No Stupid Questions

Men are often socialized to believe that showing emotion is reserved for children, women, and the weak. They are often taught that emotions are in direct opposition to "strength" and "manliness".

Unfortunately, if men show emotion, they are often criticized and made fun of (often by other men), calling their masculinity into question. As if having emotions make you weak or less of a man.

Emotions are not a "weak" trait. Emotions are a human trait.

Men need to work hard to be supportive and accepting of other men showing emotion. De- stigmatize emotional men. Stop showing sensitive men or men who struggle or cry as "weak" or worthy of mockery. This is such an antiquated view and needs to be abolished.

Support your bros. Become comfortable with emotional expression. This will help struggling men everywhere, I guarantee it.

Plenty of men can deal with this, and plenty of women can't. It's not helpful to see this as a gender thing, you'll only feel more alienated. You might want to seek out some new social connections?

Loaded question. Full of judgement, too.

This is what is commonly referred to as "toxic masculinity". That's the crux of what they're talking about. It's not just that men are taught to be dangerous to those around them, it's that we're also taught to be hard and lonely Islands that seek no support.

It's no way to live and it crushes you over time.

I don't know your exact experiences, but I had a similar feeling in the past. However, recently I noticed it was a lot of how i behaved to them. I started speaking more openly with my male friends and noticed, they also value my emotions. The main difference was, that my friendships with women started on an emotional level making it a lot easier to open up for me. With my male friends, I needed to just say how i feel, which i have not dared for a long time. My own stereotypes probably played a larger role than the gender of the people involved.

However as others have said, if they do not take you seriously when you open up, they are bad friends. (Edit: Bad friends is a bit harsh, more like friends for having fun together, not to rely on. This is also nice even if it can be hard to accept)

Sounds like you hang out with childish "men" (boys) and emotionally intelligent women.

There have been plenty of times in my life where showing emotions to women was the wrong move. On the other hand, the friend of mine that I consider the most emotionally mature is a man.

Toxic patterns get passed on due to resentment, often. It's not like they wanted to have to suppress their emotions, but they were taught to. The idea people don't have to anymore itches some people in a weird way.

Like, pretend you joined a club that had an initiation that was really painful, and it happened every year. Tradition. Now imagine that started to change, and you yourself were from that last year that ever had to do it. Now everyone who joins doesn't have to. That could breed resentment for those new people and that new system, if you let it.

Man a lot of people are chalking this up to just the individuals being assholes, but there's absolutely a societal expectation to men being stoic, and that's hard to break for a lot of people, even with their closest friends. Men are taught to be driven, active, leaders. It's what we've been conditioned to by society for thousands of years. There's a growing shift towards men embracing what can be seen as "femininity" in aspects of life, particularly emotionally, but speaking from experience here, it's still hard to open up to my guy friends. And I have good guy friends who absolutely would listen and support me. Hell, they have.

Toxic masculinity has been brought up here, and kinda shot down, but if you dig deep, that's what a lot of it is. Note that doesn't make these people BAD PEOPLE, they're as much victims of it as you are. There's no correlation between 'strength' and showing emotion. No one, man or woman, is going to look at someone going through it and say 'ah they she'd a tear! Weakling!' Hell, if anything, it takes a lot of strength to be emotionally honest. But that feeling is present as a low-level background noise everywhere. Men don't cry. Get over it you're a man. She dumped you? She wasn't that good anyway bro. Nah man, that shit HURTS. This is what toxic masculinity is. Not toxic MEN but toxic STANDARDS, which are perpetuated by both sides.

In my experience, this isn't a gendered distinction - but rather just down to the individual person.

Some of my closest friends that are both men and women alike are friends I consider "letting my guard down" around. The same applies in the opposite direction, where I have friends (but generally more on the distant friend / acquaintance side) men and women alike that I have to be a bit more guarded around.

And while I can't comment on this specifically because I of course don't know you and as such have no frame of reference, from what I've experienced in the past and seen others go through, is that a lot of times it's how you bring it up. If it seems more forceful, it's going to have a higher chance to not land well with people (of any gender).

Edit: Another thing worthwhile to note, is that people have different ways of expressing emotional acceptance. For example, my grandfather would never turn me, or anyone away for expressing their emotions. But, he's more of a silent listener, and doesn't usually comment on it - but I know that he is still accepting of my emotions the few times that I bring it up. It's very similar to the concept of love languages, if you've ever heard that. It's very possible that the men in your life are more the silent listener type.

I don't think it's a man/woman thing. I have been friends with men who were very supportive during such times, and women who saw it as weakness. I've also met a lot of women who are turned off by romantic gestures and sentimental feelings coming from men. And of course, I've encountered many that were the reverse of these.

So I honestly don't think gender is a factor here. I think it varies a lot from person to person regardless of gender. It also highly depends on your relationship with that person. Don't expect a lot of support or empathy from your most casual friends. Some friends will run away from you at the first sign of anything remotely 'clingy'.

Obligatory "nOt ALl MeN"

I'm a dude and I'm fine with my guy friends showing emotion. Very few do. We're socially taught it's weird, but it's not.

Get yourself a guy friend you can hug.

Obviously, in any discussion about groups as diverse as men/women, it's important to recognize that these are sweeping generalizations and that individuals can vary wildly.

It's not being "sensitive" or "emotional" that most dudes have trouble with.

Most women probably don't consider it a sign of strength, either. Not the sensitivity or emotionality.

In my experience, most men are focused on something that is happening. A sport or activity, a task, whatever. Your sharing is most likely out of rapport and just isn't how they want to interact.

I have close male friendships that are very emotionally open, and others where it just doesn't feel right.

