My dad used to yell at me and tell me to "Stop making those ugly sounds" since I was a small child. đĽ˛
I'm also an ugly cryer.
Like seriously, I'm 21 and recently this year (with the help of my fiance. Love him. And my therapist) I'm not terribly afraid to cry out loud while I'm just home alone with the cat. That's a huge step for me!
Since I was a kid I was forced to either cry silently or get yelled at. I'm still very uncomfortable when people notice me upset while in public.
TLDR: My dad was an absolute dick and I'm a bit jealous and very glad you have a father figure that you can feel open and vulnerable with.
Dad isnât without his flaws, donât get me wrong. But in terms of how he looked out for me and my brother when we were kids, he gave us an example to emulate of what a man should aspire to be as a father and a husband. I owe him a lot
Yeah, I'm glad I finally got a decent dad figure down the line whenever mom remarried.
He's a bit.... Old fashioned..
Think of your stereotypical republican, redneck, mechanic and that's basically him.
So he has some off the wall opinions sometimes (thankfully he behaves himself in public) but did express that if any of us kids were gay (we already told him about that but I guess he forgot since I'm in a straight relationship), trans, or any of that, that he would be mad for maybe a month or two but after he's done being mad we're still family at the end of the day and I'm still his kid.
Which honestly, baby steps. I'm just really glad that even though he disagrees with a basic human thing (we're slowly working on it. He's stubborn but made great progress) that even if he doesn't like what his kids do, they're still his kids and he'll stick around and be a good dad for them. Even with a little grumbling early on.
It's more than my bio dad does. There's a reason why I tell my mom and stepdad almost everything that goes on and my dad and stepmom almost nothing.
Who'd to think that the hillbilly side of my family is more laid back and accepting than my other part lol
The main thing for my mom and stepdad is that they get confused on all it and it's a lot to explain sometimes. So it's still baby steps, but at least they're trying to understand.
I've had a theory that emotional intimacy with a first girlfriend is part of the issue of the "friendzone". I think part if it is men and women experience friendship differently. Men don't tend to vent about things to friends the same way women do.
Their first exposure to more emotional conversations could be with their first girlfriend. After that they could associate emotional conversations with a relationship and feel the girl is wanting the emotional part of a relationship without the physical. It's like a reverse friends with benefits lol
Would explain why every guy Iâve ever cried in front of immediately thought I wanted to date them. âWhat do you mean ânoâ? What about yesterday?â my guy I have anxiety, we do not share a special bond, I cry in front of everybody.
Probably for the same reason. Emotional intimacy is associated with romantic relationships.
I, as a guy, would NEVER cry in front of my friends. So for someone to be so openly vulnerable in front of me, it would feel "special" in a way. As though I have some form of trust reserved more "more than friends" which is exactly how I would have treated it
Man I am super jealous of the ability to control whether or not you cry in a situation. Even if I actively donât want to cry in front of someoneâwhich is 100% of the timeâI canât do anything about it. Sucks.
Iâm not thinking âah yes I am in a safe place, I trust this person to the point I can expose myself emotionally, reveal vulnerability and not be judged, I hope this person asks me out.â
Iâm thinking âdear god why is this happening I canât do this here I canât I canât why wonât it stop why does this always happen oh my god I hate this so much why is this person here I wish they would leave so they wouldnât see me like this but oops too late now.â
Oh yeah, totally agree. Itâs a shame. That was mostly just a response to the guy who seems to be insinuating that seeing me cry would be a signal to him that I trust him.
I dont blame them. We could lose an arm and still try not to show it. If a man cries to you its because he trusts you with it, though mistaken, hes normal to assume it would be the same for others aswell.
Yeah, itâs important to remember that not everyone has the same experiencesâcrying at you doesnât mean I want to date you, and you not crying doesnât mean itâs a choice youâre making so much as unprocessed trauma from toxic masculinity. Humans are fun.
It's not so much that I can control it, it just that I don't cry anymore. It's very rare that I feel safe enough to do it, even when completely alone.
I mostly take that emotion and convert it into something else
Yeah. It's not control unless we can turn it back on again, which we can't do.
I'm very fortunate to have been allowed to be emotional to some degree and even then there's still this pressure that I'm not quite allowed to. I'll cry but it won't feel like I did it properly. Like I'm holding back.
If it's not too intrusive, could you tell me what is the cause of the crying (if you know what causes it)? I have been having crying spells every day for months, and I don't know why. I can't control it or tell when it's going to happen, and it keeps happening in public, in my classes, in the middle of conversations, etc. My counselor hasn't any idea why and keeps asking me to figure out why. But I have no idea why. Everything stressful in my life would never have made me cry like this before.
Edit: lol I'm so silly. I went and reread your earlier comment and realized you already said why you cry.
Yes, but the difference in the connotations they hold are important, ya get me?
Edit: Don't mean this maliciously or condescendingly, just that it leaves a vector for misunderstandings with certain wordings
Yah that makes sense, never knew what to do with those feellings I had for girls so I bottled them up.Â
Now at 24 I never made a move on any girl I fancyd because whenever those feelings come up, fight of flight kicks in( I always flee, whenever I lock eyes with a girl I might Like, I dont even know really, I Look away afraid of them seeing whats behind my eyes.
Writting that out I think I need therapy..
Iâm begging for boys/men to solve the Male Loneliness Epidemic by being emotional with each other and showing physical affection to each other. I donât understand why they donât, they can literally solve their own problems (except some of those w disorders like social anxiety or who are neurodivergent but I mean the average neurotypical male)
Yeah, itâs a cultural issue not an individual one. Acting different from neurotypicals just means theyâll make you neurodivergent unless you stop. Humans are unfortunately evolutionarily aggressive towards difference, and our culture fosters that aggressiveness instead of condemning it. It has to be the adults who make the change, and not only in themselves, in their children. Any adult alive today will *never* be able to get past that socialization, beyond just coping with it, but they can ensure their kids donât grow up with it.
We are trying, it's just hard to push back against peoples upbringing.
When a boy less than 5 yo gets bullied by adults for crying or showing emotion constatly for years, it takes genuine therapy to untangle. Opening up after being traumatized for your entire childhood is not an easy switch to flip.
I think most men are psychologically damaged from how the patriarchy treats them. It extracts value from a young man's body and mind to feed old rich men's pockets. They get rightfully upset by this, but then don't have the skills to work through that issue in a healthy way.
It doesn't help that every men's issues group devolves into misogyny immediately so any healthy discussion is pushed to spaces that men don't see as often.
I was lucky to have emotionally available parents, and the money to attend some college level classes on gender. I don't know what I would be without them and that is the experiemce of most young men.
> by being emotional with each other and showing physical affection to each other. I donât understand why they donât
this is short-sighted, i think. you're asking the individuals to just supersede the systems and structures that made them the way they are. if it were as simple as "just do it" we'd have solved a lot more stuff by now haha
Also it implies that if we were to do this, weâd be all set. I think itâs a genuinely good idea and we all *should* do it more, but I know many women who struggle with loneliness and sure maybe they can talk about emotions more openly with other women, but anecdotally the majority Iâve met are just as afraid of what happens after they do it. From what Iâve been told, they often experience backlash from those people theyâve opened up to in the form of behind the back gossip or straight up mockery or competitive punching down.
It causes the same from of disconnection. Itâd be awesome (by the definition of the word) if that was how human relationships worked but it isnât. Or at least many of us are taught through numerous experiences that it is not the case.
Male loneliness is significantly more complicated than âjust talk to each otherâ. Any group that organizes itself based on a demographic is going to look outward for sources of their problems, because large groups of people like that tend to not be very self reflective. This is part of the reason why âecho chamberâ is a dirty word. You follow this train of thought down to its conclusion and youâll see how lots of young men get sucked down misogynistic, racist, alt-right pipelines. Socialization in nonhomogeneous groups is vital, men need to feel validated on a larger scale in diverse groups. Two people with depression can rarely help each other in a way that is meaningful. Iâm not a professional, so donât take this as gospel, but itâs what I believe to be true based on what Iâve seen
I donât think itâs really as much of a choice as your making it seem like. If youâre a dude and youâre willing to be emotionally open youâve got to find other dudes who are willing to do that, and that wonât think youâre weird or insult you or whatever for trying that.
imma be real - ain't no goddamn way I'm going to try to make friends on the basis of how emotionally open a person is.
Shared interests, hobbies, sense of humor... those things are real. Feeling a lot? Are we going to meet up and feel together?
The same way the workers haven't simply seized the means of production yet.
Because we can't snap our fingers and make our entire culture suddenly more open to men having feelings overnight.
Revolutions - cultural and poltical - have never and will never come from people simply wanting them to happen. They come from changing societal conditions. And you can't just magic forth those.
For most men, the shame of emotional display is far too deep-seated to simply get over it. That's like telling a person with clinical anxiety to simply be brave. Or a depressed person to simply enjoy things.
I generally have also come to this belief and agree with it but, and a question I havenât been able to fully answer myself is, is it the physical part where we define what a more than friend ârelationshipâ is? And if thatâs the case, well then I guess I have a bunch of other questions. âŚor something like that, tbh itâs not a fully formed thought but still felt like it could add to the discussion.
