To think there’s a real crisis in men being able to express how they truly feel about life and society?

[TheGentleSwan]

It feels like, in the West, men are struggling to be honest about their emotions, their frustrations, and how they view the world. Whether it’s societal pressure, fear of judgement, or just a lack of spaces to talk openly, it seems like many men keep things bottled up. AIBU to think this is a real issue?

It’s not women’s problem to solve. My own DF is over 80 and is self confident enough to ask for help and he doesn’t give a shit and never has if other men or women think he is weak. But you met him you would think he was old school, so to speak.
He’s also someone his friends go to talk things through.

I really hear that and I don’t blame you at all for feeling done. Your experience sounds exhausting and unfortunately not uncommon. I don’t think it should be on women to drag emotional awareness out of unwilling men, especially when it comes to the cost of your own wellbeing.

When I talk about creating space, I don’t mean in one on one relationships where women already carry more than their share. I’m talking more broadly - culturally. Like, what messages do men get from other men? What kind of male friendships or communities are encouraged? How is emotional openness portrayed or rewarded in public life?

You’re absolutely right that a lot of women have tried and it’s cost them. That’s part of the problem - not that women need to do more but that men need to do more with each other and society needs to stop treating emotional honesty in men like an aberration or weakness.

Do you know how hard it is to try your best to get your partner to be open with you about their feelings and to be supportive only to be shut out time and again, and then when they eventually end up in front of a professional (counsellor/ therapist/ doctor) and can talk to them, you feel so awful having to hear about how they have ended up sick because they can’t talk about their feelings?
Why don’t you tell us what we can do that we’re not doing to get men to be comfortable expressing their emotions?

I'm male, but maybe not typical. I've never been married, always lived alone or with friends, and I have a number of male friends I can speak to honestly if I'm feeling lonely or worried.

I do feel there's a double standard in how men and women are perceived and that in the world I live in, women are allowed to be angry and sarcastic towards men. But when you see what women have to put up with it pales into insignificance.

“Like, what messages do men get from other men? What kind of male friendships or communities are encouraged? How is emotional openness portrayed or rewarded in public life?”

Those really are questions for men to be thinking about. What can women really do about any of that?

But what is naming the problem and making a cultural shift, if not for unpaid emotional labour?

Perhaps we move in different circles, but I don't think I know any women who ridicule men for showing sadness or vulnerability. I think that's pretty much solely men.

Men generally don't have a problem with showing anger. It's women who struggle with expressing anger. I'd personally like more space in society for female anger!

I'm not just being bloody minded. I don't just think woman don't have a responsibility to fix this for men, I literally think they can't. Unless enough men have a will to engage in a different type of emotional life, nothing will change. No one else can make men be ready.

I'm sorry, but what?

Men find stability in having a stable job, and a wife and kids and now some are upset that they don't have those things.

Men were and are also the ones to mock and ridicule women who didn't have a husband by X age and labelled them "spinsters," "crazy cat ladies," or told us that "you're going to die alone with cats gnawing your face off." They take great pleasure in reminding women when they're "undesirable."

So, what? Now the tables are starting to turn and they can no longer utilise destitution as a means to trap women into marriage with them, we're to feel sorry for them? Men have never felt a lick of sympathy when a woman is lonely or alone.

Sure, of course, most people (men and women alike) find deep meaning and purpose in community and rootedness in family, etc, that isn't unique to men. Loneliness isn't unique to men. Women can and do feel loneliness, but what women don't do is demand that men date them to fix that problem. Women are far more likely to resolve their loneliness through building communities around themselves-joining clubs, meeting and making new friends, etc.

Men do need to be able to do that, sure, but men need other men to role model that for them alongside other, healthier behaviours and tools of coping with negative emotions. None of this will be solved by women-unless the implication is that women should be forced to marry these creatures.

We assume that if men talk like women that they will have the same outcomes as women. I think that it's false equivalence.

