Constantly and all the time.
I gave up on being manly and reserved and whatever other BS a long time ago. Never made me happy. Problem is, most men haven’t, and even men who have generally have no social training in how to emotionally support each other. And, just in general, American culture doesn’t value or care about the emotional lives of men, at all. “Go to therapy” is as much a demand that you stop having emotions as it is a demand that you learn to regulate negative emotions.
And I honestly just don’t have any close men friends anymore. or close anyone friends, really. Nobody wants to talk to me, or share anything about their inner life. I think part of it is most of my “Friends” are Minnesotans, and white Minnesotan culture is… characterized by extreme cliqueishness, by being extremely emotionally unavailable, by an unwillingness to acknowledge or confront any interpersonal problems. Honestly kind of a shit place to be in touch with your emotions and have an extremely distressing severe mental illness.
I’ve seen a lot of men talk about this. You’re told to shed toxic masculinity, get in touch with your feelings, develop emotional intelligence, blah blah blah. And then when you do you realize with a deep, piercing insight that no one gives a shit. No one cares what you’re feeling. No one wants to know about your thoughts and how life harms or heals you. No one cares. I mean, obviously there are exceptional individuals, but for the most part? People don’t care. They don’t want to know. They don’t have any model on how to support men.
There are a lot of complaints about how men exclusively demand the support of women they’re involved with, but the other side of that? There is no other source. No one else cares. You’re honestly lucky if your partner cares. If you can’t turn to your partner for support, and you’re not closely and intimately aquainted with the handful of people in North America who actually value the emotional lives of men, you’re just stuck, alone, in pain, keenly aware that the society that demanded you develop this knowledge really just wanted you to stop expressing any emotions at all. Like yeah, it’s better to know, being emotionally aware and developing emotional intelligence will make your life better in many ways, and if nothing else truth is preferable to ignorance, even when it hurts, but one of those “What has been seen cannot be unseen” curses. Now you know that most of the people you care about don’t care about you, the inner, real, authentic person that exists under all the masks and posturing and assigned social roles. It’s a terrible thing to learn. I really hope some day men can actually, really turn to each other and expect support and compassion, but we are not at all there yet. Hell, probably half the reason all my friends are queer is that, painting with a very broad brush, queer people are much more open to non-normative gender expressions like “Acknowledging that you’re in pain and need support instead of just punching holes in the drywall”.