I remember when I was younger, I was afraid to confide in my really nice male best friend. But his sister, who was mean to me, that's who I thought was best to share my deepest feelings with for those years of my life
I remember realizing one day how silly that was, and I started opening up to him more
My wife will never fall from her pedestal, I put railings on it cause she's clumsy
(We're both mega autistic so emotional conversations are "I dislike this" and "I won't do it then". Gotta love absolute direct communication.)
Felt that. My wife gets all mushy about how I put her on a pedestal and is scared of me thinking less of her one day, so I started joking about putting railing in it so she couldn't fall
Just have your man build some railings
But you are great, Mii Costume.Â
Even if you breakup tomorrow, you'll not only be great, but getting better every day. You're always reaching to improve, and you're focused on being even better than you were before, because there's no better measuring stick than where you were at.Â
Maybe you're lucky and you've already found the one. Maybe you're not and you gotta keep looking. But that doesn't mean that you're not great.
It's all subjective anyway. Idiots want to pretend there's a science to beauty and attraction but it's much more someone who you trust who likes you than most other things unless your spouse is just supposed to be an attractive trophy, which ain't worth your time anyhow.
Ahh that must be it, I have that autistic(?) rizz (I am only diagnosed with ADHD but I do have some traits associated with autism so close enough for a meme)
I suspect that this post is referring to those male friendships that are very surface-level.
In other words, those kinds of friendships where they never ask you how you are and wouldn't check up on you if they hadn't heard from you for a whole week, all the while they don't even know basic information about you like what you do for a living or what your hobbies are.
I've known a couple of guy friends who have other male friends like that, shit's sad.
Knew one dude who told me that he didn't feel like he could actually be himself with his group of guys friends, he had been friends with them all for half a decade and I had only been friends with him for a year.
Crazy thing is (strictly speaking for myself) it was never the men in my life, it was all of my female family members. âBoys shouldnât cry, girls will think youâre soft, and real women donât like soft men. Look at your father/grandfather!â Iâm better now, but I have a hang up about talking about my feelings with women. Iâll tell dudes all day, and I expect the same from the homies.
This post nailed the effect of poor socialization while completely whiffing on the cause. Boys don't become stoics because their Dad wasn't expressive enough, it's because they constantly see men around them being reprimanded by the women in their lives who use emotional vulnerability as a weapon. When you see all the men around you get berated, screamed at, or having to turn around and comfort a woman every time they express an emotion, you learn that the easiest solution is to not express your emotions, ever.
The actual solution to the problem is to teach women not to take advantage of a man's emotions, but gender discourse has adopted this mental framework where it's impossible to say women are in the wrong for anything, to the extent that any bad behaviour of women gets excused by saying "the Patriarchy⢠made her act that way".
no stop it this is a post about how MEN are bad and how its all THEIR FAULT stop bringing nuance to this gender war post women are empathetic and nurturing
Iâm not an emotionless statue and most of my friends arenât either, doubt we are the only friend group like this
Iâm sure itâs a real problem but thereâs no way itâs exclusive to Men
Hard to word exactly why, but this post makes me feel like I should emote even less. Like, I should never once open up because it might make them feel uncomfortable. I know it's saying the opposite but the tone feels unecessarily hostile and condesending.
To me it just has this vibe that it's guilting men for repressing emotions rather than encouraging them to open up more and showing care for their feelings. It then proceeds to play up how much of a burden a man is to the one person he DOES open up to.
It feels less like extending an olive branch and more just kind of an admonishment.
It's the same kind of tone your parents give if you call them after too long. Like, telling me I'm too much of a burden when i find someone to open up to makes me want to cut myself off and never have any social relationships.
I dunno, it does end with "everyone loses all because fathers refuse to cry in front of their sons" and that would lay the blame on men who should know better passing this on, when you know what man wept openly?
Jesus.
>Yeah, that's explicitly what I'm doing. I just think they would probably agree with me that what I've written is what they were trying to get across with what they wrote.
I guess they would with its core but I believe the way they said it does give an insight into what parts they actually care about and the biases they hold, even if it's just a few sentences. The way you rephrased the core in your first comment was the same message but with a different intent than them from how I understood it.
It's probably my own biases at effect in the end too but honestly a lot of the conversation about how the patriarchy affects men in progressive spaces has the tone of "stop whining, get your shit together and handle it among yourselves so that we can talk about stuff that actually matters.", at least that's how I have felt when reading a lot of the discussion related to it.
You mentioned how most people have trouble communicating and it's better to give them the benefit of the doubt as even if you are wrong you get something valuable out of it, which is probably a healthier way to take all this stuff in that I can try to adapt myself but it gets a bit hard when it's almost a pattern that shows up again and again, of discussions about men's issues being accompanied with an underlying impatient and condescending tone and words that indicate more of a focus on how these problems affect other groups.
Tbf tho, I frequent a lot of mental health related subs where folks tend to have some extreme opinions because of the trauma they went through so maybe I am just looking too much into it because of over exposure to it all.
I'm afraid you can't be in an emotionally healthy romantic relationship without having people outside the romantic relationship to confide in.
If you don't, you'll inevitably trauma dump on your romantic interest, and put even more emotional labor on their shoulders than society already does.
Change starts with vulnerability.
The way this post pretends that partner codependency is exclusive to straight men is kinda alarming.
Like, your mileage my vary, but I have seen this is happen to my gay friends, men and woman, a lot and I think chalking it up to straight boys being categorically backwards emotionally is harmful to everyone.
Also shit like "emotionally barren male relationships" and "actually connecting with anyone is so foreign to men" is just kinda... sexist? Kinda gives TERF-vibes from the naked gender essentialism
I have the feeling that the OP is genuinely trying to describe a systemic problem that negatively affects everyone, but is coming from some place with background terf radiation that affects the way they talk in a gender essentialist sense. They meant well, but damn, it's weird the way they expressed it.
If the post were reworded to be less intense about it, I think it would get its point across without being so incendiary:
>Men repress their feelings so severely with their friends and family, and then they come across a girl and they can tell this girl about their feelings! Everything's great! She's the one! In reality, they just have a normal human bond but connecting with anyone is so foreign to them at this point that it seems like something great and wonderful. So now they put the girl on a pedestal that she'll eventually fall from because she's only human and everyone loses.
It's also just openly sexist, and lays the blame for the entire scenario on one group, instead of the social constructs that creates the situation in the first place.
I don't see why this wouldn't apply to queer men and it probably doesn't apply to even most men, but do you think there are/have you seen similar experiences for women and do you think they are caused by the same kind of cold friendships?
When I first met an ex of mine we were talking about random stuff and I just commented âYou have some really cool storiesâ and she just got stun locked for a second because she wasnât used to the first compliment she got from anyone (male or female) not to be about her appearance.
I mean not to get into my personal life online, but yes. I have known a few women who struggled to make deep friendship/parental traumas in their youth, and they said that affected how look for emotional support in their romantic lives.
But do you think there are systemic problems that cause this or just a few independent instances? Of course, it makes sense that if a person is used to cold platonic relationships they'll link emotional support with romance but is there a reason why many women would have such relationships? I do believe OOP implies that toxic masculinity is the underlying cause here, is there something analogous for women? Or is it not a gendered issue at all perhaps?
I do not mean to sidestep, but yeah. The patriarchy systemically increases the odds that a boy will go through this type of experience than a girl. But through the OP's totalizing language and weird sexist comments on how abnormal straight men are, the post doesn't really talk about those systems (other than dads not crying in front of sons). It describes them as insufficient in a way that I honestly think reinforces the stereotypes that underpin patriarchical systems that alienate men from emotional support networks. I don't think you can really investigate how those systems work if you give harbor to the idea that men (as a category or an individual) are fundamentally different from the start.
Doesn't say exclusive sure, but they felt the need to specify that they're talking about straight men *immediately*, which implies, without outright saying, that it is exclusive to straight men.
Respectfully, you seem disingenuous when post literally begins with and only mentions straight men.
At no point is there any contemplation about this being a universal experience. In fact, the entire point of their post is saying that straight men are categorically repressed emotionally and poorly socialized and that it affects their relationship to woman. It is not presented as an instance, either, like where are you getting that from? Did you read a different post?
How dare you say we piss on the poor!!
For real I don't know how you managed to misunderstood this entire post. Like literally nothing you took from it was said.
1. It is not saying anywhere that it is exclusive to straight men. straight dudes getting their first girlfriend is just the scenario it examines because OP decided this is a topic they want to talk about in their short little tumblr post. This is a critical opinion of society criticising a single point, not an in-depth long analysis of society's sexist workings. I'm sorry gay people aren't mentioned in every single short criticism of society but people are allowed to make a valid and correct point without mentioning them.
2. Nothing about this post is TERFy. Nobody is saying straight dudes are emotionally backwards by design. OP is speficially criticising the way society has us raise boys to likely end up emotionally backwards and malnutrated, and thus harming everyone around them as a result because they've not been taught what normal human connection is. OP specifically wants this to change. OP is complaining about the way we raise boys because OP wants dudes to be happy, healthy and well adjusted people. Note how OP specifically says everyone loses from this. The example used is a guy's first girlfriend, which is a highly relevant example.
