Earlier this week as I was driving, I heard podcast how so many men still don’t share their feelings. And the more I hear people make This assumption the more irritated I become. Because flat out men always share their emotions. They talk about their emotions. Where did the line that men do not share their emotions come from?
From what I’ve been able to tell, there’s not a clear answer to that question. Yet somehow society has slowly decided that men don’t express their emotions nor do they talk about their emotions. And there’s a few points that I see as to why we don’t hide our emotions. That will be talked about a little later in this post.
There are reasons that we dont just break down in tears because we are frustrated or even sad. THis is because we know our spouses. We, as men are aware of what is expected of us from society and our family. WE are duty bound to get that done first. We ensure our family is taken care of first. IF they are safe and good then we will start processing the emotions that we have.
The finger that I will point to is that so many loudmouths have stated that men don’t share their emotions. The same loudmouths that claim that men don’t share their feelings enough, and that is why we struggle with our emotions, and why we don’t talk about what we are feeling at the level that certain people believe we need to share.
The problem that we have been told by people who are against masculinity. The people who believe that masculinity is bad are the same people who are telling us we need to act more like women. Sorry, folks, but that goes against nature.
I strongly believe that the problems men face aren’t because of masculinity but because society has worked to remove masculinity from society. This can be seen in men’s suicide rates of the last 20+ years. As the increase of the ofish father figure in television, to the removal of the image of the American dad. You have seen more and more “experts” claim that masculinity is toxic. When, in fact, toxic masculinity is the very absence of masculinity in a man’s life. So let’s break some of the myths as to why people think men don’t feel or express their emotions.
Myth-busting time
Yeah! We are going to take some common myths and turn them on their head for a moment.
Boys don’t cry
The big one that many folks think of is how we teach boys not to cry. There is a reason for this, and it is vastly misinterpreted by women. This is how men teach boys to control their emotions. Ys men have tighter rein on their emotions, they don’t just let them boil out at any old time. We don’t want to have a meltdown in a puddle of tears because our wife has a gun to her head. We have to have a clear line of thought. Thinking and emotions never mix. Just look at the patriot act and see how we were emotional wrecks at that moment of a big decision-making point.
Men need clear thinking and when we can pay attention with as little emotion getting tangled in our thoughts the better we are at taking actions. Men dont cry when the pressure is on. WE will mourn and cry and process our emotions later.
Some Psychiatrists think we think we need to seek permission to feel and that is thanks to pop culture and the crap that is being shared online and on social media. We don’t need permission. We have that permission already. The issue is that sometimes we men get too busy serving our loved ones that we forget to process and think we are good till the emotions bubble up at a later time, and we don’t pay attention to where our thoughts came from. So the emotion bubbles back up at the wrong time. So they found that waiting can, at times, help with the emotions to fade a bit.
Misinterpretation of emotions
How many times have you seen your wife look like she was mad at the world? That is a misinterpretation of an emotion. Someone may see an expression on a person‘s face and interpret it as meaning that they are angry or upset. Yet for our wives, they don’t understand that there are times we just simply aren’t thinking. We do not have a thought, rattling around in our brain, all the damn time. There are times we are just watching television. There are times we’re just driving and watching the scenery go by. We don’t have any emotion happening. We don’t have a thought happening and so we get women get hit with resting bitch face and there’s this man have the same thing we have resting asshole face or resting mad face or whatever you wanna call it.
A lot of the problem is sadly that we have people thinking that they need to meddle in other people’s emotions. And that never helps, because my thoughts about a circumstance are my thoughts about that circumstance. They are not yours, nor are they my wife’s. I have my own thoughts about a circumstance that creates my own emotions. And that same process goes for you, too. This is the reason why some people get mad at a practical joke while others laugh. It is all based upon the thoughts that we have.
We share our emotions.
Society also likes to say that we don’t share our emotions. Yet they also complain that we’re angry all the time that we’re stomping around or that we’re moody which if last time I looked, those are emotions. Or am I wrong?
We share our emotions we share them all the time we laugh out loud when we’re happy we joke and rib our friends when we’re in a good mood we will cozy up and nuzzle with our wife and try to fool around when we feel horny. We show emotion all the time. We are sharing our emotions with those around us all the time.
What society wants us to do is to sit around and talk about our emotions. That is something men don’t do. Pay attention to little kids playing. You’ll notice little girls getting circles and face each other as they play. Boys will be shoulder to shoulder. Boys need camaraderie more than just face-to-face interactions.
