The 4 Ways Men Talk About What Matters While We Avoid Feeling It - Pt 1 Joking & Intellectualizing

Guys not opening up and connecting emotionally, or only doing so with our girlfriend or wife, has become somewhat of a cliché point to make. We don’t do it. Everyone knows we don’t. What’s not discussed enough is that it’s also actually a bit of a myth that we don’t talk about how we feel.  In an important sense, we regularly share our emotions, touch on sensitive, vulnerable topics, and express how much we care about each other.  If you know what to look for, we talk about these things quite a lot with other guys. 

But this isn’t to say everything is going well.  It often isn’t.  The real problem isn’t whether or not we bring things up, it’s how we bring things up.  More specifically, we too often try to connect to each other in ways that are good in many situations but also 1) avoid feeling the sadness and anxiety we’re carrying, and/or 2) deflect or minimize so we don’t risk being rejected or seen as weak. This is fine, even great to do sometimes. But not all the time.

Joking

As I like to sometimes joke with my clients, “don’t be a scared lil bitch, and just be vulnerable about your emotions.” 

This challenge is obviously a joke, but an honest one.  And it’s one I only make with clients I’ve known for a while.  It also turns on its head one of the most common ways that guys indirectly talk about what matters to them: humor.  This often comes up in two related ways: self-deprecating jokes for us and roasting for our friends. 

Whether we’re joking about ourselves or our friends, guys often zero in on failings, shortcomings, and soft spots.  And it’s usually a great way to create and signal closeness.  It says, “I know your faults, but we also have so much trust built up that you know we’re good and I still like you.”  If you don’t believe me that its ultimately about communicating trust and safety, then walk into a group of guys you don’t know well and make the same kind of joke about a guy someone else just made.  Actually, don’t do that, you’ll probably get punched.

It’s the same deal with ourselves.  Self-depreciation is great. We all need humility, and these kinds of jokes are effective ways to show it and get more comfortable with the idea that our success or failure or whatever doesn’t really matter all the much in the grand scheme of things.  It also creates closeness in the same way as making fun of others. It’s a great way to build relationships, when we can say, “Hey, look at how much of an idiot I am” and then everyone laughs with us instead of at us.

The problem is when we’re not genuinely laughing on the inside.  Guys, it’s often good to have tough skin and shake off our pain and hurt and fear with a laugh.  But that’s where you end, not where you start.  If you’re feeling anxious or sad then, well, you’re feeling anxious and sad. We have to own where we are and not force things to where we want to be. And acting as if you’re ok with something and laughing about it is nothing more than lying if you aren’t actually ok with it.  It’s fake.  It’s an act.  The result is that we keep everyone at arm’s length and we become even more alone.

The same goes when we skip straight to laughing about someone else’s issues when we don’t know for a fact they’re ok with it now and are in a place to laugh about it.  If they are, great! Make fun of him! But if they aren’t, then you’re basically telling them that they should move on to somewhere you want them to be where, but they simply aren’t at yet.  And worse, it says, since you don’t actually know what’s going on with them, that you aren’t actually very close.  And when people you aren’t close with laugh at your faults, it feels, well… kinda shitty.

Long story short: after something bad happens, joking about it is a great place to get to, but we all start where we all start, the fear and sadness that’s there.

Intellectualizing

This one is rough for me.  I love meandering into philosophical quandaries and analytic minutia.  These kinds of questions are important, and it’s just plain fun. So, while there’s a time and a place for this, the time isn’t always and the place isn’t everywhere.  There’s also a time and a place for feeling and communicating our emotions. Genuinely sharing them with someone in a felt sense.  A lot of guys treat talking about their emotions, or even discussing the nature of emotions generally, as if it’s deeply vulnerable and connecting.

And the reason for that is because it is.  And it is in two ways.

First, intellectualizing can be good because talking about emotions abstractly is a big step in a direction many of us have no real experience with. And this training since childhood is taught and enforced by both men and women.  For example, studies have shown that mothers use more emotion words with their young daughters than their sons.  Now I don’t want to get into the nature vs nurture discussion here, mostly because it’s largely irrelevant. What matters is that guys struggle with talking about their emotions, and at least part of this is because it’s something we never learned or had a chance to practice.  Therefore, discussing emotions abstractly is progress in the right direction.  And an even bigger next step forward when we move to describing our own emotions.

Second, talking about emotions, even abstractly, is risky business.  For too many guys, “emotions”, at least fear and sadness, are seen as weakness and/or irrelevant to getting things done.  We’re supposed to be stoic and unreadable, concrete and productive.  And this isn’t just about vain attempts to avoid being mocked and ridiculed (which again, comes from both men and women).  It’s about legitimate questions regarding our self-worth and the roles we play for others. If our value comes from not just our physical but emotional strength, from our ability to be an unmovable rock in the middle of a storm so others can tie their ships to us, then what are we to those who rely on us when they see (worse, feel) all of our fear and regret and doubt?  What are we if we’re just another ship and no longer a rock? 

For many guys, talking about emotions, even abstractly, is a great first step into a topic that is doubly vulnerable. First, it’s vulnerable for whatever vulnerable issue we’re scared or sad about.  And second, it’s vulnerable because it puts into question our very self-worth and value to others.

Oof!  So guys, why should we ever take the next step beyond intellectualization and be in our messy, weak emotions when someone else can see them? 

Well, the main reason is so that we can finally not be so friggin alone, and feel (not just know, but feel) that someone sees and cares about us. The truth is that you and I aren’t omnipotent gods.  We aren’t strong enough to move through life undamaged.  None of us are. We need to get over it.  We need to be ok wit the fact we break sometimes. And to repair what’s broken, we need to deeply feel like others really honestly see us and we matter to them.  Since we’re not actually invincible, we need to acknowledge this truth and connect so that we can repair.  The ironic twist is that we’re stronger in the long run this way, not weaker.  Ignoring the cracks in the foundation only means the house will collapse sooner. Holding it all in just guarantees we’ll break down and fall apart, the outcome we’re so scared will happen.

Long story short: intellectualizing can be a step in the right direction, but it still leaves a wall between us and others, and it doesn’t show what’s really going on so that our loved ones can see our pain directly and show us in return that they care.

Drinking & Anger

In Part 2, we'll get to the two harder ways we try to share: drinking and anger.