Bigstockphoto.com/Pretty African-American woman telling story to her female friend
Recent studies have found that widows fare far better than widowers after losing their spouse. Women are less likely to develop depression after losing their life partner, and overall become less frail than men do after the death of their spouse. Our theory as to why this is true? Women are better at nurturing and maintaining friendships and relationships outside of their romantic one. While female health relies greatly on certain hormones that we produce in social situations, that doesn’t change the fact that men need friendship and companionship, too. But, as you may have seen in many relationships or experienced in your own, men can become reliant on their partners for their social calendar. Men get so caught up in work and responsibilities that they forget to schedule socializing. For many men, if their wives or girlfriends didn’t make plans for them, they would be total hermits. If you are the social planner in your relationship, you know these struggles.
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You’ve tried every medium
When you learn of something you’d like for you and your partner to do—maybe a concert or a bar opening—you try every single medium to inform your partner. You’ll email him the flyer, but he’ll reply saying he’s busy at work. You’ll try texting, but he’ll forget to look at your text. You’ll go the personal route and leave a voice mail, but he complains he hates listening to voicemail. You’re considering sending a singing telegram just to tell him you’d like to attend the concert in the park this Saturday.