So, as men do share our emotions, we share them in our manly way. We do not share them in a woman’s way of sharing emotions. Doesn’t mean women are wrong. It doesn’t mean men are wrong either. It just means men share their emotions in their own way And sorry women if you don’t like how men share their emotions there’s a lot of times we don’t like how you share your emotions too because y’all get quiet and sit there and pout and brood when we try to find out what’s wrong so y’all don’t open up either.
We talk about our emotions all the time.
However, speaking of talking about our emotions, we do actually talk about our emotions. We don’t use the names of emotions, but we talk about success when we are in a good mood we talk about our failures when we are down. We talk about what we believe is the root of our emotions. We can’t figure out a particular problem that’s the source of our aggravation. Our wife denied us sex for the third week in a row; that’s the root of our frustration. We closed a big sale, and that is the source of our sense of elation. We talk about our emotions and we share our thoughts about our emotions all of the time. It’s just that we don’t get good interpretations of what we feel.
The truth
The biggest truth about men and their emotions, and why, if we don’t share it, what the root causes of that are. Because there are times when we know we won’t share our thoughts or our emotional feelings with those close to us. And therefore, the same reason is that one of the people who are close to us doesn’t share their emotional feelings with us. The first one is that we don’t feel like we are being heard.
People don’t listen
The big problem that we have is that we don’t hear each other. Now we can go about how nobody uses active listening. And there’s probably some of that is an issue. Yet even when women wanna hear their man talk about their emotions and the man actually starts doing it. What happens is the woman tunes out. The woman is actually not interested in what the man has to say about his emotions.
There are theories as to why this is my best guess is that women don’t wanna hear that their man is having trouble because that means that he is not as solid as she wants him to be. She needs an emotional rock for her to lean on. She needs a man who is emotionally stable so she can share her thoughts her worries her fears.
This is part of what I talk about when it comes to what masculinity is in a family relationship. It is positive energy that the family needs to keep going. But if a man isolate himself, he starts carrying a whole bunch of negativity and it’s real hard to process that negativity. This is why men need a band of brothers around him so that they can help him process The negative energy that his family is offloaded upon him.
So if a man starts talking about being sad or upset or anything like that, then what’s gonna be left for her to be able to complain about?
Women, you use our vulnerability against us.
Another issue that many men have faced in their relationships and marriages is that when a man does open up, it gets thrown back in his face. It gets used as a form of manipulation and scorn from his wife. All of a sudden, he talks about something he’s vulnerable about, and the wife takes the information and exploits it against him. Why would a guy wanna share? And it happens many times now men do the same thing where men aren’t innocent of that no more than than women are, but at the same time, we don’t complain about women not being vulnerable with us because we understand that if we do something like that, yeah our wife’s not gonna be very vulnerable with us.
We show love and care through service.
Yes, men are simple. We love to show our love and care in our own ways. There is the story of the wife who complained that her husband never showed her any love. The guy talked about how during the wintertime, he always brought her shoes into the house and set them by the stove, so they would be nice and warm. These are the little actions that we men do to show our wives that we love them, now sometimes they fall flat. Then there’s times that there are those wonderful instances where it’s so grand you can’t ignore it, but as men want to be acknowledged that we at least show our women that we love them and when we don’t get that after a while, we will still do it, but it’s more out of almost habit than dedication.
People avoid negative emotions.
Now, the biggest issue is why it may appear men don’t express their emotions often is for the very same reasons that women don’t express their emotions often. Yeah, women may show their anger towards their men a lot more, but they’re still a huge element in avoiding negative feelings. Men don’t like negative feelings. Neither do women. This is why there are so many Elements of resistance that we face in our lives. Men, we bury ourselves in work that is an indulgent action of resistance so that we don’t have to face the real problem that is uncomfortable, awkward, and maybe even a little embarrassing. Women, why did they drink so much wine? Why did they turn the television on so much? These are all for the very same reasons that men watch television, their own television shows all the time, why men lose themselves and video games and do yardwork at weird times of the day, because it’s easier to do that action than to actually face and do the hard work. And yes, men do get emotional resistance as much as women do.
So, as you go through your week, pay attention to those times that people say that men don’t express emotions, but also pay attention to all those times that men do express their emotions. Your eyes will be opened up tremendously.
