The Road to Hell is Paved with Suppressed Emotions
There's Nothing Strong about Pretending Not to Feel
We still live in a world where most guys think shedding tears makes you a coward. Given that even the idea of a man expressing emotions in a functional way is so taboo in our society, nothing could be further from the truth.
For several years, I facilitated groups at a program for adolescent and young-adult males. Substance abuse issues got them there. But, they all had tragic stories that led them down that dark path.
If ever there was an assortment of guys who needed to cry, it was this one. There were boys who lost their fathers when they needed them most, boys whose mothers were chronic alcoholics or heroin addicts, and boys bearing scars from beatings at the hands of people who were supposed to protect them. Many were boys whose lives were so painful, they had already given up on themselves by age 14 or 15.
One of the concepts I frequently touched on with them was how we carry our emotions in our bodies; how they don’t really go away until we actually experience them. I talked to them about how much better my life became once I gave myself permission to shed all the tears I’d been carrying.
The Road to Hell is Paved with Supressed Emotions.
I talked to them about how, when we avoid our painful emotions, they come out in ugly ways – like addiction. Some guys come home and kick their dogs. Some guys beat their wives, or kids, or both. Some guys talk down to people. Some guys stay drunk or high as often as they can. As the saying goes, until we tend our wounds, we bleed all over the people we love.
I told them that I needed to cry until I was done crying. I told them they needed to cry until they were done crying. Most of the time they would listen and nod. Often, they would show curiosity, asking me questions about how and when I cried.
On one occasion, a 19-year-old said what I assumed most of them were thinking. It was his first time in a group, and he scoffed at the idea of letting loose the tears he’d been swallowing most of his life. So, I suggested he share his thoughts with the rest of us.
He didn’t ask if I, or we, thought crying in the interest of catharsis would make him a pussy. He said it would make him a pussy. He said, “that would make me a pussy.” That’s what he was taught. That’s what he believed.
It seemed remarkable to me, that two decades into the 21st century, a 19-year-old kid could not only believe that, he still believed it after several months in rehab, where he was surrounded by people prodding him to talk about his feelings.
It reminded me how fortunate I am, having been debriefed after my own indoctrination. The guys in my circle – we were all taught that stuff. If we believed it then, we don’t anymore. We have all experienced some form of life transition that led us to challenge our unhealthy beliefs and we’re better men because of it.
I don’t think I ever heard anyone utter the words “boys don’t cry” as a kid, but it was implied. We all got the message, one way or another. If you don’t stop crying I’ll give you something to cry about. Or, go to your room, and don’t come out until you’re done crying. There was the simple imperative, quit you’re crying! We spent our boyhoods avoiding the worst – being called mama’s boy, or crybaby.
Even now, in 2023, I think most boys share that experience. Maybe they’re not told they shouldn’t cry, like the 19-year-old in my group was, but they all know it.
We all know it.
The world around us doesn’t want us to cry, because men aren’t supposed to feel in the first place.
I could get into all the reasons why the world doesn’t want us to cry. But, there’s another piece of this that I think is important to consider. We see the notion of a man crying, or expressing emotions in general, in a very black and white way. There is nothing moderate about it. So, the way we address emotion in our society, especially as it pertains to males, is every bit as extreme.
In Facing Codependence, the author Pia Mellody identifies five core symptoms of that condition. When we hear the word codependency, we generally think about low self-esteem, people pleasing, enabling, and difficulty setting boundaries in relationships. But, there’s a lot more to it. Mellody calls core symptom three “ Difficulty Owning Our Own Reality,” and core symptom five, “Difficulty Experiencing and Expressing Our Reality Moderately.”
If I go through life pretending I’m never sad, because I was trained not to feel in the first place, I’m having difficulty owning my reality. You might even say, I’m not living in reality.
Furthermore, if I believe that, in order to be a real man, I must never show sadness, I must never shed tears (the black and white thinking I mentioned before), I’m having difficulty experiencing and expressing my reality moderately.
The prevailing belief in our society is that if a man cries he is weak. He can’t be strong and show up for his family in a meaningful way. He is useless.
It’s all nonsense.
I can shed tears without being a basket case. And, I can compartmentalize my feelings in such a way that I shed tears at an appropriate time, rather than when I’m needed somehow.
Having spent years watching the “men don’t feel” messages destroy people, here’s what I told my son when he was a little boy. In moments when I wondered whether he’d already cried enough, I said “cry until you’re done crying. But, when you’re done crying, be done crying.”
