Hm, that sort of goes with the whole crux of the article, though, at least on your end. Your ex sounds like a psychopath (literally) so he may well not have followed typical psychological patterns. But you getting angry to the point of hurting his feelings, which provoked a reaction, could fit with this study. Regardless, if your ex was some kind of psychopath, I'm not sure we can look at it as a typical scenario, right?
I think there may be some confusion about what this study was concluding.
I know I titled the post in a dramatic way to garner some attention, but I wasn't being very accurate.
The conclusion is NOT that women like drama and men don't.
The conclusion is that when women feel a negative emotion like anger or frustration, they derive pleasure from having their partner share in that emotion. For example, in this population, an angry woman might turn around and say things to inspire anger in her partner by some biological prerogative. The reasoning is that women seeing their partners share in their emotion demonstrates investment in the relationship on the partners' parts.
I can say that from personal experience, this is truth. I've had more than one woman tell me, "I want you to feel what I'm feeling" very directly. I've been called a "robot" or "android" by some women because I'm not converting to some monster after being lashed out at by her. In those cases, it seems they would have preferred I get upset in response to them being upset.
But, this study suggests, my biological prerogative is utterly different. I feel threatened by an angry or frustrated woman I'm in a relationship with because it suggests to me that she wants to end this. I've gotten in many, many fights with my significant others over the years and this study is kind of revealing to me about why those relationships were so strong even though I always thought we were on the verge of ending them. From her perspective, I was utterly emotionally invested. From mine, I was about ready to walk out the door (and did a couple of times).
The point here is that she isn't lashing out because she wants it to end--she's doing it because she wants it to become strengthened. And by want, I mean deep down, underneath it all, not consciously.
I think it's mostly true. I think it's sort of descriptive of why we have the men "walking out" of relationships that their wives think were good and strong. Because men don't have this drive to share their negative feelings most of the time because they think they'll jeopardize the relationship and women don't even realize that their bonding over negative feelings isn't being reciprocated by their men.
Anyway, I guess for me, this study rings mostly true. And while the essence of it seems almost like woman-bashing, I don't think that should be the take-home at all. To the contrary, I think it should inform us about the differences between us emotionally and perhaps make us a bit more aware of what the other in our relationship is thinking. I know, there are a million books on this topic out there, but it's nice to see something with a hard p-value on it demonstrating it for someone like me.
