As a guy, I never really felt comfortable saying those things to anyone irl.
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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.
As a guy who’s half European and half Arabian, no I don’t feel comfortable expressing emotions or feelings. Each time I have done that, I get shit for it back.
“Man up”, “that’s just life” and “I know you’ll push through it”. Is what I hear. They rather have me be aggressive than to be emotional more often than not. While I’m trying to get rid of my anger issues.
So instead of expressing emotions, I just put it all in a diary. Never thought I’d be using one but it truly helps.
Relatable; as guy who grew up in a Chinese household, I always get told: “男子漢大丈夫，流血不流淚” (Think it translates to: True men can let their blood bleed and will not shred their tears… ?)
So that how I got interested in writing poetry and listening to music… very emotional and sometimes outright depressing music
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.
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
In personal settings, sure. In professional ones, not really
I cry all the time, dawg.
I will express my feelings with words no problem. I can cry under certain circumstances and in front of certain people. But I won’t do so in front of others, though I think it has to do with me not being used to do so, more than feeling that is not a masculine thing to do.
Like farting. You know your farting audience.
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…
Men and women lie when they say they want you to express yourself more. Whether they intend to or not, they get angry or sad about you burdening them with knowledge of your own experiences. Many will atore away anything you confide with them, so they can use it against you further down the line.
Sometimes people act like they’re helping but it means they just bring up your problem again and again and confuse you as to what you really want to do about it. This could absolutely be done on accident, in an eagerness to help, but i also see it done deliberatrly by a few, just to pester people
I struggle on two fronts with this - I don’t want to “burden” others with how I feel, and fairly often I don’t know what I feel.
Grew up in the American Midwest as a preacher’s kid. My parents are awesome people, but Dad’s job meant our family had to seem close to perfect for small town political reasons - we had their support for any kind of crisis, but we had to keep it inside the house so our single limited income wasn’t threatened.
Between that and a family full of neurospiciness, it felt like we were always on the edge of catastrophe. I was generally able to get by day to day, so I just kept quiet so we all had room to deal with whatever else needs handled.
So, I think I got in the habit of bottling things until I couldn’t even tell what I was feeling, and also developed an aversion to sharing what I could tell was bothering me. I’m open to the idea of sharing things, I just can’t often tell what needs shared until it pops out unexpectedly.
I don’t usually talk about my feelings (I am a woman) but people of all genders seem to feel comfortable confiding in me.
So maybe it’s not so much that men don’t express emotions, more that people in general don’t express them to men?
Or even more likely we are all different and it’s not so much a gender thing. As a stereotype I’ve heard it plenty but in practice it hasn’t seemed so. If I was being sexist I’d say men complain more about physical pain and women complain more openly about unhappiness, but I can’t say it’s a big difference IME.
No. I keep pretty much everything to myself. I am convinced that no good can come of me expressing any of my emotions. I need to be a rock. I allow myself a few minutes of crying when a relative dies.
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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.
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