No dad wants his son, or daughter for that matter, to be a crybaby. Yes. There is such a thing as a crybaby. I didn’t want my son to be a crybaby. And, guess what?
I encouraged him to cry as much as he needed to as a child, and he’s not a crybaby.
So, what is a crybaby, anyway? To me, a crybaby is crippled by their tears. It’s someone who feels sorry for him or herself and is stuck there. He’s not experiencing his reality moderately.
One day, when my son was four or five, some minor household crisis ensued. It was a problem for which he was responsible. I watched something happen with him that, by this point in his childhood, I’d seen many times. He’d learn about an issue that needed to be dealt with, then he’d get scared, or sad, or both. The emotion would wash over his face, and he would cry uncontrollably. He allowed his emotions to paralyze him because he was a little boy. He didn’t know any better.
In what I consider to be one of my better moments as a father, this time, I responded by posing a question to him. “Who do you want to be,” I asked. “Do you want to be the person who cries and freezes whenever bad things happen, or do you want to be the person who responds . . . who does something about it . . . who can be there to help the people around him? . . . It’s your choice.”
My son is as tough as any kid I’ve ever met. One of the reasons he is tough is because he is not afraid to shed a tear. And, let’s be real about it, most guys are afraid to cry. That’s the truth. They are not owning their reality, let alone expressing it moderately.
There is nothing courageous about pretending not to hurt and swallowing your tears. We act as though a man has only two choices – he can either be a basket case, or he can be someone who never feels at all. It’s just not true.
There is a way of being in which a man is strong, and he expresses sadness.
It’s not one or the other. I do it. My son does it. I know plenty of men who do it. We embody that energy.
We’re given a false choice - being taught we must choose whether to be emotional or to be strong. We don’t. In fact, we can’t. Emotions are not really a choice. Either we choose to feel them or, sooner or later, they will have their way with us.
When we teach males that we should never cry, once the floodgates inevitably open, there is nothing moderate about what happens next. It’s a mess.
Because we pretend that men don’t or shouldn’t have emotions, there is no opening to teach men how to have emotions.
There can be no teachable moments like I had with my son.
So, when a man finally does cry, he looks like a basket case. Then we hear things like, “women say they want men to be sensitive, but they really don’t.” Men will say, “I tried being vulnerable with my wife once, and she was turned off.”
It's not that she doesn’t want you to be sensitive, or vulnerable. It’s that she wants to be your partner, not your mother. She wants you to be emotionally literate, rather than emotionally crippled.
Of course, when a man bottles up his emotions and suddenly explodes in tears in front of his partner, she’s repulsed by it. It’s not because he is sensitive or vulnerable. It’s because he doesn’t know how to be sensitive or vulnerable without being a basket case. She sees this behavior as weakness because that’s what it is. He is weak, because he’s never been taught that he can embody strength and show emotion at the same time.
Emotional intelligence, emotional literacy, whatever we decide to call it, it’s a strength, and we need it. But, there’s no room for it in the status quo that would have you believe feelings are feminine. Our false, dysfunctional, patriarchal beliefs around emotions and masculinity yield a society full of men who have numbed themselves from their feelings. Disconnected from ourselves and disconnected from others, we are all, more or less, emotionally crippled. That’s what we get for pretending not to feel.
Lots of us are doing things to try and reverse the damage done by this system of beliefs. But, for the most part, we’re losing the argument that men should embrace their emotions.
It doesn’t matter how many football players go on television to tell us it’s okay to talk about our feelings if we never bother to challenge the belief that to have feelings is to be weak.
To be emotional does not mean to be a mess, or to be weak. We don’t have to choose whether to be strong or to feel. We can have both. We should have both.
No matter what we believe, no matter what we’re taught, shedding tears, or for that matter, having emotions in general, does not make you a coward. In fact, when you’re living in a culture where you’re raised with that message, where the societal standard is to act as though you are not emotional, to refuse to adhere to that norm is an act of bravery. That’s the reality.
For men, the question is no longer should I feel or should I not. My hope for the 21st century is that we begin to see the bigger picture.
The question is, would I rather be an imposter, or would I rather be real?
Am I going to succumb to the societal pressure to conform, or am I going to stand in my power?
Do I want to be an emotional cripple, or do I want to be a renegade?
We get to choose. I choose the latter.
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