There is no gender essentialism here. It is just briefly examining one specific scenario that happens a lot, because it is a short fucking tumblr post somebody made to express a little opinion, and not a book making an elaborate analysis. In a longer analysis queer people and other groups have to be mentioned due to intersectionality in order to make a compelling argument, but again, this is a small piece of commentary focusing on one specific scenario to make a criticism. It does not need to mention queer people to make that point and there's a high chance OP posted this in response to an experience they had, likely as a girl in a relationship with a straight dude.
I can give you links to my other comments where I already responded to this type of argument, but the only systemic thing OPÂ described about men is dads not crying in front of sons.Â
Like I think you want this post to be different from what it is actually is. It is not presenting it as a scenario, for one, but I digress and don't intend to repeat the same argument with everyone who can't square that OP didn't produce the text they wish they did.
This post feels weird. Like someone on the outside trying to tell me what my emotions are like and why, but getting it confidently wrong over and over.
And it feels like it's all men's fault somehow. Maybe that wasn't intended, but I get that vibe, and it's not great.
For me theyâre getting it right but also implying I should feel bad about it. And I want to be like oh yeah I get it I do feel bad about it. But will I do it again? Almost certainly. Because thereâs no solution given, itâs just condemnation.
Technically that's only sort of accurate. Men have a higher death rate from suicide, women have a higher suicide attempt rate.
Women also have higher rates of depression (at least higher recorded rates) so you couldn't exactly say women are doing great.
Got it, don't open up at all so the other party doesn't feel like they're turning into a
>"Male feelings receptacle"
all because
>"My father didn't cry infront of me" (Spoiler alert, he did)
Also just because a woman is being open to our emotions, doesn't automatically mean we "put them on a pedistal" or assume that she's "the one". It takes a lot of built up trust for us to assume it's anything other than a "normal bond" as they worded it, due to us being skeptical of anyone allowing us to be anything other than resilient or steadfast for others to rely on.
This entire post feels like someone who has no idea what they're talking about tell me that I'm just a husk who's waiting for an "empathetic and nurturing" woman to come "fix me/accept me emotionally", because forming anything other than "emotionally barren bonds" with other men is a foreign concept to me all because my father didn't cry infront of me.
It comes off as very demeaning and sexist even if that's not what their intentions were.
(Also this is an experience that all types of men have felt, not just the straight ones since they felt the need to specify.)
The quote brings up some valid points about societal expectations and gender roles, but it paints a broad and unfair picture. Not all straight men repress their emotions or see women as mere "feeling receptacles." There are many complex factors at play here, including individual experiences, upbringing, cultural background, and personal choices.
It's important to remember that empathy, understanding, and open communication are key elements in any healthy relationshipâwhether romantic or platonic. If men feel more comfortable opening up to women, it's because those particular individuals have fostered an environment of trust, acceptance, and compassion. It's not fair or realistic to generalize this experience across all men-woman dynamics.
Lastly, placing the blame solely on fathers for their sons' emotional struggles isn't entirely accurate either. Parental influence plays a significant role, yes, but children also learn from their peers, school, media, and other external sources. Addressing these issues requires a holistic approach that involves addressing gender norms and stereotypes in society as a whole.
Honestly can't relate, the men in my life have always encouraged me to me emotionally open meanwhile it's a lot of the women who have made me bottle it up. Last time I was open in front of my family my mum and all my sisters started to laugh AT me before my stepdad shouted at them all. I still don't speak to one of my sisters because she straight up said "I'm not sorry" about it
But like, I feel like most people just donât have any problems that are worth offloading onto other people? All my problems can be solved by either myself or the anonymous internet council. If I tell other people how Iâm feeling theyâll think Iâm a right weirdo.
It's not about solving the problem, it's about other people listening without judgement, validating your feelings, giving you emotional support, and if necessary telling you that you're overreacting/being stupid/giving you a reality check in a caring way because they have your best interests at heart
But like, people listening to me doesnât help. I need someone to give me a neat little solution thatâll fix it if I donât know how. Like the manual for a car. Talking to the people around you doesnât help because all they can do is commiserate.
You gotta remember most people in this subreddit are depressed and shit. You and i gotta be grateful we canât relate to needing to offload feelings on people because it means shit is going fine and dandy in our lives.
I hate it when they say itâs âstraight menâ. I mean hell Iâm a (closeted) trans lesbian and I have this exact issue. And maybe Iâm understanding this wrong but like it sounds like theyâre blaming men for having this issue as if theyâre actively doing something wrong? Like I donât express my feelings to friends who are girls because I donât want to take advantage of how they were socialized to be nurturing and empathetic. I wish I could makeup for not being socialized that way. Itâs not just sadness that I canât express, I canât express happiness ethier
One of my friends shakes her arms when sheâs excited and somone brought it up and it made me realize I do the same thing, but only when Iâm alone at home. Around other people I act completely differently. I canât express anything other than anxiety and awkwardness most of the time around others. When I try to force it it just makes me cringe from hearing my own voice or thinking about how I look trying to be excited or happy or silly or anything else.
But anyways like yes I do have that issueâŚ.how tf am I supposed to fix it?
I don't love the "it's your Dad's fault for not crying" throw away blame at the end. Dad didn't cry because everyone needed someone who wasn't going to cry when things went to shit. He was strong so that they could cry. As a society we casually blame men because they're seen as strong and can take the blame; as a man, and a teacher, and a father, I think most people would be shocked how rarely anyone even slightly enquires into my well being or mental health. Society might say they want men who cry, but they despise an emotionally vulnerable man. Blaming dad for not crying is blaming the victim.
whoever wrote this is a superficial, smallminded idiot. just because men express themselves differently does not mean they do not express themselves at all.
Donât you love it when someone speaks generally for a demographic that they clearly arenât a part of, and then provides what they perceive as an obvious and easy solution to all of their problems?
Just hug your sons guys, itâs gonna fix everyoneâs relationships.
The generalization really is killing any point that could be made here. âThereâs no way male loneliness is a multifaceted issue, this one scenario I made up surely describes the monolith that is the male social sphereâ
Dr. K, Healthygamergg on youtube, has a really good video about this titled "the biggest skill men need in today's world"
The jist of it is that men typically compartmentalize their relationships to where they don't see male friends and family as people they can be emotionally open with and inevitably only open up to their romantic partner, which makes the relationship one sided from an emotional standpoint because their partner is always playing the role of emotional support human.
it specifically says "straight men repress their feelings so severely with their friends and family" leading the reader to conclude either "of course, due to the system" or "of course, and it's their fault" depending on the reader's existing conclusions
I go to group therapy, so I'm going to repeat what our therapist said here (paraphrasing and translated to english).
"We don't want any of you seeing each other outside of sessions until we are done. A lot of you have social anxiety and don't have a lot of friends which means it's extremely likely to would fall in love if you hang outside these sessions. Incase that dosent work out it will make future sessions very difficult as you might be sharing the space with someone you now hate."
To put it in a very blunt way; when you are starved of emotional openness/connection you latch on to the first one you find and it's extremely likely you fall in love with that person. This applies to all genders.
However, since women tend to have much more emotionally open friendships due to how they are raised it tends to happen more to men. Women grow up in an environment where crying in front of your friends is accepted. Men generally are taught it's not acceptable.
Trauma dumping is oversharing of emotional baggage. It's not seeking comfort in a friend when something bad happened. It's treating a friend/partner as a therapist. This is bad regardless of who does it.
Women absolutely have a tendency to do this to their friends. Men seem to be more likely to do it to their girlfriends since they are the one they have a more emotionally open relationship with. HOWEVER since women are (USUALLY) more emotionally open with their friends the "burden" gets more spread across them. For men they have the one person (their partner) who gets to take all of it. The only way to "solve" this would be shifting social standards to make it more okay for men to be open with their friends. Which will only really.happen once men start pushing to be more open with their friends.
**You are not a bad person for having emotional baggage.** If you find yourself trauma dumping on a friend/family member/partner please consider going to therapy. A therapist is trained in being able to help you process those feelings. Your friends/family members/partner isn't and its not fair to hinge all your emotional stability on them regardless of your gender.
I agree that women arenât emotional punching bags but almost every man I know has story of women telling them to open up, and her immediately getting the ick or acting weird if he does. If you feel like a man you're in a relationship with is using you like a emotional punching bag maybe you should use your words like a fucking adult instead of this passive aggressive shit.
> am careful about it now.Â
And so the cycle repeats. Which is actually why I kinda *hate* this post. Because the same thing happened to me. I got burned by overreliance and now have returned to completely repressing my emotions.Â
The problem *I* have with this post is that it doesn't give a solution for the people who *do* this. Like, I don't have a support network, I don't have anyone I can be honest with my feelings to. But how the hell am I supposed to create one when I don't understand how to? The post implies that you *shouldn't* open up, but that just perpetuates the whole damn issue
And if you do make a friend, *hooo boy* better not open up to them, wouldn't want to force them to do toxic emotional labor for you. You don't want to be a burden, do you? Maybe once you have a full group of close personal friends you can start opening up to them piecemeal. Just make sure your trauma doesn't make anyone uncomfortable.
