This Study Revealed That Men View Their Ex-Partners More Positively Than Women Do
Have you ever left a relationship and wondered how your now-ex thinks of you? Well, this shocking group of studies published in Sage Journals might intrigue you.
The research suggests that men actually view their ex-partners in a more positive light than women do.
Much of the past research into romantic relationships has focused on the qualities of present or ongoing relationships.
Instead, this group of researchers decided to take the opposite approach. They wanted to discern “how people evaluate their former partners and, more importantly, do men and women differ in how they evaluate their ex-partners?”
Some might wonder, well, if the relationship is over, why does this matter? The researchers addressed this notion head-on and described the three key reasons why understanding feelings about past relationships is so important.
The study describes how first, feelings of affection could still be attached to a past relationship. And, men and women could react differently in the face of a break-up.
Second, there are often many other shared avenues involved in a break-up. For example, mutual friends, possessions, and even children.
These things could “cause partners to be interdependent for an extended time into the future.”
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, “the quality of individuals’ past relationships, as well as the nature of their dissolution, is likely to have an impact on people’s feelings of attachment, beliefs regarding relationships in general, and possibly the current relationship in particular.”
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In other words, if your feelings are bound to follow you, it is best to understand and address them.
So, the research took form in four studies and included over one thousand total participants. The ex-partner attitude scale was used for the first and second studies to assess behavioral, cognitive, and affective studies.
Each participant was presented with a statement from the scale that they could wither agree or disagree with.
In both studies, the researchers found that “men had more positive attitudes toward their ex-partner than women did.”
A third study was conducted to confirm this, and also examined “gender variables”— such as coping styles, dependence differences, and more.
Again, men tended to regard their past partners in a more positive light. But, there were also more findings.
According to the study, men had more permissive and “playful love attitudes” as opposed to women. Additionally, “men reported that they received more social support from their ex-partners during their relationship than women did.”
Finally, “women reported more active coping behavior than men did, and they attributed the breakup cause more to their partner or as residing within the relationship than men did.”
Do any of these results shock you? The researchers thought they might. That is why their fourth and final study aimed to determine if these gender differences were “intuitively obvious” to the general public.
Using an email campaign, the researchers recruited nearly six hundred participants. Then, each participant was asked to either agree or disagree with the previous findings.
Shockingly, sixty-two percent of the participants reported that they did not believe a gender difference was present– regardless of their own gender.
The researchers believe they have found “a new phenomenon that seems far from obvious to most people. Women tend to have more negative attitudes toward their former romantic partners than men do.”
Think back to your past relationships. How did you feel and talk about your breakup and your ex-partner?
Do these findings ring true in your own life, or do you disagree that there is a gender difference?
To read the complete set of studies, visit the link here.
More About:Human Interest
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