What Breakups ACTUALLY Do To Men
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Why do men feel like a breakup destroys their entire life?
Hey chat, welcome to the Healthy Gamer GG podcast. I'm Dr. Alok Kanuja, but you can call me Dr. K. I'm a psychiatrist, gamer, and co-founder of Healthy Gamer. On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you. So let's dive right in. If you ask the average woman, what do you lose when you get divorced? What they will say is I lost a relationship. If you ask a man, what did they lose? They will say I lost a life, right? This life is now gone. All right, chat. Today, we're going to talk about how to successfully navigate a breakup. So I've been meaning to make this video for a while because there's a lot of advice out there.
And a lot of the advice, I got to just be honest with you all, kind of like pisses me off. So here's an example.
Fear doesn't stop death. Fear stops life. Fear doesn't stop the end of a relationship. Fear stops the relationship. And like, this is great, right? Like, oh my God,
like fear is not the avoidance of death. It is the avoidance of life. Oh my God. Fear isn't what saves a relationship. Fear is what destroys relationships. And so the first thing that I kind of noticed when I was like looking at dating advice or breakup advice on the Internet is that what determines the advice that you see has nothing to do with outcomes. It has everything to do with the emotional state of the person who has recently broken up. So if I've been dumped, which video am I likely to click on? Which video empathically resonates with me? when i hear statements like this like there's some value to it right like absolutely fear does prevent us from doing certain things in life that are good for us like that's like actually like obviously but also if i'm afraid that my boyfriend or girlfriend's bestie at work who happens to be the gender that they're attracted to their work husband or their work wife if i'm afraid of their relationship that fear can be very helpful in saving the relationship
If I'm going on a date with someone who's kind of a creep and is like, hey,
do you want to come back to my place? I have a really great meal prepared for you.
Please come back. Don't go. Fear in that situation doesn't prevent life.
What is the “no‑contact” rule and why isn’t it realistic for many men?
It prevents death, which is the basic problem with a lot of the dating advice out there. Right. And everyone is sure that this is what you should do after a breakup. And the key thing is if you're seeing it on the Internet, what's determining that is the level of emotional engagement with the post. So a great example of this is a lot of people will say number one rule after a breakup. No contact. Just go no contact, bro. No contact. Avoid them. Get rid of all the reminders. So here's a channel which I think has pretty good information about it. And this is what I find a little bit honestly frustrating. I'm a psychiatrist. And the problem is like when I'm trying to help people through a breakup, they're like real people in real lives.
And something like going no contact simply is not a luxury for like 45 to 50% of people. You have a shared friend group, you are married and have kids. And then how are you supposed to go no contact and delete everything and block them if you're sharing children? And so in my journey to help the people in my office, what I sort of dug into and what I found is ultimately like the way to get over breakups. And this is a concept called equifinality. So this is this concept which we'll kind of go over. This is this concept that you can use a lot of different strategies. And you can use strategies like avoidance, actually emotional avoidance. A lot of people will tell you things like feel your feelings. Actually, you don't need to do that.
A lot of people will employ problem-focused coping. So this is where, like, we're not just going to journal and talk about our feelings and things like that. We're actually going to, and this is a lot of advice on the internet, like, just go lift, bro. Like, put yourself together. Go lift. Hit the gym. Start putting your life together.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why do men feel like a breakup destroys their entire life?
0:03–2:19
2
What is the “no‑contact” rule and why isn’t it realistic for many men?
2:19–3:55
3
How does the concept of equifinality explain different coping strategies?
3:55–5:22
4
What role does self‑concept play in the severity of a breakup?
5:22–7:37
5
Why are men at higher risk for heart problems after a breakup?
7:37–9:18
6
How do activation and de‑activation strategies help manage breakup emotions?
9:18–11:40
7
What practical steps can rebuild a healthy self‑concept after loss?
11:40–14:56
8
When is staying friends after a breakup advisable and when is it not?
14:56–17:37