How emotional mis-management breeds male loneliness

Disclaimer : This article is mainly meant for men mainly but women may also gain some insights about their male partner from it. When I use "you" I am actually assuming I'm writing for a male reader. My goal here is to share a portion of my journey and highlight the link between male loneliness and the improper use of emotions.

Loneliness to deal with sharp disempowering emotions

Over the last 15 years since I graduated from my engineering school, I have experienced a lot of changes in my personal life: I got married, became the father of 4 kids, moved house 9 times in 6 cities in 3 different countries. Over the course of time, I noticed that my professional network grew - I've been able to meet, and keep in contact with, many wonderful individuals I look up to and admire. As a couple, we have many friends and couples we like to spend time with. I have also kept a few "good friends" from my student days, but we only call each other once or twice a year. I can easily call a mate to have a beer or play a game of badminton or squash during the week. From a social perspective this looks quite OK - right ? Then where's the problem ?

On the personal side, I have experienced many ups and downs. I like to say that I'm now living with my "5th wife": since we married in 2005, we have been through 4 major crises as a couple. Each time we have almost reached points of "no return" and each time, we learned from the hardship and our relationship was reshaped and reinforced. During these moments of intense instability, I felt emotionally very challenged, especially because I had to deal with it by myself.

I had very few intimate male relationships I could call for a chat to discuss my deep struggles when I needed to vent - or to get challenged/kicked in the butt. In fact, I actually had nobody with whom I could be totally raw. When I did go out with a friend, I was looking more for a diversion or a "Flight/Flock" (in relation with the 4Fs of stress management : fight/flight/flock theory), to escape from the pain I was experiencing in my relationship.

Role play : what would you do ?

Let's try an example so that you can picture this for yourself: Imagine you were having a nice dinner with your wife and a couple of friends. The evening goes smoothly, the inhibition slightly decreases after a few drinks and all of a sudden, your partner tells a story about a situation where you failed to achieve something the day before. Your partner thought it was "cute" or "funny" but for your this episode was totally private and you immediately feel a wave of shame; you think your partner should never have shared this story outside of your marriage. You feel a sense of unfairness and deep betrayal. On the way home in the car, the tension is very high between you. The next day the tension is still present, and you feel you need someone to help you "drop the pill" so that you can let go of this anger that hasn't disappeared during the night.

Here's my question to you, reader: who would you call then and there? Someone who would be ready to make time for you - on the spot, who would be willing to listen to your stream of negativity and rage without judging or giving advice regardless of how bad the situation might be for you (and also despite the fact that you are responsible for your emotion, your wife has nothing to do with it! We'll look at that in a later paragraph) ?

A few years ago the only such person in my life was my wife. So, when a crisis struck my marriage I had to deal with it by myself. In contrast, my wife always had friends from whom she could seek the right level of support. 

Emotional loneliness : a trait for many men

Over the last few years I've had the occasion to discuss this situation of emotional loneliness with other men, and it became clear to me that this is the case for many men. There's now also quite a lot of literature about this topic, and one author in particular has spent a lot of energy on the subject, including several longitudinal studies to back her theory: in her book Deep Secrets: Boys' friendship, the crisis of connection, Niobe Way (professor of Applied Psychology at New York University) draws several very interesting conclusions. (NB: her studies are mainly based on the US population, but I'm pretty sure her conclusions are similarly applicable to French and NZ guys ):

• In their early years, boys do express deeply fulfilling emotional connection and love for some of their peers, but when they grow up, that sense of connection seems to vanish. Many men in their 30s-50s are experiencing a sense of deep loss that haunts them even though they are engaged in fully realized romantic relationships, marriages, and families.
• According to Prof. Way, this distancing is a result of toxic judgments leveled against boys by their environment and society ("big boys don't cry", "a boy doesn't whine", "you're a big boy, you don't feel hurt").
• Modeled in particular by the pressure of "big brand marketing", many men regard emotional connection as a female trait. Many fathers will also reject it in their sons, demanding that they "man up". Emotional independence and isolation are seen as proof that they are "real men". According to historical societal belief, real men should be stoic and detached - any boy who might show too much of the wrong kind of emotions will be crushed by the steamroller of homophobia.
• The conclusion is merciless. According to Way "These boys mature into men who are autonomous, emotionally stoic, and isolated". The societal pressure of homophobia and toxic masculinity "naturally" leads boys towards isolation until they reach the black hole of male loneliness that crushes the majority of adult men.