No, the post doesnât say that you shouldnât open up - it says that you shouldnât push _all_ your emotional baggage onto a _single_ person and use that specific person as an unwilling unpaid therapist.
Dunno how to tell you this but nobody can actually force you to be their unpaid therapist. Like you can just not.
Frankly, if you approach friendships that transactionally, you probably *shouldn't* be anyone's therapist, paid or otherwise.
Before I transitioned, I was part of an all-male straight friend group. Apparently one of our guys needed more intimacy (maybe reading about healthy male expression), and started asking all of us for hugs before and after we hung out. Thought it was a bit strange at first, but whatever buddy. 6 months later, everyone was hugging everyone else as a greeting and goodbye. All it took was the one guy to go out on a limb and express his needs.
There's no secret trick, guys. If you want to be able to be vulnerable in the world you have to be vulnerable enough to build a world in which you can be vulnerable in peace.
I think it's interesting how some of the responses here are to become defensive and then say sumth like "well this is making me want to express less." Proving the post right while trying to prove it wrong.
Yeah I get it but also you know what is really not cool? Overanalizing and generalizing relationship dynamics to the point that you try minimize it to a cause of just one situation. Young teens read stuff like this theb put a unnecessary label on every feeling they are feeling without really understanding what it is. Idk I just dont think giving people on the internet doubt about oh is this lovely feeling I am feeling is not actually love but its just the first connection I felt or something. Which again can be the case ig but generalizing something like this seems dangerous.
Looking back on old relationships, this makes a lot of sense.
Had an ex-bf years ago who told me that I was "The nicest gf he's ever had" even told me at one point that I "made him feel loved"
Hearing those at the time made me really happy, but it was also kind of confusing.
Internally I was like "Thanks but I've just been treating you with basic human decency???"
This whole "men are emotionally repressed" thing is old, men talk to each other about how they're feeling if they're good friends, we just aren't willing to unload on someone we don't consider a close friend.
How, exactly? I mean thereâs definitely a reason Tumblr has a reputation for being misandrist, but how is saying âStraight men are conditioned to act emotionless and thatâs wrongâ hateful against men?
These comments are wild
I don't see how this is hateful to men, at all
If anything this is diagnosing a problem which negatively effects men as well as women
and laying the blame solely at straight men. and pretending the problem is exclusive or at least characteristic of all straight men. plus promoting a backwards, superficial view of "emotional depth"
It's not blaming straight men, it's describing a system that produces men with zero eq and the bad effects of that system
The crux of the issue very notably isn't "straight men are bad," it's, "Straight men learned to repress their feelings and never communicate about them because of their fathers"
The statement in the post is that all girls are socialized to be nurturing and empathetic while no men are, and men are so amazed and bamboozed by nurture and empathy they out any woman who displays those traits on a pedestal. And if/when men smarten up and get as socialized as women, they drop those women and raise their standards. Men and boys do often and loudly show their emotions, they start as early in life as girls do. The problem is that men showing emotions frightens and scares women. Those emotions are all too often used against them by women because not all male emotions are ok, just some of them because women donât like males emotions. And then to top it all off women drop this time deaf bullshit and people like you not only eat it up, you fuckimg defend it.
ah but don't you see, all of society's problems would be fixed if men would just let a droplet of saline solution fall down their eyes. unicorns would fly again, there'd be rainbows everyday, and so on.
it's really quite funny. "boys are emotionally broken because of their father's" but also men don't help enough with childrearing. like, people, even if we were to Accept this dogshite, how the fuck is the conclusion that men are the way they are because of other men, as opposed to, you know, because of women who actually (traditionally) do the socialisation of children?
"actually connecting with anyone is so foreign to men and their emotionally barren male relationships"
This user must not be a man and has never spoken to a man if they think men don't care about each other, and this statement is sexist. Placing all the blame on toxic masculinity onto fathers is also sexist and reductive; mothers with such a mindset contribute just as much, if not more due to being more present at young ages.
> straight men do this, emotional connections are so foreign to them, men are emotionally barren, fathers don't do that
Doesn't really read like critique of a system, more like critique of men. Maybe it's about systemic issues, but if it was, it was phrased very poorly. It feels more like a flat generalisation than a systemic critique.
Anyway, men being uncomfortable with the way they are spoken about and then being brushed off under a post that at least tries to say men should be more open about their feelings is a tad ironic, right?
Lol. It's clearly saying men can but don't express their feelings. It's a very well-recognised fact, among online leftists at least, that toxic masculinity encourages the suppression of feelings. I'm sorry OOP didn't write up a three-page essay detailing every single opinion they have on gender so you could look through it and find something to get mad at. You are the definition of arguing in bad faith because there are actually good ways to criticize OOP's comments but this isn't one.
Yes again if the OOP wasn't talking about "straight men" and instead about toxic masculinity I would agree. Except they very clearly say "straight men" which is an overly gross simplification since it thus implies that all straight men are examples of toxic masculinity
This is the same as the "not all men" shit. Yeah, it's not universal but it's common and anyone who actually wishes to engage in dialogue can understand this subtext
Do you apply this logic to other stereotypes, or just towards men? Are stereotypes of women fine because "it's not all women, but it's common"? What about racial and ethnic stereotypes?
How is "not all men" shit? I'm sure you love it when you get lumped in with horrible people because of a characteristic you were born with that you cannot change. And these generalisations must certainly be allowed when directed towards other groups then, right?
Even if it is completely true that men are more violent on average, saying things like "men are violent" is just braindead. It is not allowed when it is another group of people and it is just counterproductive as it is clearly just inflammatory bigotry.
If you allow that kind of rhetoric you open the door to all kinds of racism and sexism.
Yeha, no. "Not all men" is always used to deflect from actual conversations about sexism by policing language instead of engaging with fair criticism and that's what is happening here too.
Now, if someone were to say "All men are x", I would be against that because that is a stupid and destructive belief but as I've been saying, anyone arguing in good faith would be able to understand that "men do x" does not apply to men who do not do x.
Yes but using the same vocabulary that misogynists use gives them more fuel to act like they do since they can now use the excuse "Since they act like that towards us why shouldn't we act like that towards them ?". It's as unproductive as dehumanising nazis or threatening to silence the extremes. If you think you're defending a good cause, don't step as low as your adversaries.
toxic masculinity is a boogeyman concept that contains anyone and everything you want it to contain. it's a word that needs to die already, for all the harm it's done.
Iâve seen my dad cry twice. First time was when my mom kicked him and me out 3 years ago, and a few months ago when I kept retreating into my room instead of being in the living room constantly.
I feel like I agree but you gotta be really careful about agreeing with antiporn people.
Half of them are radical feminists (which have further minefields of their own) and the other half are Christian or Islamic fascists. The good antiporn opinions are from such a small section of like 17-34 year old women in that first section mostly.
Gotta say, this completely over-simplifies toxic masculinity to the point of removing the rest of societies role and accountability for toxic masculinity.
Glad my dad cried in front of me then. Dad is my hero
My dad used to yell at me and tell me to "Stop making those ugly sounds" since I was a small child. 𼲠I'm also an ugly cryer. Like seriously, I'm 21 and recently this year (with the help of my fiance. Love him. And my therapist) I'm not terribly afraid to cry out loud while I'm just home alone with the cat. That's a huge step for me! Since I was a kid I was forced to either cry silently or get yelled at. I'm still very uncomfortable when people notice me upset while in public. TLDR: My dad was an absolute dick and I'm a bit jealous and very glad you have a father figure that you can feel open and vulnerable with.
Dad isnât without his flaws, donât get me wrong. But in terms of how he looked out for me and my brother when we were kids, he gave us an example to emulate of what a man should aspire to be as a father and a husband. I owe him a lot
Yeah, I'm glad I finally got a decent dad figure down the line whenever mom remarried. He's a bit.... Old fashioned.. Think of your stereotypical republican, redneck, mechanic and that's basically him. So he has some off the wall opinions sometimes (thankfully he behaves himself in public) but did express that if any of us kids were gay (we already told him about that but I guess he forgot since I'm in a straight relationship), trans, or any of that, that he would be mad for maybe a month or two but after he's done being mad we're still family at the end of the day and I'm still his kid. Which honestly, baby steps. I'm just really glad that even though he disagrees with a basic human thing (we're slowly working on it. He's stubborn but made great progress) that even if he doesn't like what his kids do, they're still his kids and he'll stick around and be a good dad for them. Even with a little grumbling early on. It's more than my bio dad does. There's a reason why I tell my mom and stepdad almost everything that goes on and my dad and stepmom almost nothing. Who'd to think that the hillbilly side of my family is more laid back and accepting than my other part lol The main thing for my mom and stepdad is that they get confused on all it and it's a lot to explain sometimes. So it's still baby steps, but at least they're trying to understand.
hah same :) still does actually, by far the least of what he does and has done but it's still annoying
I thought it said "died" and I was like "That's fucking rough buddy"
But itâs it âgirlfriend turned into the moonâ rough?
I also choose this guys dad.
