Why Men Don't Talk About Feelings

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Women, as I understand you. You want to talk about feelings or ask your man to show them more often, open up to you, turn to him and see a hole in the shape of an unshaven person in the nearest wall. "Tell me how you feel, it's so easy!" Just. For you.

Male initiation

The boy turns into a man very early and very abruptly. Just yesterday he - like his sister, for example - was allowed to cry, hug with his parents, shout “I love you, dad!”, Be afraid and complain. It is possible, it is possible, and then once - and it is impossible.

Stop crying!

Be a man!

Don't need that snot!

Be patient! Be patient, I say!

Sometimes such commands begin even at the age of 5–7 years old, when children of any gender are basically unable to control their emotions and behave like an adult.

There are difficulties with female initiation (there is no initiation), but this is not the point now, and the transformation of a “boy into a husband” is going to the opposite extreme.

Forcing a child to stop his own tears or outbursts of tenderness is psychological abuse. How to say "don't blink" on pain of reprisals. And the boy, of course, will try. He will keep his eyes open as much as he can, because for him parents are almost deities. He is completely dependent on them. All his self-esteem, all his well-being rests on their approval. And you can get it if you “be a man” at an age when even your voice does not break.

Many fathers (mothers too) think that this is how they form strength and resilience, raise a real man. Or maybe they just by inertia "mirror" the behavior of their own parents. The child, of course, assimilates these attitudes and, like orders, carries them further into adulthood.

Here's what comes out of it.

Feelings through "I can not"

Do not misunderstand me. Men, like women, are different. Some are great at talking about feelings and willingly express them. Not only aggression (there are no particular problems with this), but the entire or almost the entire spectrum.

But on average in the ward, men have difficulties with such things, otherwise the articles from the series "10 Ways to Understand What He Feels" would not have had so many views. I can understand the dissatisfaction of girls and wives: they want emotional closeness with their partners. This is natural and, in general, necessary for deep relationships, but to spread rot men for coldness and reticence when it comes to feelings is at least unfair.

Imagine that from childhood you were tied to your torso with one leg and a crutch, they say, walk like that. There is no option to refuse, and you went, got used to it, learned to live like that. And then they suddenly untied the leg, and they were trying to take away the crutch.

Of course, you will fall to the ground: the leg has long atrophied. Of course, you will fight for your own crutch until bloody bruises. Without it, you are, in fact, disabled.

Look around you: at people's reactions, at what they write on the Web, at gender stereotypes. The crying man is drunk at best. Gentle and enthusiastic - gay or "woman" (why comparison with a homosexual or a woman is considered shameful in our country is a separate question). Will show fear or insecurity - a rag.

Considering other aspects of the modern image of masculinity - strength, control, success always and in everything - it is not surprising that many men are tightly closed. This is the same crutch. They are faced with a choice that cannot be called a choice: the price for experiencing and expressing all these "non-male" emotions is the rejection of masculinity. Tenderness, love, fear, longing - this is impossible, do not touch. They exist for others. "Stay away, he will kill."

If you punish, prohibit, taboo and shame a person for certain emotions long enough, he can forget how to not only express them. He loses the ability to interpret and even actually feel them. A kind of emotional atrophy. Frustration, which crossed the line "feelings are uncomfortable" and boiled over into "oh well, to hell with them, these feelings, I don't need them."

This is an adaptive mechanism of the psyche, the most basic one.

Girls, understand, there is a chance that your man does not talk about his feelings, not because he does not love you enough or is not trying hard enough. Perhaps the reason is simpler and much worse.

HE. REALLY. CAN NOT.

Can not. Not taught. Where would he get the words if he never said them? Where to get the understanding that he has been blocking all his life?

Yes, there are just callous people. Women too. Insensitive, cold, indifferent. And only you can understand whether your man is like that or not. But if you saw some cracks in his stone mask and want to see new ones, then demanding that he break this armor overnight is asking for the impossible.

How to live further

I am often reproached for the absence of life hacks in my articles. This time I will not resist the voice of the people. Girls, life hacks for you.

Be patient(you knew I was going to say that, right?) What is simple and natural for you, for your man, is like learning to walk again. Noticeable progress over a year of good, warm relations is an excellent result.

Thank him for his efforts.… Even small progress is a reason to rejoice. And if your introverted man allowed himself to cry in your presence, this is a giant step forward. Tell him: "Dear, thank you for trusting me, that you are sincere with me, I really appreciate it." Most likely, these tears were not easy for him.

You won't be able to skim the cream … In other words, if a person develops his sensitivity, he cannot concentrate only on “good”, comfortable (including for you) feelings. It's either all or nothing. “It’s unpleasant for me when you try to control me” is also a feeling, his, quite real. Are you ready for this? Ready to support a man who is crushed, desperate, and feeling like a failure? Think about this before complaining about your boyfriend's callousness.

Trust is immensely important … "Showing vulnerability" for most men (and many women, by the way) is tantamount to "showing weakness." No one is in a hurry to open up in an environment where your throat will be torn open at the first opportunity (and this is how the fear of vulnerability looks). Trust is that safe rear, in which it is not that comfortable to remove some of the protections, but it is not terrible either.

You cannot change it … I repeat: you cannot change it. Thoughts in the spirit: "If I do X, Y and Z, then everything will work out," - this is from a false sense of one's own omnipotence. You cannot control the development of another person. All that you can do is not to interfere and, if possible, help him to develop in the direction in which he already wants to go. Gratitude, understanding, patience - it's all about support. But if a man refuses to "swing" the sphere of feelings, then there will be no changes, no matter how you dance around him.

And finally

Dear men, I sympathize with you very much. Now, on the third wave of feminism, on the Internet they only talk about the problems of women, and all this is important, I am not trying to discount it. But maybe it seems to you that behind women's problems yours are taken for granted, they say, men have all the power, what should they complain about? Many people really think so, and it is unfair, and it is good if at least your friends understand what kind of meat grinder it is - the race for the title of "real man". In it, as it were, there is no time for talking about feelings.

But understand this: a life without feelings is like a picture painted with one gray paint. Thoughts, ideas, values are important, but an idea that is not charged with feelings is inert and will not bear fruit. Values that are not felt will not survive even a tiny crisis. A relationship without feelings will die a silent death, leaving no trace in you. If from the whole spectrum you allow yourself only anger and cynicism, your life will consist of them, and, unbalanced by something else, it is unlikely that it will bring you happiness.

Try to open up just a little. To a loved one, or at least to yourself. It will make you a better man.