Bruce Kluger

My friend Walt said, "Good riddance."

My brothers called her "the harlot."

And most of my other male buddies advised me to go out and get laid.

There's no bonding quite like the male bonding that occurs when your wife runs off with a married man.

The year was 1989, and my life came to a head-snapping stop one hot summer evening. I'd returned home from work to a disturbing tableau: Most of my wife's belongings were gone from our one-bedroom apartment. So was the cat.

Later in the evening, the phone rang.

"I need some time to think," was all my wife said.

Eight distressing days later, I received a letter from her—no return address—in which she declared her love for a married man who frequented the bar she tended. Six weeks shy of our second wedding anniversary, the marriage was over.

I was in shock, of course, and spent the next several months trying to rebuild my life. I started seeing a therapist. I read self-help books. I dove into a manic home-renovation project, transforming my apartment from a love nest to a bachelor pad.

I also received a lot of smart counsel from women. I shared. I listened. I cried.

And yet as grateful as I was to be escorted through this emotional minefield by my female A-team—my ex-girlfriend Sally, my divorced neighbor Lynne, even my mom—it was the guys in my life who cut to the chase:

"Take off for as long as you need to get your shit together," said Barry, my boss at the magazine where I worked, "and come back only when you're ready. Full pay."

"Where do you want to go?" offered another colleague, the VP of advertising sales. "Las Vegas? L.A.? Book your flight—I'll put it on my department's dime."

Women take care, men take charge is a maxim that has been applied to everything from family dynamics to boardroom politics. Yet when it comes to relationships, this fix-it mentality gets a bad rap. As we follow the instinct to right the listing ship, men are frequently admonished to indulge instead in a relationship microanalysis that would leave even Oprah exhausted.

But that summer I went with my gut, gravitating to my male friends whenever I felt stuck. While they clearly didn't have the probing, in-the-trenches agenda of my female confidantes, at this moment in my life they satisfied a more pressing need: to feel that I was back in control. As a result, I felt thankful, even relieved, that my guys seemed less interested in the backstory of my matrimonial mayhem than they were in propping me up and sending me on my way. Their company gave me comfort.