He Loved You More Than Life Itself — And It Killed Him
Men love like mountains, and fall like them too.
This essay is free, but with Premium Membership you get MORE. Join today.
by John Mac Ghlionn
June 29, 2025
They call it broken heart syndrome. The clinical term is takotsubo cardiomyopathy, a name that sounds like something plucked from a Japanese horror film. But the horror is very real — and very Western. It mimics a heart attack. Your chest tightens, your breath shortens, and your heart — quite literally — starts to fail. Most people think of it as a woman’s affliction. But the truth is far darker: when it hits men, it kills.
A recent study looked at 200,000 cases of broken heart syndrome in the United States. Women made up 83 percent of cases. But men were more than twice as likely to die from it. That’s not a coincidence. It speaks to something deeper — something cultural, psychological, and biological. Women may suffer more frequently, but men suffer more fatally.
Men don’t break often. But when they do, they don’t bend — they shatter. And what’s left doesn’t always go back together…