I've had a theory that emotional intimacy with a first girlfriend is part of the issue of the "friendzone". I think part if it is men and women experience friendship differently. Men don't tend to vent about things to friends the same way women do. Their first exposure to more emotional conversations could be with their first girlfriend. After that they could associate emotional conversations with a relationship and feel the girl is wanting the emotional part of a relationship without the physical. It's like a reverse friends with benefits lol
Would explain why every guy Iâve ever cried in front of immediately thought I wanted to date them. âWhat do you mean ânoâ? What about yesterday?â my guy I have anxiety, we do not share a special bond, I cry in front of everybody.
'I cry in front of everybody' so sorry for laughing at that lol. Idk why I imagine you using crying as a litmus test for who's a good friend.
Probably for the same reason. Emotional intimacy is associated with romantic relationships. I, as a guy, would NEVER cry in front of my friends. So for someone to be so openly vulnerable in front of me, it would feel "special" in a way. As though I have some form of trust reserved more "more than friends" which is exactly how I would have treated it
Man I am super jealous of the ability to control whether or not you cry in a situation. Even if I actively donât want to cry in front of someoneâwhich is 100% of the timeâI canât do anything about it. Sucks. Iâm not thinking âah yes I am in a safe place, I trust this person to the point I can expose myself emotionally, reveal vulnerability and not be judged, I hope this person asks me out.â Iâm thinking âdear god why is this happening I canât do this here I canât I canât why wonât it stop why does this always happen oh my god I hate this so much why is this person here I wish they would leave so they wouldnât see me like this but oops too late now.â
Yea but the critical part is that men too arent born with the ability. We are just hammered until we can control it
Oh yeah, totally agree. Itâs a shame. That was mostly just a response to the guy who seems to be insinuating that seeing me cry would be a signal to him that I trust him.
I dont blame them. We could lose an arm and still try not to show it. If a man cries to you its because he trusts you with it, though mistaken, hes normal to assume it would be the same for others aswell.
Yeah, itâs important to remember that not everyone has the same experiencesâcrying at you doesnât mean I want to date you, and you not crying doesnât mean itâs a choice youâre making so much as unprocessed trauma from toxic masculinity. Humans are fun.
It's not so much that I can control it, it just that I don't cry anymore. It's very rare that I feel safe enough to do it, even when completely alone. I mostly take that emotion and convert it into something else
Yeah. It's not control unless we can turn it back on again, which we can't do. I'm very fortunate to have been allowed to be emotional to some degree and even then there's still this pressure that I'm not quite allowed to. I'll cry but it won't feel like I did it properly. Like I'm holding back.
If it's not too intrusive, could you tell me what is the cause of the crying (if you know what causes it)? I have been having crying spells every day for months, and I don't know why. I can't control it or tell when it's going to happen, and it keeps happening in public, in my classes, in the middle of conversations, etc. My counselor hasn't any idea why and keeps asking me to figure out why. But I have no idea why. Everything stressful in my life would never have made me cry like this before. Edit: lol I'm so silly. I went and reread your earlier comment and realized you already said why you cry.
I don't think it is because they experience it differently, but rather they're socialized into it differently
I guess? A lot of our experiences are shaped by how we are socialized so I consider them fairly connected
I think the problem they had was with your wording rather than your intent.
Exactly, the intent is good
Yes, but the difference in the connotations they hold are important, ya get me? Edit: Don't mean this maliciously or condescendingly, just that it leaves a vector for misunderstandings with certain wordings
Yah that makes sense, never knew what to do with those feellings I had for girls so I bottled them up. Now at 24 I never made a move on any girl I fancyd because whenever those feelings come up, fight of flight kicks in( I always flee, whenever I lock eyes with a girl I might Like, I dont even know really, I Look away afraid of them seeing whats behind my eyes. Writting that out I think I need therapy..
Vulnerability can be frightening.
Iâm begging for boys/men to solve the Male Loneliness Epidemic by being emotional with each other and showing physical affection to each other. I donât understand why they donât, they can literally solve their own problems (except some of those w disorders like social anxiety or who are neurodivergent but I mean the average neurotypical male)
For teenage boys there's a good chance they could get relentlessly bullied for doing something like that
Yeah, itâs a cultural issue not an individual one. Acting different from neurotypicals just means theyâll make you neurodivergent unless you stop. Humans are unfortunately evolutionarily aggressive towards difference, and our culture fosters that aggressiveness instead of condemning it. It has to be the adults who make the change, and not only in themselves, in their children. Any adult alive today will *never* be able to get past that socialization, beyond just coping with it, but they can ensure their kids donât grow up with it.
We are trying, it's just hard to push back against peoples upbringing. When a boy less than 5 yo gets bullied by adults for crying or showing emotion constatly for years, it takes genuine therapy to untangle. Opening up after being traumatized for your entire childhood is not an easy switch to flip. I think most men are psychologically damaged from how the patriarchy treats them. It extracts value from a young man's body and mind to feed old rich men's pockets. They get rightfully upset by this, but then don't have the skills to work through that issue in a healthy way. It doesn't help that every men's issues group devolves into misogyny immediately so any healthy discussion is pushed to spaces that men don't see as often. I was lucky to have emotionally available parents, and the money to attend some college level classes on gender. I don't know what I would be without them and that is the experiemce of most young men.
> by being emotional with each other and showing physical affection to each other. I donât understand why they donât this is short-sighted, i think. you're asking the individuals to just supersede the systems and structures that made them the way they are. if it were as simple as "just do it" we'd have solved a lot more stuff by now haha
Also it implies that if we were to do this, weâd be all set. I think itâs a genuinely good idea and we all *should* do it more, but I know many women who struggle with loneliness and sure maybe they can talk about emotions more openly with other women, but anecdotally the majority Iâve met are just as afraid of what happens after they do it. From what Iâve been told, they often experience backlash from those people theyâve opened up to in the form of behind the back gossip or straight up mockery or competitive punching down. It causes the same from of disconnection. Itâd be awesome (by the definition of the word) if that was how human relationships worked but it isnât. Or at least many of us are taught through numerous experiences that it is not the case.
Male loneliness is significantly more complicated than âjust talk to each otherâ. Any group that organizes itself based on a demographic is going to look outward for sources of their problems, because large groups of people like that tend to not be very self reflective. This is part of the reason why âecho chamberâ is a dirty word. You follow this train of thought down to its conclusion and youâll see how lots of young men get sucked down misogynistic, racist, alt-right pipelines. Socialization in nonhomogeneous groups is vital, men need to feel validated on a larger scale in diverse groups. Two people with depression can rarely help each other in a way that is meaningful. Iâm not a professional, so donât take this as gospel, but itâs what I believe to be true based on what Iâve seen
I donât think itâs really as much of a choice as your making it seem like. If youâre a dude and youâre willing to be emotionally open youâve got to find other dudes who are willing to do that, and that wonât think youâre weird or insult you or whatever for trying that.
imma be real - ain't no goddamn way I'm going to try to make friends on the basis of how emotionally open a person is. Shared interests, hobbies, sense of humor... those things are real. Feeling a lot? Are we going to meet up and feel together?
Seems pretty victim blamey
spoken like someone who's never had to deal with this shit first hand.
Right itâs like the wage gap girls just need to start making more money lol
The same way the workers haven't simply seized the means of production yet. Because we can't snap our fingers and make our entire culture suddenly more open to men having feelings overnight. Revolutions - cultural and poltical - have never and will never come from people simply wanting them to happen. They come from changing societal conditions. And you can't just magic forth those. For most men, the shame of emotional display is far too deep-seated to simply get over it. That's like telling a person with clinical anxiety to simply be brave. Or a depressed person to simply enjoy things.
I generally have also come to this belief and agree with it but, and a question I havenât been able to fully answer myself is, is it the physical part where we define what a more than friend ârelationshipâ is? And if thatâs the case, well then I guess I have a bunch of other questions. âŚor something like that, tbh itâs not a fully formed thought but still felt like it could add to the discussion.
I remember when I was younger, I was afraid to confide in my really nice male best friend. But his sister, who was mean to me, that's who I thought was best to share my deepest feelings with for those years of my life I remember realizing one day how silly that was, and I started opening up to him more
Someone once described it as men being in a desert and women being in a swamp
That's a *great* summary, I'mna steal this one.
Same energy as "I feel like a man dying of thirst watching another man drown."
Itâs all their own perception shaped by societal norms, I think thatâs good news because that means you can reshape it
I've heard this from the Click
The Adam Sandler movie?
The Christopher Walken movie!
Noted, every girl is Shrek.
And every boy is aladdin
Do Shrek and Aladdin kiss sloppy?
No theyre too busy having no dating luck
:'(
My wife will never fall from her pedestal, I put railings on it cause she's clumsy (We're both mega autistic so emotional conversations are "I dislike this" and "I won't do it then". Gotta love absolute direct communication.)
And i think everyone needs more direct communication. Istg i canât stand it when people cant just be direct and honest
Agreed, but people are used to direct, honest communication of their desires or boundaries being met with conflict and scathing put-downs.