I've just looked at the suicide stats for New Zealand and the results are staggering: the rates for boys and girls are pretty similar until the onset of adulthood, then the gap becomes huge. The age bracket with the highest suicide rate is 45-49, where five times as many men as women take their own lives. Could emotional loneliness be part of the explanation ?

Exiting the vicious circle ?

Many men around of the world have already started to act in order to change this unacceptable fate. In looking for ways to progress on my emotional journey I've bumped into the concept of "Men's groups". I'm living in Auckland, and after comparing different options, and based on a referral from one of my wife's good friends, I've joined Essentially Men in New Zealand (I know the website looks pretty outdated, but don't let that put you off).

The concept is awesome: men from all walks of life and who want to progress in their personal development as a father, as a husband and/or as a man, join up and create groups with very specific rules to make sure emotional safety and confidentiality are preserved.

The first step of the process was a sessions of 3 full days. The group I joined had 17 participants and was led by a group of roughly 10 volunteers (men who had previously experienced a transformation through Essentially Men and are ready to “pay it forward”). One of the rules that I found awesome, though basic, is that it's forbidden to talk with anyone about business/job, sports and politics. The goal is really to focus on what really matters: you as a person. You cannot hide behind your usual safety net.

One of the rules of Essentially Men is to not describe what exactly happens during these 3 days, because being surprised and making a conscious choice to progress through our own mental and emotional barriers is part of the experiential process. Therefore I won't give more info... just do it, take a chance!

But the best part comes afterwards: you have the opportunity to form a group of men who will meet at the frequency you decide in order to continue your journey with a bunch of peers "like you" who want to reconnect with who they are as men. Therefore every Tuesday evening I meet with my group of 13 men, and depending on our professional or personal constraints, we manage to get between 5 and 11 men at each evening. During these evenings, we agreed on a basic structure (a welcoming, a grounding, an emotional check-in, etc.). I found that having this space to genuinely share with other men about where I'm at, my progresses and struggles, but also getting to hear the journey of others, at the different stages of their lives (the ages range from 25 to 65 year old) is invaluable.

Within the group I also found the type of intimate friends I had never met so far: every morning during the 30 minutes on my way to work, I have the opportunity to have a phone conversation to share how I'm feeling, what's "in the background" for me, and have someone who listens to me respectfully, who offers feedback or clarifies what I've said. This friend knows everything about what I really think, feel, and want. He knows when I screwed up with my wife, when I messed up with my kids, but he's also here to help me voice out loud my gratitude when I'm proud of myself and acknowledge my humanity. And vice versa. How cool is that ? I'm sure many women, when reading this, will think that's really friendship 101. I really think that for men, this is unfortunately far from common.

Many men don't deal properly with their emotions, and that's one of the key reasons why they cannot connect with other men as authentically and deeply as they need. I propose to explore this topic a little further to help you create a few insights (hopefully).

Emotions 101

Before going further I'd like to clarify my understanding of emotions and their purpose. (This will be useful for the rest of my development here).

These are the basics: an emotion is a warning sent by your body to let you know there's a gap between what you experience and what you need - that is, what is good for you. I love this video from Philippe Garric (sorry, it's in French), in which Philippe uses a simple metaphor: imagine a rubber band between your 2 hands. Your left hand represents who you are, your right hand represents what you actually experience, and the rubber band represent your emotions. If the gap between the 2 hands starts to widen, then the rubber band will stretch and try to bring both hands back together to narrow the gap. At that point in time, you notice the tension in your muscles (the emotions rise) but you are free to listen to this tension and actually bring the hands together, or ignore it. If you do ignore it and the gap widens, then:

• your energy will start to drain faster and faster (which is the case when uncomfortable emotions are strong),
• the rubber will stretch even further and the tension will increase,
• the rubber will slowly lose its elasticity. The parallel is that the emotions will slowly lose their function to help you adapt to your environment.

