As a guy, I never really felt comfortable saying those things to anyone irl.
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Gay cis male
When around my boomer parents: Fuck no
When around my friends: Hell yeah! Some of the straight guys use me as a sounding board for their emotions, since they know I’m not going to judge them.
The older I get, the more I realize that opening up makes things worse.
Same. Especially significant others (length of relationship doesn’t matter) it actively makes things worse. So I keep them to myself.
I am so very sorry you have to live like this.
In general, reading a lot of these comments in this thread is just heartbreaking.
I really think this is a cultural thing in part. I live in a progressive social democracy in Europe, and I really don’t think many see it like most people here do. I asked a couple of the more traditionally masculine/male friends and they tell me the share everything too, that they need it in a relationship especially, since they do hold stuff in from others apparently. But the very closest ones, friends and spouses that is, they need to lighten the load. And I recognize that too. Shit’s too heavy to carry alone.
African American male. Growing up it was the “Man up” “no one cares” and all of that negative talk.when trying to be open I still express feelings and emotion but I do limit it depending on who I’m around, and those people are very rare for me to want to be around longer than a small talk catch up while passing by
In personal settings, sure. In professional ones, not really
I cry all the time, dawg.
No. I keep pretty much everything to myself. I am convinced that no good can come of me expressing any of my emotions. I need to be a rock. I allow myself a few minutes of crying when a relative dies.
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I don’t usually talk about my feelings (I am a woman) but people of all genders seem to feel comfortable confiding in me.
So maybe it’s not so much that men don’t express emotions, more that people in general don’t express them to men?
Or even more likely we are all different and it’s not so much a gender thing. As a stereotype I’ve heard it plenty but in practice it hasn’t seemed so. If I was being sexist I’d say men complain more about physical pain and women complain more openly about unhappiness, but I can’t say it’s a big difference IME.
I am very comfortable expressing any emotion, as long as it is anger. I am also keenly aware that most times I attempt to express any emotion emotion other than anger, the person or people I am expressing it to are most likely to mistake it for anger.
I’m cis male, and I think I do a better job of it than many, though I think there are some lingering effects of cultural expectations and upbringing that don’t always make it easy.
No. It’s not acceptable at all to have feelings. No one will care in a positive way if you do as a man.
There is no acceptable outlets for emotion as a man.
This is way weird political shit gets so much traction as it is considered to be acceptable to be angry at idea you don’t agree with,hate an opponent or other and you are allowed to be happy at the pain you bring them.
Everything else is shut up you don’t know how good you have it or shut up you don’t know how much worse it is for someone else.
When people tell men “you can tell me anything” what they mean is “I don’t want to feel like you’re keeping things from me.”
It 100% does NOT mean “you will face no negative consequences for telling me.”
Men keep some things to themselves because sharing feelings has resulted in getting burned too many times.
These things aren’t necessarily bad. They might just shatter exciting illusions the other person prefered over the ordinary truth.
I struggle on two fronts with this - I don’t want to “burden” others with how I feel, and fairly often I don’t know what I feel.
Grew up in the American Midwest as a preacher’s kid. My parents are awesome people, but Dad’s job meant our family had to seem close to perfect for small town political reasons - we had their support for any kind of crisis, but we had to keep it inside the house so our single limited income wasn’t threatened.
Between that and a family full of neurospiciness, it felt like we were always on the edge of catastrophe. I was generally able to get by day to day, so I just kept quiet so we all had room to deal with whatever else needs handled.
So, I think I got in the habit of bottling things until I couldn’t even tell what I was feeling, and also developed an aversion to sharing what I could tell was bothering me. I’m open to the idea of sharing things, I just can’t often tell what needs shared until it pops out unexpectedly.
I will express my feelings with words no problem. I can cry under certain circumstances and in front of certain people. But I won’t do so in front of others, though I think it has to do with me not being used to do so, more than feeling that is not a masculine thing to do.
Like farting. You know your farting audience.
I’m transfem, which has had some interesting effects on how emotionally open I am. I feel I’ve been more able to be open since I transitioned, but that might also just be the effect of being around LGBT+ people - my family still gets annoyed when I’m less controlled around them
