The Emotional Lives of Men

The Emotional Lives of Men: Vulnerability

“Is it true that men are less emotional than women?” someone asked recently.

I think many men are feeling pushed into being emotional, judged, and getting defensive that they’re not willing to be “vulnerable” with others… but what is vulnerability really? What are we asking of men?

First, men are just as emotional as women. I've been coaching for twenty years and men cry, all of them, and feel joy, and laugh so hard tears come, and rage, and feel a fear so intense it ices their spines...

So the question isn’t do men have feelings, they do, but rather what happens to the emotions of men.

Imagine a boy, say 13 years old, neural typical, and if that boy didn’t feel the six core emotions (emotions that are universal, across cultures, across time) like anger, fear, sadness, joy, delight and disgust we’d be concerned, right?

True every boy feels and expresses these differently for different reasons but people would be more surprised and concerned if a boy wasn’t feeling these emotions.

The right question then becomes… what happens to emotions in men?

Well in short they’re neglected, suppressed, shamed, and beaten out of men.

"The male socialization process is a trauma that is so normative that we do not think of it as trauma at all." Levant and Pollack

If emotions are “feminine” and something that needs to be repressed in men… well that’s incorrect and impossible to uphold as men continue to feel fear, sadness, anger, delight, joy, disgust they just do it in socially acceptable ways.

Fear comes out in a wall of fat around the body.

Anger comes out in politics.

Sadness comes out in sports.

Joy comes out in materialism…

It’s okay to cry when your team loses, it’s okay to eat your feelings, it’s okay to yell at Biden or Trump, it’s okay to love your car, your boat, your lawnmower...

This is of course cliche but the emotional lives of men are still deeply neglected.

So what can be done?

Small steps.

My dad lost both his mom and dad to cancer before he turned fifteen years old. The first therapist he trusted had him write a letter to his dead mom. Jesus F dude… maybe lean into it slowly? My dad wrote the letter. I found it in his papers after he had passed and it was very sad but written from the age he lost his mom not from a place of an empowered resourced adult.

Men with other men can make emotions a game, a challenge, how fast can I make you cry kinda thing.

I remember I had this coworker and we were doing this intense leadership program and he said, “When the lights go down that’s when they want you to cry…” and he wasn’t wrong.

We had to give our own eulogy.

I cried like a baby. With big snot bubbles running down my face but I was used to crying at that point and it didn’t upset my basic working psychology.

When I started learning about emotions I was 17 years old. I was in a program for abused teens and they had a huge chart on the wall with maybe a hundred words written on it all emotions. I knew intellectually what the words meant but it took years to develop the pathways and emotional muscles to understand that I wasn’t just angry I was feeling vengeful.

That’s a good place to start.

Beauty is another place to start… just enjoying what one finds peaceful and enjoyable. If I had been my dad’s therapist I would’ve had him garden more… he was so happy in his garden.

So why should men do this work at all? Isn’t that what women are for?

Well as anybody who has done the work can tell you… women struggle with their emotions just as much as men. A decade ago I’d have my women clients beat a heavy bag and OMG the catharsis… just feeling anger in the body and releasing it safely was a revelation.

We all struggle with emotions.

Men taking responsibility for their interior, their emotional life frees up the burden on women.

Second, it makes for a well lived life. Being able to safely feel, express, engage with emotions brings you to the here and now… and makes for better decision making and logos.

I know far too many men who claim to have mastered emotions but the irony is they don’t see how much their emotions are actually running their logic… usually anger masking sadness.

The last thought I have on this is that women and men do feel the same core six but there are differences. No need to get into that right now… but how and what men feel can be different than that of women.