In my experience, women are different. Male/female relationships are already complicated and getting into preferences and other dynamics is pointless. It could be anything.

Assuming you're attractive/confident/wealthy/etc, there would be many women who would comfort you just to keep you in their orbit.

Assuming you aren't, there are many women who would comfort you out of a sense of maternal care and empathy.

Assuming you're usually friendly, funny, safe, etc, women broadly seem to be kinder and more interested in interacting in that emotional space.

Does any of it matter? Probably not. Before insulting all men you know, it might be better to consider that you might just not like to have typical male friends. Just because people don't like doing what you do, it doesn't make them dumb.

You have given lemmy very little to go on here, so pick whichever answer you prefer.

Hypothesis 1: The culture of which you are a part has established gender roles which lead to its women typically being more emotionally open and empathic than the menfolk.

Hypothesis 2: For similar cultural reasons, women around you tend to favour a communications style that happens to be more compatible with the one you have developed for yourself, leading to easier mutual understanding.

Hypothesis 3: You have some hang-ups of your own about sex which are making you more receptive to female company than male.

A lot of my male relationships, we bond while we do things. My female relationships we can just hang out. Don't know why that is.

Find the right men. There are 4 billion men out there and many are able to communicate and be there for friends. It may take moving into some peripheral spaces where different experiences and points of view are appreciated.

Those men have issues of their own. We're often raised to be stoic. Many men are instilled with this idea that crying makes you weak, and that men aren't supposed to be weak from a young age. It makes many of us men absolute pieces of shit, IMO. It's the very foundation of toxic masculinity.

I agree that socialization is a big part of this tendency, as other commenters are saying. However, having experienced living with a testosterone dominant body and an estrogen dominant body, I've found that it was much harder for me to process other people's emotions on T. While I would care about people and what they were expressing, I often would feel overloaded by strong emotions. On E I don't notice that as much, and have a lot more patience and capacity to emotionally engage with others.

I'm sure this stuff varies a lot from person to person, and there isn't one single factor that determines how men and women would typically behave. But in my own life there's a pretty big hormonal component to this

In my experience, as a man, this simply doesn't happen.

Men are rejected by both men and women when they're emotionally vulnerable.

Source: failed to complete suicide in 2014. Lost 95% of my friends, including ones that were active in an org that supposedly worked to prevent suicide.

Yes

Pretty much that.

Because on the whole, boys are never taught to deal with any emotion but anger. All others must be suppressed lest you look weak...

To listen to another man express painful emotions means they may have to acknowledge that they are not masters of the universe and perfect, stoic gods in every way and in every aspect of their lives.

It takes real courage to allow yourself to be emotionally vulnerable around others and the vast majority of man are never able to to this with anyone but their partners (and will never admit that that they have) and most not even then.

Could you give more specific examples? I don't deny your experience, it's a bit difficult to try and understand without additional context. Without it, I and other commenters are probably shooting in the dark. The explanations we give might be too general to be useful or satisfactory, or too specific wherein they miss the mark completely for you.

Yes, I think so. It’s been my experience that when you show a vulnerability or do something that causes people to confront a hidden little part of themselves, people who can’t deal with their repressed emotions around that thing tend to get resentful and sometimes react in really immature ways. Internally, they might think things like “You’re CRYING? But I don’t feel like I get to cry! I never get a chance to show my emotions! Why should YOU?” And then externally, what comes out of their mouth is wild shit like “pull yourself together” or “man up”. This also happens with other modes of self expression but I think in terms of emotion and masculinity it is particularly awful. Women are more likely to have experienced the harmful effects of strict gender roles, and generally want to make sure men feel supported in the face of that, because it (patriarchy) hurts us all.

Women are also often socialized to know how to react and how to help when people get upset, which can lead to some bleakly unfair family situations, but in contrast to men who might not have that skill set or that lifetime of practice with those types of social situations, they’re going to respond very differently. It is absolutely a skill to be able to cope with others’ feelings, and that skill is not taught to children evenly.

This largely depends on the individual people around you and the culture of your area. There are large swaths of the US where avoiding the perception of vulnerability or toxic masculinity are the norm among men. I live in a bigger city where these absolutely still exist but are much less common. Among the other men around me, emotional authenticity is the norm rather than the exception.

I know for a fact people can grow in this regard though, so my advice is to keep being your authentic self. This will have you modeling what authenticity looks like for those who don't have it, and will also help you cultivate like-minded people around you

I think one take might be that the cause might be based out of a fear of being perceived as being gay. I mean you have generations of men who faced everything from hanging, to chemical castration to prison sentences for being gay. Policing expression of things like any sign of physical signs of affection or "womanly" displays of emotional connection put men in physical danger. That generational trauma of emotional amputation for preservation of life doesn't go away in a day.

Internally a lot of guys still have their guards up because that was the model of behaviour their fathers and male community members have because their Dads were like that so even if the underlying cause isn't known the behaviour seems more "normal". It's what the people you saw as grown ups did and what they trained you to emulate to be like them. Under those circumstances everything else becomes the deviation because it feels counter to what you were taught or are mirroring. Fighting that feeling of oddness requires an act of conscious will. A lot of people still look at being gay or femme is a failure state. A weakness of moral character... because it is a rejection of internalized homophobia and misogyny and rejecting the notion that these things are deviant is seen as an endorsement. Compulsory straightness was and is a pretty facist system and all facist systems require a "failure state" to demonize. You don't want to be the target of violence so you enact the violence asked of you to prove you aren't one of the failures.

These systems self perpetuate by default.

Women don’t run away from their emotions, like men are taught to do.