In an ideal world, both people would lose their feelings at the same time. Or, at the very least, one person would know it before the other got any more invested. You know you’ve been losing feelings for your boyfriend, but have you been paying attention to the signs he is heartbroken over you?
Because if you’re the one doling out the heartbreak, there’s a chance you’re feeling guilty about it. If that is the case, these signs will help you identify the problem in time and help minimize his suffering.
There’s a misconception that it’s usually women who get more heartbroken than men. But we’re here to dispute that claim. If a guy is heartbroken, he tends to hide it from everyone. There is a stereotype that men are less emotionally invested in relationships than women, and so, don’t suffer heartbreaks. It’s time this rumor was finally put to rest, and this blog will help you do it. Here are 15 sure-shot signs he’s heartbroken over you.
What Does Heartbreak Feel Like For A Man?
According to this study, men experience more emotional pain during breakups than they openly admit in a real-world setting. However, they’re more than willing to share their pain online, especially on forums where they have the option to remain anonymous. So, it is not that men are less invested in relationships, it is that they’re just stigmatized out of sharing their feelings. So we circle back to the question this article seeks to answer for you: what does heartbreak feel like for a man?
Let us hit some reality checks before we go deeper into the subject:
- Men love deeply and passionately, so it is safe to assume that it is difficult for men to deal with heartbreak
- A heartbreak can stir up some really serious feelings of self-doubt, inadequacy, and loneliness in men
- Some even turn to drugs and alcohol to get over it!
- Just because men refrain from a show of emotions, it doesn’t mean they are immune to the effects of a tragic heartbreak
- It takes time for men to heal from a broken heart
If you’re feeling guilty or simply looking for signs he still loves you after breakup, then you’re in the right place. This blog will help you figure out the signs of a broken heart from love so you can help him move on as a friend, or figure out if he will take you back. Here are 15 sure-shot signs he’s heartbroken over you.
15 Sure-Shot Signs He Is Heartbroken Over You
Grief is subjective, no matter the reason for it. That holds true in this case as well. While it is a little easier to get over heartbreak if you know the exact reason for it, that is not always the case. Sometimes, you will not be given a reason and have to make do with that. While we don’t know the experience of every man going through a heartbreak, what we do know is that it can be much more difficult for men to recover from one.
We have another study to back up this claim – Quantitative Sex Differences In Response To The Dissolution Of A Romantic Relationship – which found that men never fully recover from heartbreaks. But there will be signs you broke his heart. And if you’re wondering whether you are the one who hurt him, here are 15 clear signs he is heartbroken over you.
1. He pleads for a second chance
The most obvious sign a man has a broken heart will be his pleading for a second chance. When a man is heartbroken over someone, more often than not, he will beg and plead with them to come back into his life. Through the sincerity of his pleas, you’ll be able to tell whether he is heartbroken over you or not.
If he is over you, he will have zero reasons to ask you to take him back. So if you want signs he is heartbroken over you, his asking for a second chance is the most important one.
2. He tries to stay in touch with you
Now we come to one of the signs he still loves you after breakup: He tries to stay in touch. A man hurting after the breakup might choose the more obvious route of avoiding the ex. But a man still in love with said ex will choose the opposite route – trying to stay friends. Now, we’re not saying it is a good decision, nor are we calling it bad, we’re just telling you it could be a sign he still wants you back.
A guy who is heartbroken over you will continue to call or text on a regular basis. Even if you were the one to initiate the breakup and hurt him, he’s just too used to your comforting presence in his life. He also might be harboring a tiny sliver of hope that you will take him back. So if he’s trying to stay in touch even after a breakup, he’s hurt, but trying to stay in your good graces.
3. On the other hand, he refuses to see you
This is one of the signs you really hurt him. If he is still pining over you, he will now avoid you at all costs, even if it is important. This is because he knows that once he sees you, the floodgates will open and it will be hard to push the memories back in. He knows his pain threshold well.
He will also start to avoid the places he’s likely to bump into you. He will stop going to the places you two visited together or places he knew you wanted to visit at any point in time. And if a mutual friend has confirmed this to you – oh yeah, he’s definitely heartbroken over you.
4. He has erased all signs of you
One of the major signs you really hurt him, he has erased all evidence of you ever existing in his life. He will clean up everything, from his social media to his bedroom, of anything that ever showed you both were together. It feels like you never existed for him, ever, and he just pressed a switch to completely erase you from his mind.
