Divorce makes women happier than men

Divorce makes men feel devastated, confused, betrayed and even suicidal; while women are more likely to feel relieved, liberated and happy following a split, according to a report published today.

While breaking up will usually make adults feel happier than they were before, divorced men are more prone than women to find solace in drinking. They are also more likely to go back to an old flame, have casual sex or join a dating agency.

Divorced women will give greater focus than men to engaging in "positive" activities such as spending time with friends or family, or seeing a counsellor for therapy. In contrast, men will worry more about finding a new partner and throw themselves into their work as a distraction.

The survey, which questioned 3,515 divorced adults about the impact of their marital break-up, found that nearly three-quarters of those separating more than two years ago were happier now. Splitting up within the last 2 years had left 57% of divorcees happier.

But the most significant trend highlighted by the research was that women are comprehensively shown to handle divorce better than their male partners.

Recent splits had left 23% of men devastated, whereas with women the figure was lower at 20%. Of recently divorced women, 46% said they felt "liberated" at being single; only 37% of the men concurred.

Among the recent divorcees, 7% of men said they were "suicidal", as opposed to just 3% of women.

The report suggested that the figures were the result of women's "greater emotional strength", pointing to differences in coping strategies among both sexes.

Men were more likely to take time off from work (8% versus 6%) as well as being more likely to be unable to work as well as usual (13% versus 10%). More women will spend more of their time with friends (51% versus 38%), while men are more likely to turn to alcohol (33% to 23%) or casual sex (23% versus 12%).

Despite going through greater inner turmoil as the result of a divorce, men are actually more likely than women to remarry first. None of the women respondents had remarried within the first 2 years of a break-up, but 4% of the men had.

Two or more years later, 15% of the men had remarried; for women the figure was just 5%. More of the women were just not interested in a new relationship, preferring to cohabit or just date instead.

The biggest fear among both sexes after a divorce was whether they would have enough to live on, followed by concern about the impact the split might have on their children.

But the most striking aspect of the research, commissioned by Yorkshire Building Society to help design better mortgage products for divorcees, was that men were shown to suffer more emotional trauma than women following a marital break-up.

More than two years after a divorce, 41% of men were still sad about the failure of their marriage; for women the figure was only 33%.

"The differences between men and women's emotional experience of divorce is startling; women simply appear to be stronger than men throughout a break-up and afterwards," said Rachel Court, head of mortgages at Yorkshire Building Society.