the relationship, a low simmer of frustration neither person can name. He's suppressed his needs. Why can't she suppress hers? Why does she seem so needy? He isn't a bad partner. He's just never been shown how emotional connection actually works, because he's spent his whole life being taught that his own emotions are a liability.
This, more than infidelity or money or in-laws, is often the real root cause of divorce: a lack of felt emotional connection. It doesn't matter how good a provider or father a man is. If his wife doesn't feel connected to him, she will eventually leave. And the cruelest part is that the very behavior he was taught would keep her, suppressing himself into strength, is what pushed her away.
You Are Not a Monster
If any of this sounds like your life, here is what I want you to know first:
It's not your fault.
There's nothing wrong with you.
You are not a monster, you're not broken, you are not bad.
You have internalized a story that was a lie from the start. You don't have to keep suppressing everything you feel in order to be worthy of love.
What you do need is a different relationship with yourself. Before you can build the kind of vulnerable, emotionally connected relationship you actually want with someone else, you have to be willing to have that relationship with your own feelings and needs. Trust them. Listen to them. It’s not weakness. It’s a superpower.
Ready to break free from the story that’s been eroding your self worth? Watch my free Masterclass to learn how to regulate your nervous system and rebuild your identity after years of emotional abuse:
Where to Go From Here
If this resonated, check out my YouTube video, "Why Women Leave Good Men." It picks up exactly where this leaves off: what happens inside a marriage when a good man is suppressing everything, and what women are doing on their side of this same broken system.
The Surprising Reason Why Women Leave Good Men
Women leave good men, men who are good providers, good husbands and good fathers because
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