I think the status games for men are brutal and, combined with a preponderance to violence, against others and themselves, it's an incredibly risky combination that won't be overcome by sitting in a circle and talking about feelings.

My DH has very few friends. Because he puts zero effort into making any.
That's on him, really. He would agree that nobody is stopping him but himself

I put a lot of effort into making friends. All the groups I belong to have mostly women and very few men. Men are often too lazy to join clubs or groups. Their problem not ours.

Yep

And to justify why the system is skewed towards women. HA!

My feeling is that men have always been conditioned to contain emotions and showing too much is not really encouraged.

I see it's men doing this to men/ boys. I don't see mums telling their boys to man up but I see dad's doing it. I see mums trying to challenge this all the time.

I feel that there are bigger issues impacting women who have less of a voice and are pretty much dominated in every sphere. It doesn't mean the post title is incorrect. It's not a pressing issue for me as much as say encouraging males to view women and treat women better generally.

By better, I mean less misogyny, violence, sexism.

And how you do this I have no idea. Education in school and blowing up SMedia would be a start.

We had a message from school recently encouraging parents to talk to kids about toxic masculinity. It turns out the school hadn't. I thought, please can you bloody cover this topic and help back up a challenge to what's going on because there will be households where the guys are all toxic and won't be teaching anything useful counter to it.

Bit of a side track.

It’s heartbreaking to watch someone you care about struggle emotional, especially when you’ve done everything you can be there for them and they still shut you out. To be clear, I’m not saying women aren’t already doing enough, in many cases, you’re doing more than anyone should be expected to. The question I’m trying to raise isn’t about what more women should do but what kind of broader shift needs to happen so that men themselves feel more able and willing to engage emotionally, ideally long before it becomes a crisis.

Maybe that shift starts with men modelling that openness for each other, or more emotional education growing up, or less shame around vulnerability. I don’t have the magic answer. But I think conversations like this, hard as they are, matter because they remind us how high the emotional cost can be for everyone involved when silence wins.

Exactly - those are questions for men. That’s kind of the point I was trying to make earlier… if we keep deflecting those questions or acting like they don’t matter, then nothing changes. I’m not saying women should fix this - I’m saying we should stop framing the whole conversation as irrelevant or annoying just because it’s not ours to solve. Sometimes naming the problem is part of creating the space for the people who are affected to step into it differently.

Even in “man spaces” I’ve witnessed, they are run by misogynistic ex-12 steppers (OK but that’s a whole other issue) who have an agenda and only seem to flame and justify abusive stances. Speaking from being on the other end of someone attending these groups too

How is this mocking vulnerability? It’s mocking men who kill their partners.

Men and fathers need to be the change for their sons. That's the starting point. But they can't do it often because their sons are extensions of themselves and they are internally conditioned.

I don't think this is going to change anytime soon. Hasn't it always been this way from what we understand of history and evolution.

I struggle here... (I'm a bloke 🙋)
I despair of my fellow men sometimes, because of attitudes and behaviour which appal me.
But I also know many men are really struggling.
In the UK, suicide is the leading cause of death for men under 50. Recent data shows that over 75% of all suicide deaths are male, with rates particularly high among middle-aged men. Men are starting to support each other better, but many struggle.
And apologies for the ones who are arseholes - we don't like them either.

The loss of rootedness - in relationships, work, purpose - is massive and when men voice that loss clumsily or through anger, it gets written off or ridiculed. But you’re right… if people feel they have no meaningful place in society, that’s not just an individual crisis - it’s a collective one. Creating space for honest reflection on that - without defaulting to either mockery or martyrdom - feels like an important step.

I agree.
But at the same time, are men, as a group, able to express those issues? Ate tgey able to do so wo gettimg angry or putting the blame on someone else (usually women)?

