trying talking about your feelings as a man and see how society reacts…
This is odd to me, because talking about my feelings is how I got close to romantic partners. It’s also how I formed a lot of friendships with other men. How can you be close to someone if you don’t talk about feelings?
Very few feelings are allowed. If you keep to those social acceptable feelings, you’re fine. The second you go off-script, people are done with you.
Like I can pet my dog and say I love her. That surface level stuff is fine. But talk about anything complex, like the struggles we’ve had, or how she helped me through some depressing periods or she had a period of sickness and anxiety and misbehavior? People freak out and back away or tell me to shut up and go get a therapist and get my dog one too.
Men are allowed a very narrow and shallow range of public emotion. Basically anger, and sentimentality are acceptable. Anything else? You’re creepy, weird, or mentally ill.
If you go outside that box or show complexity or vulnerability, you’re socially rejected because it makes people ‘uncomfortable.’
Yeah, no, I meant less the surface level stuff and more the “anything complex” category that you brought up.
Not everybody wants to talk about that kind of stuff all the time, and that’s normal. But it has not been my experience that all men want to talk about surface level stuff and only women talk about deeper feelings.
cool, my experience is that people only want to talk about their problems, regardless of gender. they dont’ give a fuck about yours and get offended and upset if you do so. but I’m male, and I’ve never had the experience of having anyone care about my problems beyond dismissing them as ‘bringing them down’ and that i need to ‘get over it’. even when it’s my dad dying of cancer and it’s my so called ‘loving girlfriend’ of years.
This is odd to me, because talking about my feelings is how I got close to romantic partners. It’s also how I formed a lot of friendships with other men. How can you be close to someone if you don’t talk about feelings?
I know plenty of men who talk about their feelings, and they’re surrounded by friends who love them well. Seems like a skill issue to me.
I think a lot of societies don’t do enough to teach men about how to communicate and how to communicate feelings.
Part of it might also be men internalizing this notion that they can’t discuss feelings and treating other men with that same standard.
I mean, I get it, it’s harder for men than women. The change needs to start with individual men though, not with society.
Which feelings?
Very few feelings are allowed. If you keep to those social acceptable feelings, you’re fine. The second you go off-script, people are done with you.
Like I can pet my dog and say I love her. That surface level stuff is fine. But talk about anything complex, like the struggles we’ve had, or how she helped me through some depressing periods or she had a period of sickness and anxiety and misbehavior? People freak out and back away or tell me to shut up and go get a therapist and get my dog one too.
Men are allowed a very narrow and shallow range of public emotion. Basically anger, and sentimentality are acceptable. Anything else? You’re creepy, weird, or mentally ill.
If you go outside that box or show complexity or vulnerability, you’re socially rejected because it makes people ‘uncomfortable.’
Yeah, no, I meant less the surface level stuff and more the “anything complex” category that you brought up.
Not everybody wants to talk about that kind of stuff all the time, and that’s normal. But it has not been my experience that all men want to talk about surface level stuff and only women talk about deeper feelings.
cool, my experience is that people only want to talk about their problems, regardless of gender. they dont’ give a fuck about yours and get offended and upset if you do so. but I’m male, and I’ve never had the experience of having anyone care about my problems beyond dismissing them as ‘bringing them down’ and that i need to ‘get over it’. even when it’s my dad dying of cancer and it’s my so called ‘loving girlfriend’ of years.