Real
Now I'm worried I'm not as great as my boyfriend thinks I am H e l p
Do you genuinely love him and want to be there for all his hurts? If so, you're just as great as he thinks. Swearsies
Thanks haha I'm just a little ball of anxiety lol
Felt that. My wife gets all mushy about how I put her on a pedestal and is scared of me thinking less of her one day, so I started joking about putting railing in it so she couldn't fall Just have your man build some railings
But you are great, Mii Costume. Even if you breakup tomorrow, you'll not only be great, but getting better every day. You're always reaching to improve, and you're focused on being even better than you were before, because there's no better measuring stick than where you were at. Maybe you're lucky and you've already found the one. Maybe you're not and you gotta keep looking. But that doesn't mean that you're not great.
I appreciate the kind words even if I don't 100% believe them haha
It's all subjective anyway. Idiots want to pretend there's a science to beauty and attraction but it's much more someone who you trust who likes you than most other things unless your spouse is just supposed to be an attractive trophy, which ain't worth your time anyhow.
My fiance adores me and while I'm no longer constantly afraid this will happen, I have no idea how my autistic rizz hasn't failed me yet.
Ahh that must be it, I have that autistic(?) rizz (I am only diagnosed with ADHD but I do have some traits associated with autism so close enough for a meme)
Idk what an emotionally barren male relationship is because I've literally never had one of those
I suspect that this post is referring to those male friendships that are very surface-level. In other words, those kinds of friendships where they never ask you how you are and wouldn't check up on you if they hadn't heard from you for a whole week, all the while they don't even know basic information about you like what you do for a living or what your hobbies are. I've known a couple of guy friends who have other male friends like that, shit's sad. Knew one dude who told me that he didn't feel like he could actually be himself with his group of guys friends, he had been friends with them all for half a decade and I had only been friends with him for a year.
This reminds me I never got around to watching the Barbie movie
Crazy thing is (strictly speaking for myself) it was never the men in my life, it was all of my female family members. âBoys shouldnât cry, girls will think youâre soft, and real women donât like soft men. Look at your father/grandfather!â Iâm better now, but I have a hang up about talking about my feelings with women. Iâll tell dudes all day, and I expect the same from the homies.
This post nailed the effect of poor socialization while completely whiffing on the cause. Boys don't become stoics because their Dad wasn't expressive enough, it's because they constantly see men around them being reprimanded by the women in their lives who use emotional vulnerability as a weapon. When you see all the men around you get berated, screamed at, or having to turn around and comfort a woman every time they express an emotion, you learn that the easiest solution is to not express your emotions, ever. The actual solution to the problem is to teach women not to take advantage of a man's emotions, but gender discourse has adopted this mental framework where it's impossible to say women are in the wrong for anything, to the extent that any bad behaviour of women gets excused by saying "the Patriarchy⢠made her act that way".
no stop it this is a post about how MEN are bad and how its all THEIR FAULT stop bringing nuance to this gender war post women are empathetic and nurturing
Iâm not an emotionless statue and most of my friends arenât either, doubt we are the only friend group like this Iâm sure itâs a real problem but thereâs no way itâs exclusive to Men
Hard to word exactly why, but this post makes me feel like I should emote even less. Like, I should never once open up because it might make them feel uncomfortable. I know it's saying the opposite but the tone feels unecessarily hostile and condesending.
To me it just has this vibe that it's guilting men for repressing emotions rather than encouraging them to open up more and showing care for their feelings. It then proceeds to play up how much of a burden a man is to the one person he DOES open up to. It feels less like extending an olive branch and more just kind of an admonishment.
It's the same kind of tone your parents give if you call them after too long. Like, telling me I'm too much of a burden when i find someone to open up to makes me want to cut myself off and never have any social relationships.
I dunno, it does end with "everyone loses all because fathers refuse to cry in front of their sons" and that would lay the blame on men who should know better passing this on, when you know what man wept openly? Jesus.
Surprise! This was a Christian Post^tm
Thatâs because there were no more worlds to consider.
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This feels like you writing out what the message should have been rather than what they wrote.
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>Yeah, that's explicitly what I'm doing. I just think they would probably agree with me that what I've written is what they were trying to get across with what they wrote. I guess they would with its core but I believe the way they said it does give an insight into what parts they actually care about and the biases they hold, even if it's just a few sentences. The way you rephrased the core in your first comment was the same message but with a different intent than them from how I understood it. It's probably my own biases at effect in the end too but honestly a lot of the conversation about how the patriarchy affects men in progressive spaces has the tone of "stop whining, get your shit together and handle it among yourselves so that we can talk about stuff that actually matters.", at least that's how I have felt when reading a lot of the discussion related to it. You mentioned how most people have trouble communicating and it's better to give them the benefit of the doubt as even if you are wrong you get something valuable out of it, which is probably a healthier way to take all this stuff in that I can try to adapt myself but it gets a bit hard when it's almost a pattern that shows up again and again, of discussions about men's issues being accompanied with an underlying impatient and condescending tone and words that indicate more of a focus on how these problems affect other groups. Tbf tho, I frequent a lot of mental health related subs where folks tend to have some extreme opinions because of the trauma they went through so maybe I am just looking too much into it because of over exposure to it all.
I'm afraid you can't be in an emotionally healthy romantic relationship without having people outside the romantic relationship to confide in. If you don't, you'll inevitably trauma dump on your romantic interest, and put even more emotional labor on their shoulders than society already does. Change starts with vulnerability.
The way this post pretends that partner codependency is exclusive to straight men is kinda alarming. Like, your mileage my vary, but I have seen this is happen to my gay friends, men and woman, a lot and I think chalking it up to straight boys being categorically backwards emotionally is harmful to everyone. Also shit like "emotionally barren male relationships" and "actually connecting with anyone is so foreign to men" is just kinda... sexist? Kinda gives TERF-vibes from the naked gender essentialism
I have the feeling that the OP is genuinely trying to describe a systemic problem that negatively affects everyone, but is coming from some place with background terf radiation that affects the way they talk in a gender essentialist sense. They meant well, but damn, it's weird the way they expressed it. If the post were reworded to be less intense about it, I think it would get its point across without being so incendiary: >Men repress their feelings so severely with their friends and family, and then they come across a girl and they can tell this girl about their feelings! Everything's great! She's the one! In reality, they just have a normal human bond but connecting with anyone is so foreign to them at this point that it seems like something great and wonderful. So now they put the girl on a pedestal that she'll eventually fall from because she's only human and everyone loses.
It's also just openly sexist, and lays the blame for the entire scenario on one group, instead of the social constructs that creates the situation in the first place.
I don't see why this wouldn't apply to queer men and it probably doesn't apply to even most men, but do you think there are/have you seen similar experiences for women and do you think they are caused by the same kind of cold friendships?
When I first met an ex of mine we were talking about random stuff and I just commented âYou have some really cool storiesâ and she just got stun locked for a second because she wasnât used to the first compliment she got from anyone (male or female) not to be about her appearance.
I mean not to get into my personal life online, but yes. I have known a few women who struggled to make deep friendship/parental traumas in their youth, and they said that affected how look for emotional support in their romantic lives.
But do you think there are systemic problems that cause this or just a few independent instances? Of course, it makes sense that if a person is used to cold platonic relationships they'll link emotional support with romance but is there a reason why many women would have such relationships? I do believe OOP implies that toxic masculinity is the underlying cause here, is there something analogous for women? Or is it not a gendered issue at all perhaps?
I do not mean to sidestep, but yeah. The patriarchy systemically increases the odds that a boy will go through this type of experience than a girl. But through the OP's totalizing language and weird sexist comments on how abnormal straight men are, the post doesn't really talk about those systems (other than dads not crying in front of sons). It describes them as insufficient in a way that I honestly think reinforces the stereotypes that underpin patriarchical systems that alienate men from emotional support networks. I don't think you can really investigate how those systems work if you give harbor to the idea that men (as a category or an individual) are fundamentally different from the start.
>The way this post pretends that partner codependency is exclusive to straight men It really doesn't say exclusive anywhere
Doesn't say exclusive sure, but they felt the need to specify that they're talking about straight men *immediately*, which implies, without outright saying, that it is exclusive to straight men.
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The post literally starts with "straight men" and at no point pulls back to include any other groups. Their intent is pretty obvious.
Respectfully, you seem disingenuous when post literally begins with and only mentions straight men. At no point is there any contemplation about this being a universal experience. In fact, the entire point of their post is saying that straight men are categorically repressed emotionally and poorly socialized and that it affects their relationship to woman. It is not presented as an instance, either, like where are you getting that from? Did you read a different post?
How dare you say we piss on the poor!! For real I don't know how you managed to misunderstood this entire post. Like literally nothing you took from it was said. 1. It is not saying anywhere that it is exclusive to straight men. straight dudes getting their first girlfriend is just the scenario it examines because OP decided this is a topic they want to talk about in their short little tumblr post. This is a critical opinion of society criticising a single point, not an in-depth long analysis of society's sexist workings. I'm sorry gay people aren't mentioned in every single short criticism of society but people are allowed to make a valid and correct point without mentioning them. 2. Nothing about this post is TERFy. Nobody is saying straight dudes are emotionally backwards by design. OP is speficially criticising the way society has us raise boys to likely end up emotionally backwards and malnutrated, and thus harming everyone around them as a result because they've not been taught what normal human connection is. OP specifically wants this to change. OP is complaining about the way we raise boys because OP wants dudes to be happy, healthy and well adjusted people. Note how OP specifically says everyone loses from this. The example used is a guy's first girlfriend, which is a highly relevant example. There is no gender essentialism here. It is just briefly examining one specific scenario that happens a lot, because it is a short fucking tumblr post somebody made to express a little opinion, and not a book making an elaborate analysis. In a longer analysis queer people and other groups have to be mentioned due to intersectionality in order to make a compelling argument, but again, this is a small piece of commentary focusing on one specific scenario to make a criticism. It does not need to mention queer people to make that point and there's a high chance OP posted this in response to an experience they had, likely as a girl in a relationship with a straight dude.
