As a guy, I never really felt comfortable saying those things to anyone irl.
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Thank you, btw, for being there for the ones who feel alone in this world. I hope you know you’re appreciated. Full disclosure: I’ve been one of those men.
As a guy it’s far easier to talk to women about things than to other guys.
Gay cis male
When around my boomer parents: Fuck no
When around my friends: Hell yeah! Some of the straight guys use me as a sounding board for their emotions, since they know I’m not going to judge them.
I tell my family I love them, I tell my best friends I love them, I hug people I care about, I tell them I miss them, they’ve seen me cry. It doesn’t make me feel any less of a man. If somebody says it does, they aren’t somebody I want to close with. Fuck em.
I wish I could be you, and I have a dear friend who is as liberal with his truth.
I worry so many of us suffered unintentional neglect during times of crises - divorces, poverty-driven migration, etc - because everyone had to cope and keep working and was exhausted in the rebuild, that we aren’t as free with our feelings as we should be because we didn’t see or get the practice.
And poor people don’t get professional help to course-correct since they’re barely food-secure.
But you’re awesome. And every time I see a grown-ass man displaying physical parental affection for his child - a kiss, a hug, snuggling a sleepy babeh, all that - I know that child has amazing potential to express his/her own affection without so much reservation.
It’s a good trend. Keep it up.
Be the change you want to see in the world. Sometimes it has to be introduced slowly and with compassion, sometimes it has to be radical as it can be urgent. Even in African villages where men are committing suicide, they create safe spaces to talk about their feelings. (I think this is one of the videos on the topic - can’t watch it due to age gate).
It’s not easy and everybody’s path is different. If you can’t find somebody locally (friend(s) or therapist), you can start online. It helped me too. But always try and stay critical. Many self-help groups for me are taken over by right-wingers who say “you can be yourself here”, make men feel safe and then give them a scapegoat (immigrants, women, whatever) and spread hate towards other groups.
I was very lucky to grow up in the environment and places I did, and recognise that not everybody can be so lucky.
Best of luck and hope that you will be able to make those connections that allow you express your feelings ❤️ Emotions are human.
Coming from the Midwest I don’t think I ever felt uncomfortable expressing any emotions. I could kind of rattle off whatever I wanted to say without too much thinking.
But having lived in Los Angeles for roughly 10 years now I’m afraid to be open at all. When I first came here I was accused of hacking people’s credit cards twice because here knowing about computers means you’re a hacker. I learned to keep my mouth shut and become a robot; toxic/fake positivity is everywhere here and if you don’t play along then you’re quickly cast aside.
I spent some time in the midwest and you nailed it exactly. People in the midwest aren’t nice, they’re fake nice.
Sounds like they meant LA was worse
Yes, initially I found Los Angeles much nicer but after time felt it was much more fake. You can’t really speak your mind here.
Wait, you think the midwest is nice for real? That was not my experience at all. I got a lot of nice polite words to your face with a lot of being nasty when your back was turned. Not everyone was that way of course, but it was the very large majority
Yeah I’m experiencing the complete opposite here. I remember being able to discuss actual topics and not talking shit every time someone turns their back in the Midwest. I don’t remember the last time I felt I could actually be myself here (California).
As someone who has lived in the Midwest, the biggest distinction is if I’m in a city, a suburb, or rural town. People in cities can’t emotionally afford to be genuine to everybody they meet. Rural folk are suspicious of outsiders, but will help you hide a body if you’re in the group. Suburbians can be a happy medium, at least in my experience.
I can believe it a bit. I feel like LA gets influenced quite a lot culturally from Hollywood, and it’s morphed into a lot of fakeness, a competitive atmosphere, and lots of people trying to front being wealthy or coming from money.
I don’t think that’s everyone, but some of my friends that moved to LA struggled with the clicky-ness of the place and another I visited had friends that all were money focused and wanting to flex their wealth or their family’s wealth.
The older I get, the more I realize that opening up makes things worse.
Same. Especially significant others (length of relationship doesn’t matter) it actively makes things worse. So I keep them to myself.
I am so very sorry you have to live like this.
In general, reading a lot of these comments in this thread is just heartbreaking.
I really think this is a cultural thing in part. I live in a progressive social democracy in Europe, and I really don’t think many see it like most people here do. I asked a couple of the more traditionally masculine/male friends and they tell me the share everything too, that they need it in a relationship especially, since they do hold stuff in from others apparently. But the very closest ones, friends and spouses that is, they need to lighten the load. And I recognize that too. Shit’s too heavy to carry alone.
I’m cis male, and I think I do a better job of it than many, though I think there are some lingering effects of cultural expectations and upbringing that don’t always make it easy.
In personal settings, sure. In professional ones, not really
I am very comfortable expressing any emotion, as long as it is anger. I am also keenly aware that most times I attempt to express any emotion emotion other than anger, the person or people I am expressing it to are most likely to mistake it for anger.
When people tell men “you can tell me anything” what they mean is “I don’t want to feel like you’re keeping things from me.”
It 100% does NOT mean “you will face no negative consequences for telling me.”
Men keep some things to themselves because sharing feelings has resulted in getting burned too many times.
These things aren’t necessarily bad. They might just shatter exciting illusions the other person prefered over the ordinary truth.
I think I’m emotionally stunted from years of repressing my feelings. I don’t feel that strongly about most things. A lot of people will comment about how stoic and quiet I am, but it’s not like there’s really too much to express. When I am “upset”, it’s usually because I’m exhausted or hungry.
That being said, in times of catastrophic events (deaths, break ups, etc), I might get upset. But I tend to be very good at expressing myself with words. I take my time and choose them carefully, so much so that sometimes other people will think that im being silent; im not, I’m thinking about all the ways this could play out depending on what I say.
Crying only happens quietly, to myself, maybe once a year, and usually because of some dumb kids movie that gets to me. I think the last one was Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.
African American male. Growing up it was the “Man up” “no one cares” and all of that negative talk.when trying to be open I still express feelings and emotion but I do limit it depending on who I’m around, and those people are very rare for me to want to be around longer than a small talk catch up while passing by
I cry all the time, dawg.
As a person of the male genre I prefer to express my emotions through body hair
I think its a maturity thing for guys. My gym buddies and I were talking about mental health a while back and I said “I was on meds for a while because I had an irrational sense that life wasnt worth living. A year later on the meds I was fat, unmotivated and had erectile dysfunction and I was like ‘Great, now I have legitimate reasons to think about killing myself’ so I came off the pills.”
The 20 somethings all looked super fucking uncomfortable, the thirty somethings nodded and made sympathetic faces and the other 40+ guy said “How are you doing with it these days?” Of course I immediately deflected and said “Oh its hard as a rock” which got the laugh and broke the tension. But the only guy who didnt duck the conversation was the guy of a similar age who had a rough divorce years before I knew him…
I’m from EU. I’ve noticed that the maturing and openness is related to not being under the influence of USA culture (social media, tv, movies, etc). As in - the open, expressive, thinking guys in my bubble happen to be not watching TV, social medias, youtube and such.
I’m transfem, which has had some interesting effects on how emotionally open I am. I feel I’ve been more able to be open since I transitioned, but that might also just be the effect of being around LGBT+ people - my family still gets annoyed when I’m less controlled around them
