Men Will Talk About Their Problems, Just Not To Each Other
We lean on women for emotional support far more than we should.
There’s a common belief that men won’t talk about their mental health problems but that’s not quite right. Most men are comfortable talking about their feelings and their mental health, just not always with each other. As a bisexual man, when I’ve dated men I’ve felt like I had ‘permission’ to talk about my emotions. But that same allowance doesn’t exist outside of romantic relationships. For many men, the only relationships they have with other men are as friends or relatives. Society doesn’t grant them a space to talk about their feelings with people of the same gender.
This isn’t something I ever noticed until I actually tried to do it. It’s such normalised behaviour to me that I couldn’t even see it. I speak a lot about my mental health, I’m pretty in touch with my emotions and if I’m depressed I’ll happily chat to women for as long as they’ll listen. But this week I did something I’ve never done before, I texted two men and told them I was feeling low. One of them was one of my oldest friends and the other was my Dad. I think the pandemic gave me license to reach out. Before I would’ve been scared of their response or wouldn’t have been sure they’d understand. But now I knew it was almost impossible they hadn’t experienced something similar. They both responded saying they’d had low patches too and had been struggling. We haven’t spoken about it since, it’s like reaching out was enough of a breakthrough and we’re retreating back into our shells to recover.
I’m really aware of how stupid or maybe even sad this might sound — I texted two people I know to say I felt a bit depressed and they texted back they felt the same. It’s not much in the grand scheme of things. But to me, it was a massive shift in my relationship with both of them. I’ve known my Dad my whole life and my friend for nearly as long, but the blueprint of how we relate to each other was set down a long time ago and not all of it by us. It was difficult and strange to break out of patterns that had existed for so long.
This isn’t just a problem for men. Whether they’re aware of it or not, many men subscribe to the idea that it’s a woman’s role to provide emotional support. That it’s less “weak” to speak to a woman about how they feel. Much of the time the responsibility for men’s emotional well-being falls to women. When that responsibility isn’t shared by a network of friends and instead is placed on one person, whether it’s a friend, wife, girlfriend, or mum, it’s a huge burden to hold.
The fact that so much of society is geared towards the needs of men means that it doesn’t really occur to many of us that we might have problems stemming from our gender. But like any gender, some issues are unique to how we experience the world. In particular ideas about masculinity and the role of men can have catastrophic and sometimes fatal consequences for us. We can only address these issues and support each other if we are communicating with each other. I discovered this week how far we have to go.