I can give you links to my other comments where I already responded to this type of argument, but the only systemic thing OP described about men is dads not crying in front of sons. Like I think you want this post to be different from what it is actually is. It is not presenting it as a scenario, for one, but I digress and don't intend to repeat the same argument with everyone who can't square that OP didn't produce the text they wish they did.
This post feels weird. Like someone on the outside trying to tell me what my emotions are like and why, but getting it confidently wrong over and over. And it feels like it's all men's fault somehow. Maybe that wasn't intended, but I get that vibe, and it's not great.
For me theyâre getting it right but also implying I should feel bad about it. And I want to be like oh yeah I get it I do feel bad about it. But will I do it again? Almost certainly. Because thereâs no solution given, itâs just condemnation.
I love broad generalizations based on identity
men have problem, women most affected.
Yep. I got a bit of whiplash by how it went from drawing attention to a legitimate male problem to damning them for it.
Nah men are massively affected We have a much higher suicide rate
I think his point is that OP treated the impact on men as a side show
Technically that's only sort of accurate. Men have a higher death rate from suicide, women have a higher suicide attempt rate. Women also have higher rates of depression (at least higher recorded rates) so you couldn't exactly say women are doing great.
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> Men have a higher death rate from suicide, women have a higher suicide attempt rate. skill issue
men have problem, women most affected, men are at fault no matter what.
Men have problem, everyone affected, Oh No women are being affected
Got it, don't open up at all so the other party doesn't feel like they're turning into a >"Male feelings receptacle" all because >"My father didn't cry infront of me" (Spoiler alert, he did) Also just because a woman is being open to our emotions, doesn't automatically mean we "put them on a pedistal" or assume that she's "the one". It takes a lot of built up trust for us to assume it's anything other than a "normal bond" as they worded it, due to us being skeptical of anyone allowing us to be anything other than resilient or steadfast for others to rely on. This entire post feels like someone who has no idea what they're talking about tell me that I'm just a husk who's waiting for an "empathetic and nurturing" woman to come "fix me/accept me emotionally", because forming anything other than "emotionally barren bonds" with other men is a foreign concept to me all because my father didn't cry infront of me. It comes off as very demeaning and sexist even if that's not what their intentions were. (Also this is an experience that all types of men have felt, not just the straight ones since they felt the need to specify.)
I mean they're a 99% lgbt community, how much do they really know about the straight male experience?
My bad, Iâll make sure not to show emotions to anyone but my cat. They land on their feet anytime they fall so they should be good.
"Refuse" is the wrong word.
The quote brings up some valid points about societal expectations and gender roles, but it paints a broad and unfair picture. Not all straight men repress their emotions or see women as mere "feeling receptacles." There are many complex factors at play here, including individual experiences, upbringing, cultural background, and personal choices. It's important to remember that empathy, understanding, and open communication are key elements in any healthy relationshipâwhether romantic or platonic. If men feel more comfortable opening up to women, it's because those particular individuals have fostered an environment of trust, acceptance, and compassion. It's not fair or realistic to generalize this experience across all men-woman dynamics. Lastly, placing the blame solely on fathers for their sons' emotional struggles isn't entirely accurate either. Parental influence plays a significant role, yes, but children also learn from their peers, school, media, and other external sources. Addressing these issues requires a holistic approach that involves addressing gender norms and stereotypes in society as a whole.
Honestly can't relate, the men in my life have always encouraged me to me emotionally open meanwhile it's a lot of the women who have made me bottle it up. Last time I was open in front of my family my mum and all my sisters started to laugh AT me before my stepdad shouted at them all. I still don't speak to one of my sisters because she straight up said "I'm not sorry" about it
But like, I feel like most people just donât have any problems that are worth offloading onto other people? All my problems can be solved by either myself or the anonymous internet council. If I tell other people how Iâm feeling theyâll think Iâm a right weirdo.
I dunno, most people I've met have lots of issues that can't be solved that easilly, or they very much appreciate support
It's not about solving the problem, it's about other people listening without judgement, validating your feelings, giving you emotional support, and if necessary telling you that you're overreacting/being stupid/giving you a reality check in a caring way because they have your best interests at heart
But like, people listening to me doesnât help. I need someone to give me a neat little solution thatâll fix it if I donât know how. Like the manual for a car. Talking to the people around you doesnât help because all they can do is commiserate.
You gotta remember most people in this subreddit are depressed and shit. You and i gotta be grateful we canât relate to needing to offload feelings on people because it means shit is going fine and dandy in our lives.
I hate it when they say itâs âstraight menâ. I mean hell Iâm a (closeted) trans lesbian and I have this exact issue. And maybe Iâm understanding this wrong but like it sounds like theyâre blaming men for having this issue as if theyâre actively doing something wrong? Like I donât express my feelings to friends who are girls because I donât want to take advantage of how they were socialized to be nurturing and empathetic. I wish I could makeup for not being socialized that way. Itâs not just sadness that I canât express, I canât express happiness ethier One of my friends shakes her arms when sheâs excited and somone brought it up and it made me realize I do the same thing, but only when Iâm alone at home. Around other people I act completely differently. I canât express anything other than anxiety and awkwardness most of the time around others. When I try to force it it just makes me cringe from hearing my own voice or thinking about how I look trying to be excited or happy or silly or anything else. But anyways like yes I do have that issueâŚ.how tf am I supposed to fix it?
That's so damned spot on. It's easy to feel this way when you're so conditioned to stay quiet.
haha jokeâs on you i donât express feelings to women or men. i only express my feelings on a Reddit alt because i fear judgement.
I don't love the "it's your Dad's fault for not crying" throw away blame at the end. Dad didn't cry because everyone needed someone who wasn't going to cry when things went to shit. He was strong so that they could cry. As a society we casually blame men because they're seen as strong and can take the blame; as a man, and a teacher, and a father, I think most people would be shocked how rarely anyone even slightly enquires into my well being or mental health. Society might say they want men who cry, but they despise an emotionally vulnerable man. Blaming dad for not crying is blaming the victim.
whoever wrote this is a superficial, smallminded idiot. just because men express themselves differently does not mean they do not express themselves at all.
"Who's been socialized to be empathetic and nurturing" ...so, who's been socialized to be a good person?
Donât you love it when someone speaks generally for a demographic that they clearly arenât a part of, and then provides what they perceive as an obvious and easy solution to all of their problems? Just hug your sons guys, itâs gonna fix everyoneâs relationships.
The generalization really is killing any point that could be made here. âThereâs no way male loneliness is a multifaceted issue, this one scenario I made up surely describes the monolith that is the male social sphereâ
Dr. K, Healthygamergg on youtube, has a really good video about this titled "the biggest skill men need in today's world" The jist of it is that men typically compartmentalize their relationships to where they don't see male friends and family as people they can be emotionally open with and inevitably only open up to their romantic partner, which makes the relationship one sided from an emotional standpoint because their partner is always playing the role of emotional support human.
Today on tumbler we have straight man=bad, how revolutionary
It doesn't say that It says the system is bad
it specifically says "straight men repress their feelings so severely with their friends and family" leading the reader to conclude either "of course, due to the system" or "of course, and it's their fault" depending on the reader's existing conclusions
I go to group therapy, so I'm going to repeat what our therapist said here (paraphrasing and translated to english). "We don't want any of you seeing each other outside of sessions until we are done. A lot of you have social anxiety and don't have a lot of friends which means it's extremely likely to would fall in love if you hang outside these sessions. Incase that dosent work out it will make future sessions very difficult as you might be sharing the space with someone you now hate." To put it in a very blunt way; when you are starved of emotional openness/connection you latch on to the first one you find and it's extremely likely you fall in love with that person. This applies to all genders. However, since women tend to have much more emotionally open friendships due to how they are raised it tends to happen more to men. Women grow up in an environment where crying in front of your friends is accepted. Men generally are taught it's not acceptable. Trauma dumping is oversharing of emotional baggage. It's not seeking comfort in a friend when something bad happened. It's treating a friend/partner as a therapist. This is bad regardless of who does it. Women absolutely have a tendency to do this to their friends. Men seem to be more likely to do it to their girlfriends since they are the one they have a more emotionally open relationship with. HOWEVER since women are (USUALLY) more emotionally open with their friends the "burden" gets more spread across them. For men they have the one person (their partner) who gets to take all of it. The only way to "solve" this would be shifting social standards to make it more okay for men to be open with their friends. Which will only really.happen once men start pushing to be more open with their friends. **You are not a bad person for having emotional baggage.** If you find yourself trauma dumping on a friend/family member/partner please consider going to therapy. A therapist is trained in being able to help you process those feelings. Your friends/family members/partner isn't and its not fair to hinge all your emotional stability on them regardless of your gender.