If you keep stretching, then at some point the rubber band will suddenly break. This corresponds to the moment when you fall into depression or burn out.

So to sum up, here are the functions of our emotions:

• they give us an energy to move (to set a "motion"),
• they send us a "warning" or information message,

When the emotion is empowering, it gives us the info that our needs are satisfied. When the emotion is uncomfortable, it gives us the info that our needs are not satisfied. (Side note: therefore, there's no such thing as a "positive" or a "negative" emotion, all of them are extremely useful!)

But why are we triggered so hard ?

In her book Heal your wounds and find your true self, Lise Bourbeau gives a very powerful metaphor to explain the concept of mirroring.

Imagine that, when you were very young, you got wounded in the inside of your palm. Time has passed but you never really took care of this wound. One day, many years later, your wife gently and lovingly squeezes your hand. This movement actually re-ignites a sharp pain and your remove your hand abruptly, frowning. Your wife had no negative intention at all, however you really suffer. Try to imagine what happens for both yourself and your wife and the related narratives at play !

This story brings at least 2 insights:

• You are never responsible for the emotions of others, even when they reignite a deep wound. You are just responsible for the way you act and behave.
• Your responsibility is to take care of your wounds and not blame others for the fact external events might re-open them if they were not healed. Back to the story given in the example: do you think you'd be able to let your wife know immediately that despite the fact you suffer, you love her and she's not responsible for what you feel ?

As a man, how can I gain more awareness of my emotions?

My wife is pretty well connected to her emotions and therefore she's able to express them simply as they come : this gives rise to uncomfortable moments (for me...). However, the beauty of this is that she allows me to hear what she feels very quickly, and this limits the risk of me over-interpreting what I perceive when things go out of whack. 

As a boy very focused on sports and intellectual work, I've grown up very disconnected from my emotions (in the Enneagram model, I'm a type 3). My way to progress and survive in life when as a kid was to look for love by acting in a way that I thought would make my parents, friends etc. love me more/better. The big issue with such behavior is that I was giving priority to the perception of others over what my actual needs were. In particular, (you saw this coming), I was rarely listening to my emotions. Worse than that, I grew up not being really able to even identify and name many of them.

Long story short, I learned that the first step to re-align with who I am is to take the time to check in regularly about the signs from my body. I found this great app called iMoodJournal and I strongly recommend it. The concept is pretty simple:

You schedule notifications throughout the day, to force you to pause and assess how you feel on a scale of 1 (crap) to 10 (unstoppable). After a few months of use, I fine-tuned my use of the app as follows:

• I scheduled 3 notifications at random times each day from 8.30am to 7pm. Each time, I take a few seconds to scan my body very quickly and rate how I'm feeling, even when in a meeting (ok, except with customers). This has absolute priority. When I'm alone working by myself for instance, I actually answer the following questions that I've defined for myself: #1.I'm feeling... #2. I notice in my body... #3. My internal narrative leading to the emotion is ... #4. The actual facts are...  I've selected 3 notifications because I sometimes simply don't feel the vibrating alert in my pocket (they happen at random times) so overall I manage to go through the routine in average between 1 to 2 times a day.
• I also scheduled 1 notification to answer the question "how is my relationship with my wife". Same concept (rating from 1 to 10) but this acts as a reminder for what I'm working towards as a husband. (Side note: to identify the tracking of the 2 types of notifications in the graphs I use a keyword #couple when I answer the rating for this second type of notification).

On my mobile phone, in parallel with the text messages and phone calls, that's the one and only notification with vibrating alert that I kept. I removed notifications from all other apps including news, chats, social networks and email for focus/productivity reasons and my staff/colleagues know it.