I think a big part of the issue is frim the fact women role/script has changed. A lot. Theyre independent p, esp financially. Tgey aren’t worried anymore about ‘going alone’. And they still have a network of friends around them. Somethimg essential as we’re going towards a society where more and more people are single. (Well the majority).
By contrast, men’s role/script has remained static. Some changes but not so much. They’re still the provider, Notbthe caring one. They still exiect women to carry the emotional Labour in the rejationship. Theyre not that great at having a network of friends around them. These men are going to struggle so much more as we head towards a society where most if them are single….

The answer to that though can’t be anger and blame. And I dint think they’ve done much of the work needed to understand what’s going on. Maybe in alert because it’s asking them to take on roles agd work they haven’t done before. And those (like being the emotional care taker) aren’t valued. So I suspect there’s a resistance there too.

Also follow childfree women over 30 on Instagram and you’ll see random males - (sometimes with women /wives/daughters in their profile pics) trolling them with terrible abuse when they post a holiday reel or a picture of a girls brunch etc.

They seem incredibly angry that some women have chosen not to have children - whether it’s because they don’t want children or they haven’t found a suitable partner yet.

They also troll single mothers. Go figure.

And yes as pp have said- anger is an emotion too.

Agree. My otherwise “gentle, feminist” ex-partner was absolutely triggered whenever his son was having a fallout with my daughter - honing in on her to tell her off for whatever his son was doing?! FFS. And his son was extremely bossy and belligerent, moody at 5. It made me think there really is no hope of things changing any time soon, and that it’s almost impossible to trust a man not to have frightening hidden triggers

Meant I agreed with a PP talking about this not changing anytime soon as the fathers see the sons as an extension of themselves and are blind to this

To me, naming the problem doesn’t have to be emotional labour, it can just be part of honest cultural reflection. Not all commentary is a demand for action; sometimes it’s just an invitation to think differently. I agree that the actual work of shifting things has to come from men themselves and if there’s no will there, no amount of external effort will make a difference.

But I also think conversation shapes culture. Even just questioning the dominant narratives can help clear space for different ones. That doesn’t mean women have to pick up the emotional slack and I hear you loud and clear on the importance of space for female anger too, which is just as policed, in different ways. So I guess I’m not trying to outsource responsibility, just name something I think is showing up more and more in the cracks and invite a better way of seeing it.

I constantly see and hear men’s voices and opinions all over the internet. Most of the things they say, particularly about women, are pretty disgusting. I have an amazing husband who is able to effectively communicate his feelings, we’ve been together many years, since way before all this harmful, misogynistic online stuff started and I’m grateful for him every day. If he left I’d rather be alone than take my chances with the kind of men I regularly see spouting off about women’s “market value declining” after 25 etc.

With a little correction there.
Men die much more often because the way they try to commit suicide is more violent. Therefore it works much more often than women.
But women attempt suicide more often than men.

Which actually points towards more MH issues in women.
(Not that it negates the issues with NH in men btw!!)

I agree ref a quick scroll on SMedia.

I use YouTube mostly and very rarely FB. The public forum / debates are endlessly flooded with horrible, often scary comments from men. Usually misogynistic and giving a platform to thousands ion thousands possibly hiding parts of that view from the women in their life.

I see no fear or reluctance to express this stuff.

I currently have a male teen going on about ' Karen s' and think, what hope is there. The internet is flooded with it.

Mens feelings really are not the big scary elephant in the room atm.

I don’t disagree that women have historically borne the brunt of social shaming around relationships, ageing and loneliness. That double standard is real and I’m absolutely not suggesting that women should now fix men’s loneliness or be emotionally available to men out of obligation or pity.

What I am saying is that loneliness, emotional repression and disconnection are showing up in destructive ways - yes, often among men - and if we want a better society overall, it’s worth acknowledging how masculinity has failed men too. Not to centre their pain above anyone else’s but to understand that encouraging emotional growth in men doesn’t mean excusing bad behaviour or demanding anything from women.

It just means recognising that if the only models men have for connection are transactional or shaming, that affects everyone. The fix? As many have said - men need to step up, model better emotional lives and build that kind of community. But talking about the cracks in the current model isn’t the same as asking women to carry the repair load.