Why’s it so hard to be vulnerable as a guy?
What do we do with our problems? We put them in our mind vise and we crush them! At least, that’s what I always thought.
The male role models in my life were the template by which I patterned not only my actions but my affect:
An unflappable manager, who even in a company-ending calamity that could see us all unemployed, remained cool under pressure and led us to the other side successfully.
A self-possessed father that dealt with divorce and near bankruptcy never once showed a hint of doubt and whose endurance made him the rock of the family.
A principled friend who never once showed distress, whose humility and dedication to faith and family were awe-inspiring.
Through stoicism, confidence, and emotional toughness they created environments where their teams/units/families felt safe and burdenless…able to live their best lives/do their best work. Following these examples felt right, it felt like I was doing something morally good by living my life for others rather than for myself.
What this meant in practice for me (and the vast majority of men following similar codes) is that emotional pain, insecurity, and uncertainty felt like things to hide to avoid burdening others (a “just power through” mentality)...I was constantly filtering myself to avoid showing any cracks in the armor:
Don’t express fear or powerlessness in front of your partner because diffidence is unattractive.
Be calm and non-reactive with your subordinates so that they don’t lose faith in your leadership.
Don’t tell your friends you’re hurting because then you become a “burden” and they won’t want to be around you.
But the flaws in this worldview became readily apparent when my Mom died unexpectedly. I didn’t tell a soul: I quietly took 2 days off work, put her affairs in order, and returned to life as usual. I even went to the gym the night it happened (never skip leg day) and hung out with my gym buddy after.
I eventually told my best friend several weeks later and my surviving parents found out by accident via the obituary in the local paper. I had thought “what could they possibly do? This is just something you have to deal with internally anyways,” but all that did was hurt my friends and family who wondered why I wouldn’t depend on them and needlessly prolonged the healing process. I didn’t have to go through that (or anything else really) alone.
The Consequences of Male Stoicism
While we all deal with anxious and avoidant tendencies, and we all hope our partner and friends will accept an unfiltered version of ourselves, research shows that men struggle more with emotional vulnerability and intimacy in part due to this man-as-protector ethos.
Men feel immense social pressure to live up to these expectations. In one study, respondents (male and female) were 20% less likely to characterize men sharing their emotions as positive/agreeable. Likewise, Men generate additional pressure on themselves–the same study found men take a more moralizing stance with respect to the emotional feelings and behaviors that they believe to be appropriate for men and women. That is to say, men broadly see emotional regulation as a matter of right vs. wrong, not just personality.
As a direct consequence, there is an entire cohort of disconnected, isolated, emotionally unavailable men. The effect of this extends beyond the obvious impact on romantic relationships. A 2019 survey concluded that one in five men have no close friends, twice as many as women. In 2021, the Survey Center on American Life found that the number of men saying they had at least six close friends halved from 55% to 27%.
The result? The male to female suicide ratio is almost four to one. Even if you set aside suicide, further research has shown that long-term social isolation can increase a person’s risk of premature death by as much as 32% (e.g. via chronic illness like heart disease).
All around, the findings demonstrate that when these men experience high levels of emotional pain, they have problems identifying symptoms and disclosing distress and this, along with the coping mechanisms used (alcohol, drugs), exacerbate and prolong distress.
Breaking Through
You can logically understand the problems with suppressing one's emotions and still be unable to change the behavior. It took a couple key realizations for me to change:
I want my friends to be open with me and believe that I will accept them unconditionally…I would be crushed if I learned they were holding back or didn’t think they could depend on me. Why would I believe my friends were any different? By bottling things up I was harming the relationship in the exact way I was trying to avoid.
Discovering through discussions with exes (now friends) that my attempts at projecting stability and strength to depend on when they were feeling overwhelmed/anxious was instead perceived as being unresponsive/dismissive.
Ultimately no one in my life had sent any signals they would reject an unfiltered version of me, and jumping to such a conclusion without evidence is a prime example of a thought distortion.
Practicing Vulnerability
Changing our stance towards emotional vulnerability is necessary for our long-term health and well-being…but rewriting beliefs that have become central to the moral code of many including myself is a tall order. Like any other behavior change, it is a gradual process of breaking down and building new habits.
Some low-stakes steps you can take to begin practicing vulnerability include:
Start with something positive: tell a friend what they really mean to you. It will feel like a much smaller leap to share something that could only be received positively and has no perceived risk of being misconstrued.
Talk to a therapist: sometimes you do need a filter, don’t overcorrect to radical honesty…therapists are professionals with a code of conduct, they can act as an impartial 3rd party that can listen non-judgmentally. Sometimes just saying things out loud is all you need, and other times they can help you build skills to navigate complex situations.
Express ambivalence: when you’re uncertain or have mixed feelings about something, share that with your partner/others. Showing that you don’t always have the answers, are open to their perspective, and want to work on forming a conclusion “together” can build immense trust…this will come in handy when you inevitably stick your foot in your mouth.
Reflect and find yourself: maybe you’ve been “filtering” for so long and so often you don’t actually know what you actually feel or who you really are…that’s not particularly uncommon. Think about the people that bring out your best qualities, those that make you feel the most comfortable and where you have to put in the least effort into socializing successfully. Likewise, identify the opposite groups, those that bring out the worst in you or feel like it takes extreme exertion to interact successfully. Reflect on what changes you can make in your life to get more time with the former and less of the latter.
Being vulnerable does not come at the expense of your masculinity. Ironically, the mental fortitude and emotional stability needed to be there for the people around us comes in part from our capacity to share and cope with our emotions.