This is not a personal snub, so don’t take it as one. He just did it to avert the emotional connection and create a distance from you and make himself feel better. Removing you from his life by deleting phone numbers to chats to videos helps him see less of you. This way, he won’t be reminded of you and the pain you caused. So if you were looking for signs he is heartbroken over you, don’t miss this one.
5. He has undergone a personality change
Want to know if he is heartbroken over you? Find out whether he has undergone a personality change or not. Women tend to make physical changes to their appearance immediately after a breakup, men tend to make this change internally. Most of the time, there will just be subtle signs he still loves you after breakup. This is one of them.
He may have started being more reflective about things. He will start to look back on every situation and introspect on his behavior. He might even start to lose sleep thinking about where he went wrong and if he made you miserable. This might lead him to reach out to you. This is just one example of a personality change; there are several others. But if you catch the change in his personality that only happened after your breakup, it is a sign your man has a broken heart.
6. He has caught a severe self-improvement bug
Some people’s first reaction to bad news is to hide from the world; some people prefer to find ways to cope and fight with the world. Somewhere in the middle of this, we have heartbroken men who decide to embark on a road to self-improvement. One of the signs of a broken heart from love is trying to better himself by any means necessary just to distract himself a little bit.
He may start to spend hours at the gym, or he might decide to buy a whole new wardrobe of clothes he won’t even wear. Or he might decide to stick to his New Year resolutions this time, or he starts taking more courses, or whatever else he thinks could help him improve. So if you’re seeing this transformation in him, it is a sign he is heartbroken over you.
7. He has reverted to old, bad habits
If he has not caught the self-improvement bug, chances are he’s going to fall back into some problematic patterns. Who doesn’t have a few bad habits? Well, your man must also have had some bad habits prior to you both getting together. Maybe he had a caffeine addiction or an alcohol addiction, maybe he was aggressive; there are countless bad habits he could have had. But if he made positive changes for your sake, he probably sees the reverse of that as a way of getting back at you.
He is hurting, and he sees this as the perfect opportunity to hurt you back. He will pick those habits up again as if he never even got rid of them in the first place. Astonishing, right? Reverting to harmful behavior is a sure sign he’s heartbroken over you. He doesn’t know how to deal with the pain and wants to hold you responsible for it, so he becomes his worse self again, just so you could feel bad about it.
8. He has sworn off dating altogether
If a guy is heartbroken, the very first reaction is often swearing off dating altogether. If you’ve been broken up for a while now and he’s yet to get back into the dating field, this is your sign he is still heartbroken over you. He might find it hard to go out on dates. Or he may be harboring some feelings for you and doesn’t know how to move on while he still wants you back.
But whatever the reason behind his hesitation to start afresh, if he’s been claiming to people that “he will never date again,” it is your confirmation that he is heartbroken over you. If he’s still roaming around without a hand to hold, feel free to take this as a sign he is heartbroken over you.
9. Or he’s in a new relationship two days after things ended with you
Moving on after a breakup is a spectrum and your man could lie on any end of it – or maybe the middle. One side is swearing off dating, and the other is going around town like a casanova and trying to date anyone he comes across. He is either looking to satisfy short-term needs through casual relationships or is just trying to mask his pain. This is an unhealthy coping mechanism. If you see signs there is someone else in his life immediately after you guys ended things, you can conclude that he might not be over you yet.
According to a study, toxic masculinity involves the need to aggressively compete and dominate others and encompasses the most problematic proclivities in men. No wonder heartbreak can drive a man crazy. If society paused long enough to look at the ramifications of placing binds upon men for expressing their emotions, men would be in a much better place. Men are often told to “grow a pair” or “man up” when they wish to show ‘feminine’ emotion, which is why they suppress their pain.
But if a guy is heartbroken, he tends to leave behind several signs. In this scenario, he is hiding his pain by dating whoever he can. So if he has suddenly started to see people that you are sure he never would have dated before, here’s your sign he’s heartbroken over you.
10. He tries his best to make you jealous
Jealousy – the ugly emotion that rears its head when it is the least needed. This is the trump card your man might play. Has he started posting pictures with that hot colleague you just couldn’t stand? Is he somehow always surrounded by people that you think he could be attracted to? Or he just so happens to “run into you” while he’s on a date? All of these are obvious ways of trying to make you jealous.
