MEN’S HEALTH: Why do you think that relationship breakdown is so detrimental to men’s mental health?

DR ZAC SEIDLER: We’re about to invest pretty heavily in way more research on this because it’s only come to the fore in the past couple of years that it’s consistently becoming a risk factor. And we’re like, “What is going on here?” I have, from my own clinical experience and now research, enough hypotheses to throw out here, which is that, as you said, there is definitely something around emotion regulation. That’s when you have all of these horrible thoughts and feelings washing over you. Guys aren’t taught how to metabolise that. What does that feel like and how can I actually move on?

We’ve just been doing some research looking at what young men look at online, especially in the wake of a relationship breakdown, and they’re all typing into Google, “How do I get her out of my head?” It’s just these basic skills around how to move on with your life, how to deal with rejection. I was never taught that. I don’t know if you were?

MH: No.

ZS: And that was the most painful part of my teenage years and my early 20s. It was like, “Damn, what is going on here? My heart is ripped apart”. And I was very lucky, and this is the key thing: I was very lucky to have five close mates who I could talk to really openly and honestly about this, and they could see me hurting and they wanted to talk about it.

The majority of guys do not have that, especially when they go through divorce. When you go through separation, if you’ve had kids and you’re in your 30s, 40s, and 50s, women are making all of the social arrangements in couples. I’m like, “I’m not letting this happen”. I will not let my wife make arrangements because I’m just like, “I’m doing this. I’m not letting this be taken away from me”. Because you know that when you end up in this situation, that guy, and this is not malicious by the woman by any means, we’re socialised completely differently. The guy ends up with nobody, and it doesn’t matter how the separation happened, whether it’s amicable or otherwise, he has not invested. He has not invested in those foundations.

We often talk about how you get to high school, you get to university, you’re still spending some time with your mates. The second you get into the workforce and then if you have kids, it’s like, “See you later”. Friendships fall away, they are de-prioritised. That is so dangerous. It is like the foundations of loneliness and isolation. So, if you want to safeguard yourself against, not only mental health difficulties, but substance misuse, against literal relationship breakdown, friends are going to both be the saviour for your relationship and in the wake of a relationship breakdown because they do just happen, they will be the one to pick you up. Because at the moment, men are putting so much emotional baggage on their partners, because they don’t have anyone else to share it with.

Whereas women largely, and this is a generalisation, beforehand they don’t lose friends over their 20s and 30s and 40s. They maintain them. They might have some fights with people, but it’s going to stay pretty steady. And then those friendships, they’re sharing with them, so they don’t need to throw everything on their partner. And also, if it all goes to shit, they go out and they hang out with each other and they have girls’ nights and they relate with one another, and there is still the same pain. This is the important thing. They don’t feel any less pain. They just deal with it completely differently. And getting back on the horse, these endless ideas for what guys should do to get over a break-up that you witness online, it’s horrible. That is the last thing that is actually going to help you. Shagging your way to the top, it’s like, what is that going to do for your heart? You’re just going to delay pain.

I think that what we need to do is understand nobody here is perfect. No one is doing life well, in the grand scheme of things. There is a lot of distress going around, and women need just as much time and attention and care. And we’re never about let’s take pie from them. It’s about let’s learn, let’s coexist and find ways to actually benefit one another.

As we said at the start, The Real Face Report was like if you want to improve women’s health, in many ways their health is directly tied to men’s health, which is that if we can make guys feel better about themselves, be able to connect with other guys and women and feel like they have a sense of purpose and meaning and drive, especially young guys who are really struggling at the moment, then we’re going to get to a point where women are not holding the emotional baggage for their partners and their sons.

They’re not calling – the amount of calls I get as a therapist from mothers and wives – guys don’t call me. Their mums do, and they’re 40. So, it’s like imagine if we turn that down from a women’s health perspective, that woman doesn’t need to be worrying about her son because he’s going to be looking after himself.