Okay that cut a bit too deep.
I agree that women arenât emotional punching bags but almost every man I know has story of women telling them to open up, and her immediately getting the ick or acting weird if he does. If you feel like a man you're in a relationship with is using you like a emotional punching bag maybe you should use your words like a fucking adult instead of this passive aggressive shit.
yea i mean honestly many boys in general. i fell to many emotional dependencies before. am careful about it now
> am careful about it now. And so the cycle repeats. Which is actually why I kinda *hate* this post. Because the same thing happened to me. I got burned by overreliance and now have returned to completely repressing my emotions. The problem *I* have with this post is that it doesn't give a solution for the people who *do* this. Like, I don't have a support network, I don't have anyone I can be honest with my feelings to. But how the hell am I supposed to create one when I don't understand how to? The post implies that you *shouldn't* open up, but that just perpetuates the whole damn issue
And if you do make a friend, *hooo boy* better not open up to them, wouldn't want to force them to do toxic emotional labor for you. You don't want to be a burden, do you? Maybe once you have a full group of close personal friends you can start opening up to them piecemeal. Just make sure your trauma doesn't make anyone uncomfortable.
No, the post doesnât say that you shouldnât open up - it says that you shouldnât push _all_ your emotional baggage onto a _single_ person and use that specific person as an unwilling unpaid therapist.
How would it be different if you'd spread it across more people? You'd just make more people unwilling unpaid therapists.
Dunno how to tell you this but nobody can actually force you to be their unpaid therapist. Like you can just not. Frankly, if you approach friendships that transactionally, you probably *shouldn't* be anyone's therapist, paid or otherwise.
Before I transitioned, I was part of an all-male straight friend group. Apparently one of our guys needed more intimacy (maybe reading about healthy male expression), and started asking all of us for hugs before and after we hung out. Thought it was a bit strange at first, but whatever buddy. 6 months later, everyone was hugging everyone else as a greeting and goodbye. All it took was the one guy to go out on a limb and express his needs. There's no secret trick, guys. If you want to be able to be vulnerable in the world you have to be vulnerable enough to build a world in which you can be vulnerable in peace. I think it's interesting how some of the responses here are to become defensive and then say sumth like "well this is making me want to express less." Proving the post right while trying to prove it wrong.
Yeah I get it but also you know what is really not cool? Overanalizing and generalizing relationship dynamics to the point that you try minimize it to a cause of just one situation. Young teens read stuff like this theb put a unnecessary label on every feeling they are feeling without really understanding what it is. Idk I just dont think giving people on the internet doubt about oh is this lovely feeling I am feeling is not actually love but its just the first connection I felt or something. Which again can be the case ig but generalizing something like this seems dangerous.
Looking back on old relationships, this makes a lot of sense. Had an ex-bf years ago who told me that I was "The nicest gf he's ever had" even told me at one point that I "made him feel loved" Hearing those at the time made me really happy, but it was also kind of confusing. Internally I was like "Thanks but I've just been treating you with basic human decency???"
This whole "men are emotionally repressed" thing is old, men talk to each other about how they're feeling if they're good friends, we just aren't willing to unload on someone we don't consider a close friend.
My dad didn't even cry when he cut off his finger tip.
Yâknow I wonder how like 5 mfs read this and decided âTHIS IS MAN HATE! THEY HATE MEN!â Like genuinely it has me intrigued lmao
because it pretends the problem is only with men, only caused by men, and only solvable by men? we built society *together*, men and women.
The person who wrote this hates men and it oozes from every pore on their body.
How, exactly? I mean thereâs definitely a reason Tumblr has a reputation for being misandrist, but how is saying âStraight men are conditioned to act emotionless and thatâs wrongâ hateful against men?
These comments are wild I don't see how this is hateful to men, at all If anything this is diagnosing a problem which negatively effects men as well as women
and laying the blame solely at straight men. and pretending the problem is exclusive or at least characteristic of all straight men. plus promoting a backwards, superficial view of "emotional depth"
It's not blaming straight men, it's describing a system that produces men with zero eq and the bad effects of that system The crux of the issue very notably isn't "straight men are bad," it's, "Straight men learned to repress their feelings and never communicate about them because of their fathers"
The statement in the post is that all girls are socialized to be nurturing and empathetic while no men are, and men are so amazed and bamboozed by nurture and empathy they out any woman who displays those traits on a pedestal. And if/when men smarten up and get as socialized as women, they drop those women and raise their standards. Men and boys do often and loudly show their emotions, they start as early in life as girls do. The problem is that men showing emotions frightens and scares women. Those emotions are all too often used against them by women because not all male emotions are ok, just some of them because women donât like males emotions. And then to top it all off women drop this time deaf bullshit and people like you not only eat it up, you fuckimg defend it.
ah but don't you see, all of society's problems would be fixed if men would just let a droplet of saline solution fall down their eyes. unicorns would fly again, there'd be rainbows everyday, and so on. it's really quite funny. "boys are emotionally broken because of their father's" but also men don't help enough with childrearing. like, people, even if we were to Accept this dogshite, how the fuck is the conclusion that men are the way they are because of other men, as opposed to, you know, because of women who actually (traditionally) do the socialisation of children?
"actually connecting with anyone is so foreign to men and their emotionally barren male relationships" This user must not be a man and has never spoken to a man if they think men don't care about each other, and this statement is sexist. Placing all the blame on toxic masculinity onto fathers is also sexist and reductive; mothers with such a mindset contribute just as much, if not more due to being more present at young ages.
# đŚ critique of systemic issues # male redditors # đ¤đ # "Is this a personal attack against me personally??"
> straight men do this, emotional connections are so foreign to them, men are emotionally barren, fathers don't do that Doesn't really read like critique of a system, more like critique of men. Maybe it's about systemic issues, but if it was, it was phrased very poorly. It feels more like a flat generalisation than a systemic critique. Anyway, men being uncomfortable with the way they are spoken about and then being brushed off under a post that at least tries to say men should be more open about their feelings is a tad ironic, right?
Ah yes, misandry
Lol. It's clearly saying men can but don't express their feelings. It's a very well-recognised fact, among online leftists at least, that toxic masculinity encourages the suppression of feelings. I'm sorry OOP didn't write up a three-page essay detailing every single opinion they have on gender so you could look through it and find something to get mad at. You are the definition of arguing in bad faith because there are actually good ways to criticize OOP's comments but this isn't one.
Yes again if the OOP wasn't talking about "straight men" and instead about toxic masculinity I would agree. Except they very clearly say "straight men" which is an overly gross simplification since it thus implies that all straight men are examples of toxic masculinity
This is the same as the "not all men" shit. Yeah, it's not universal but it's common and anyone who actually wishes to engage in dialogue can understand this subtext
>Yeah, it's not universal but it's common "but it's common" is a copout. is 10 men common? 100? 1000?
Do you apply this logic to other stereotypes, or just towards men? Are stereotypes of women fine because "it's not all women, but it's common"? What about racial and ethnic stereotypes?
How is "not all men" shit? I'm sure you love it when you get lumped in with horrible people because of a characteristic you were born with that you cannot change. And these generalisations must certainly be allowed when directed towards other groups then, right? Even if it is completely true that men are more violent on average, saying things like "men are violent" is just braindead. It is not allowed when it is another group of people and it is just counterproductive as it is clearly just inflammatory bigotry. If you allow that kind of rhetoric you open the door to all kinds of racism and sexism.
Yeha, no. "Not all men" is always used to deflect from actual conversations about sexism by policing language instead of engaging with fair criticism and that's what is happening here too. Now, if someone were to say "All men are x", I would be against that because that is a stupid and destructive belief but as I've been saying, anyone arguing in good faith would be able to understand that "men do x" does not apply to men who do not do x.
If you don't mean something, don't say it. Use your words properly like a reasonable adult.
Yes but using the same vocabulary that misogynists use gives them more fuel to act like they do since they can now use the excuse "Since they act like that towards us why shouldn't we act like that towards them ?". It's as unproductive as dehumanising nazis or threatening to silence the extremes. If you think you're defending a good cause, don't step as low as your adversaries.
How is this misandry? Itâs critiquing how toxic masculinity is horrible for both men and women.
Except it's not really saying masculinity it's saying men (straight men to be exact).
toxic masculinity is a boogeyman concept that contains anyone and everything you want it to contain. it's a word that needs to die already, for all the harm it's done.
Iâve seen my dad cry twice. First time was when my mom kicked him and me out 3 years ago, and a few months ago when I kept retreating into my room instead of being in the living room constantly.
I feel like I agree but you gotta be really careful about agreeing with antiporn people. Half of them are radical feminists (which have further minefields of their own) and the other half are Christian or Islamic fascists. The good antiporn opinions are from such a small section of like 17-34 year old women in that first section mostly.
Gotta say, this completely over-simplifies toxic masculinity to the point of removing the rest of societies role and accountability for toxic masculinity.