My Facebook feed is filled with divorced or almost divorced women turning to each other for support and there is one thing you won’t find on there:
Men.
Single dads and divorced dads are not gathering in tribes on social media boards or in person to chat about their plight and experience with divorce even if they want to.
Why not?
Why Divorced Dads Don’t Turn to Each Other for Support
A study published in 2000 in the Psychological Review, showed that stressed women “tend and befriend” while men go for the “fight or flight” option. Researchers suggest that this is due to the fact that when stressed, men’s brains omit less oxytocin, that feel-good love hormone than women. And according to statistics produced by the American Psychological association in 2011, women (70%) are more apt to do something to reduce their stress than men (50%) are.
No matter which way we slice it, research shows that men tend to go the solo route when it comes to working through stress while women look for company along the way.
Men don’t want to raise their hands and say, “Hey everyone, my life sucks,” or “I miss my ex-wife,” or “It’s really hard raising kids in a single-parent home.”
Doing that would mean admitting pain and hardship, something that isn’t considered a masculine trait and let’s face it, while women have been the oppressed gender from the start, men also suffer from unfair stereotypes and expectations. Men aren’t oppressed, they are REPRESSED emotionally!
It’s not OK for a man to cry.
Be a man, suck it up.
You’ve heard those phrases tossed around and so have I.
We tell men to be brave and strong and to keep a straight face. This doesn’t leave a lot of room for grief and sadness.
So it isn’t surprising then that single dads and divorced men are not looking for a support group, but to me, this limits divorced men and single dads from moving past divorce in a healthy way.
If men could form groups or did form groups, it could help them grieve divorce and learn new parenting strategies from other dads. If a man did reach out to another man to say, “Hey, how did you find a good custody schedule,” or “Is mediation the better route?” it would be beneficial for that divorcing dad.
Going solo on such a huge adventure like becoming a divorced, single dad seems risky, from my female-wired brain. It could also be the reason men seem to jump into new relationships, faster.
A new partner might just be the divorced man’s support group, but that is problematic too. Someone you’re romantically interested in shouldn’t be a springboard for grief and renewal.
So for all the divorced dads out there, why not see befriending or growing your support network of other divorced and single dads in a different light, rather than seeing it as a “b*tch fest” or gathering like a group of old ladies?
See reaching out for support as a:
- Chance to network: Maybe your new friends will have good business contacts or even better, cute single female friends.
- Chance to mentor: If you’re a single dad mentoring a man who’s going through the divorce process, you can be a father figure to someone going through the experience—an adoptive son or little brother, as it were.
- Chance to learn from others: Use your man brain and be logical: someone who has been there or done that will know certain pitfalls to avoid as you go through the divorce process that you wouldn’t have known without asking someone in the “know.”
To all the divorced dads or “going through a divorce” dads, why not do things a little differently in your life this time around? Making contacts and building a support network isn’t just for women. It’s for smart people who want to make a huge life adjustment a bit easier or in other words, it’s for you!
There are good points to this article worth noting – However -We don’t tell men they have to be anything. That’s an excuse for their bad behaviors. The fact is they are what they are naturally and the majority are just not interested in emotions. Most of the ones I’ve dealt with are honestly shallow. They don’t want to discuss it and they don’t. Please don’t pin it back on women, supposedly telling them they should be this or that. NO! If they want help, they can find it. If they care about emotions, they can find people to discuss as such. This is their own responsibility and not for women to heap one more thing to guilt themselves about.
We DO talk to each other. Because only another divorced dad could understand. We do it privately.
Suggesting that our coping techniques are not just different but inferior, and that behaving more like women do would save us, is partly offensive and partly amusing. No, thank you.
FCCDAD, sure you do! Ha! I was married for 24 years and my ex couldn’t have an emotionally constructive conversation with me. Don’t try and tell me he is talking to other men about the trials and tribulations of divorce. Now, he may be talking to other men about what a bitch I am and how I’m “taking all his money,” but, that man isn’t talking to anyone about anything constructive. And, that is the way of the majority of men I know. You could suck peanut butter through a straw quicker than you could get my father or brother to talk about what they’ve learned about the adversity they’ve experienced or how they’ve grown from it. If I even broached the subject they’d look at me like I had 3 heads. Shallow and superficial is the way of most men. Lock it up, stuff it down and pretend it didn’t happen.
“If I even broached the subject they’d look at me like I had 3 heads.”
of course they would; you’re not a divorced dad. they’d die before letting you in on that discussion.
“what they’ve learned about the adversity.” I didn’t say talk to them about divorce, I said talk to them about what they had learned from periods of adversity in their lives. But, it’s six to one, half dozen to another. Men aren’t going to talk about the deep stuff, not to women or each other.
When I figured out my ex wife was having an affair, the last thing I wanted to do was broadcast it and get sympathy. On one level, it would make me look pathetic and on another, sooner or later, it will get back to the kids. I kept that part a secret shared with two others. We had lots of deep conversations, but it was kept close and guarded. When it comes to support, there really isn’t much out there on the dad side. That’s especially true for the dad’s with custody (like me… eventually). Most of the support is geared to the moms.