After several months of use, I learned several lessons:

• The more I actually take the time to probe about how I'm feeling, the faster I'm actually able to identify my emotions,
• That I'm able to stop, breathe, and name my emotion is sometimes sufficient to very quickly dampen uncomfortable emotions I had not even really identified during the day. This is the famous labeling effect of naming ("name it to tame it").
• There are clearly repeating patterns of emotions I generally feel throughout the week,
• Overall, what most impacts my state of mind is... actually the state of my relationship with my wife. The correlation is pretty stunning and if it looks obvious in hindsight, I was not really aware of it.
• The app proposes a graphs showing the ratings averaged per day of the week (see adjacent pic). This clearly show that I'm rating higher during the week (typically when I'm "doing" a lot of stuff, achieving and helping others at work) than during the week-end (when the emotional stakes are higher for me, given the higher frequency of interactions with my loved ones...and therefore there are also more "risks").

Once you've identified a strong uncomfortable emotion, how can you limit its negative symptoms ?

Over the years, my wife and I have read quite a lot of books and theories around managing our emotions. It's only very recently that we found a way that really worked for both of us. We learned this technique during a retreat called "Making love retreat" lead by an amazing couple, Anne and Jean-Francois Descombes  (side note: I recommend this session to all couples. We found this exceptional to bring our relationship to a new level). These techniques are fantastic when shared between partners, to tackle occasional emotional bursts. This is not meant to address an overall disempowering state of mind (like depression or chronic emotional condition).

They introduced us to 5 very simple steps to deal with strong emotions. Here's what it would look like if it were happen within a couple relationship:

1. Identify: you become aware that something was triggered in you,
2. Acknowledge: you express this to your partner using the words "I'm emotional" - regardless of the cause and responsibility of this, just say it.
3. Separate: once you reached a state where your limbic system was triggered, there's often no point arguing or discussing further. If you do, there's high probability that the situation will escalate negatively and you might contaminate the relationship itself. The suggestion is to pronounce this sentence (each part is important): "I need to take care of myself, I'm going away and I'll come back". The goal here is to state exactly what you plan to do and leave without violence in order not to reawaken a wound on the other side (no need to slam the door :)).
4. Move your body: this is the moment where moving the body brings a lot of benefits. Tony Robbins repeats regularly that "motion creates emotion". If you move your body, you get a chance to release most of the tension/toxins, which will redirect blood and energy to the prefrontal cortex (that rational part of your brain). If you're not in a position to take your running shoes and run your lungs out, you can also take advice from the same Tony Robbins who proposes that you create your own "power move". A "power move" is a ritual you create for yourself during which you breathe fast, make energetic movements, force a smile (fake it 'till you make it) and repeat the cycle a few times. This also has the effect of dampening down uncomfortable emotions. If you need to re-gain self confidence, another good approach is to strike a power pose (check out this great TedX Video from Amy Cuddy) which has a direct impact on both testosterone and cortisol hormones.
5. Come back and check: the best way to confirm whether the tension has actually diminished is to try and look your partner in the eyes.

Conclusion

Men seem to have a pretty large gap to bridge when it comes to the harnessing of their emotions. The societal image of men creates a huge distortion between how men should use their emotions for their own benefit, and how they are "naturally" shaped by life into lonely souls. In addition to this loneliness the fact that men don't listen to their emotions and messages from their body also means that their bodies will send even stronger messages: chronic diseases, pains and cancers among others. If you want to read more on this, I strongly recommend this excellent book What your aches and pains are telling you: cries of the body, message for the soul  from Michel Odoul.

If you experience the beautiful gift of becoming a father and you happen to have sons, you have the power to take part in creating a new generation of boys who could learn to be emotionally aware. We have 4 kids, including two boys, and that's definitely a challenge we want to take up. This would probably deserve a new article in itself...

The good news here is that there's hope ! As usual, the most important thing is to make a first step forward. Will you read one of the books I recommend ? Will you invest in a "man's group" session like Essentially Men ? 

If you used other sources and techniques in relation with this topic or have other suggestions, please let me know in comment!