He’s upset about the split but does not know what to do about it. So he is trying to make you jealous to see if you still have any feelings for him. Another reason could be that he’s just trying to hurt you the way you hurt him. It’s not okay if he’s trying to give you a taste of that pain. So, don’t let it get to you.
11. A sudden life change is afoot
If you both always planned on something big, chances are he’ll go ahead with that plan anyway. If he accepts a new job out of nowhere or moves across the country for no apparent reason, it’s a surefire sign he’s heartbroken over you. He might make the move to get rid of you, and he might take up that new job to get a ‘fresh start.’ Whatever way he’s chosen to move on, making huge life decisions immediately after a breakup is a huge sign he’s suffering and these changes are his ways to deal with heartbreak.
12. His social media is full of depressing things
Your man has become the president of the ‘Women haters’ club. And so, his social media posts have taken a turn for the worse. Where he used to post random or positive content, it is now just a black hole of negativity that no one wants to be sucked into. It would simply imply that his relationship with himself has become a negative relationship.
Our social media posts usually give others great insight into what is going on in our lives at that moment. And one of the biggest signs of a broken heart is the dark, depressive posts people post on social media. So if your ex has suddenly become Mr. Negative, you might want to strap in for a bumpy ride.
13. Or he’s seen partying all the time
There are several ways people choose to cope with pain. One of them is posting gloomy content and the other is excessive partying. Ever since you broke up, it seems like every photo he’s tagged in is of him painting the town red. He’s hitting the clubs daily and he’s partying all his time away.
This is more of a big deal if he never used to be interested in going to parties while you two were together. So if he’s now turned into a huge party-lover, it’s one of the major signs he is heartbroken over you and doesn’t know any other way of coping with feeling empty after a breakup.
14. He badmouths you around town
You go out for dinner with a mutual friend. She reveals that she met your ex a few days ago and all he did the whole night was insult you. You’ll go through the initial shock that this guy once claimed to love you. And now, all of a sudden, he hates your very guts? It is not that hard to believe, though. Once you break up with someone, all bets are off and they might channel their hurt into anger if they want to hurt you back.
15. He wants revenge
If your ex is hurting because of you, he might just start to live his life by these golden words: Revenge is a dish best-served cold. But the dish is a little hard to digest if you’re the one who’s having to eat it! Another extreme sign he is feeling heartbroken is him trying to sabotage your career, life, or any progress you’ve made till now. If he has the opportunity to stop you from advancing in your job, he will stop it. And you’ll see no signs that he’s feeling guilty for hurting you.
If he knows some secrets about you that will make your life difficult, he will go around spilling those to anyone he can find. Other ways of sabotaging you include hurtful comments on social media, leaving bad reviews on your business pages, or anything else. But if you do notice these signs, this is a problem for law enforcement, so don’t waste any time and report him as quickly as you can!
Key Pointers
- Heartbreak is a common occurrence. It is hard to deal with, but it is an unavoidable part of life
- Men tend to remain hurt for a long time after a heartbreak. They start to feel empty inside and they are likely to feel that loss intensely, especially since they are not encouraged to express their pain
- There will be many signs a man is feeling heartbroken. He can become rash and impulsive, he might date all the time or leave the dating world altogether, he might want you back or would try to make you jealous, he’ll either try to improve drastically or revert to old, bad habits, etc
- Heartbreak can completely change a man, and the effects of this change tend to stay for a long while
When a man has a broken heart, he might stop doing his chores, avoid going out with his friends and family or start to make extreme changes to his daily routine. If you are a friend who can catch these signs, you could actually help him out in time and stop him from descending into a downward spiral. Or if you’re his ex who wants to get back together with him or be his friend, make sure you keep a lookout for these signs he is heartbroken over you.
FAQs
Men experience strong emotions, much like women do. When a man has a broken heart, it takes time to come to terms with the fact that he has been through a life-altering experience. The pain lasts longer for men and they’re usually not the same after a heartbreak. Some tend to become more compassionate for others, while some tend to become cold, unfeeling, and bitter. Really, it just depends on how they react to the pain.
Everyone experiences heartbreak differently. But men tend to go through some common stages when going through a heartbreak. Initially, they might withdraw from social activities and tend to isolate themselves. They can also become angry and lash out for no apparent reason. As they start to accept it, they might try to win their ex back by any means necessary. Once they truly accept the relationship is over, they try to distract themselves from it.
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