How often do you seek out emotional support?
Not often enough. I’ll occasionally do some real surface level stuff, but I don’t really have anyone that I’m truly comfortable sharing my deeper feelings with.
how often are you vulnerable with other men that you’re platonic with?
Again not all that often. I don’t really have consistent contact with my friends especially since most I’ve met at work and we don’t meet outside of work all that often. The one friend I was closest to recently was someone who I had started opening up to. But then COVID hit and he ended up leaving the job we worked at together as well as moving further away (although not out of the city we live in). I still talk to him once in a while, but usually via text or phone and its just not the same as talking to someone in person.
AMAB and still living as a guy… not on HRT or anything yet. To answer your first question: pretty much never. I never talk to my male friends about my problems, honestly for a long time I didn’t have much to talk about. If I did talk to someone about my problems they pretty much have to be female. Not sure why, but I just don’t feel emotionally comfortable with men. Actually, I have one friend who ill talk to about my feelings, and I’ve gotten support from them, but even then I think maybe I’ve had one deep talk with him. It just doesn’t happen.
Honestly I’m not close with many other men. My wife and I each only have sisters and neither of us are really close with anyone outside our family. Couple buddies at work, one BIL who is a recluse and kind of an ass and one BIL who is a great dude and very kind but about a decade my junior so talking to him about things troubling me would feel inappropriate.
I will share some surface level emotional challenges with my work buddies, anything else I either process/eventually forget about on my own or my wife is my only support system.
When I was younger I was bad about over sharing but it’s hard for me to gauge that correctly so I err on the side of less with friends.
I do provide, I think a lot of emotional support to my wife and one of our other family members who are pretty open about concerns for the future with me, which I’m pretty proud of sometimes and very stressed by and a little resentful (not toward my wife, the other individual, who my wife is also a major support for) about at other times.
I will say that like most people I do occasionally have conflicts with my spouse and being as she’s basically my whole support system I basically just have to stew with it til I get over it when this happens. I don’t really discuss it even in vague terms with those friends I do have because I think it would make me feel like a misogynist to do so (you know “hyuck hyuck hyuck anyone else hate their wife?” and I love her very much actually).
Overall I would have to say even posting this feels like over sharing and is a little uncomfortable but it’s a mostly honest accounting of how I share (or don’t) my emotions with people around me.
Hahahahahaha, oh you’re serious? Hahahahahahahabahahahaha
I did frequently throughout middle and high school when I still had a tight knit group of friends. In particular, my best friend and I would talk about pretty much everything, and it was so nice to have a relationship where I could straight-up be myself without putting up a front. Drifted away from everyone during a long period of depression, and so while I’m still technically in touch with a lot of the same people it’s pretty superficial now. Very grateful to have access to therapy.
So to actually answer your question: I really don’t seek out emotional support from peers or family these days. It’s nothing to do with machismo (which I’ve never really identified with), but just plain old isolation. On the rare occasion (maybe once every year or two?) I do seek out support from a non-professional, it’s almost always from women, although it’s less “seeking out” and more just random connections with people. I also will talk with my dad sometimes, but that always feels like rolling the dice. He’s a good guy and emotionally available, but we’re so different that we have trouble communicating effectively and it often feels very invalidating.
