#18 – Building Intentional Male Relationships – Part One!
Act Like Men – Men’s Leadership Podcast
Sponsored by Men’s Ministry Catalyst
This is part one of a two-part series on men and male friendships. Today we will speak to men and their emotions and in part two, Podcast #19, we will speak to men and their male friendships.
In this podcast today we want to highlight some of the causes or why men struggle with their emotions.
Let’s jump right into some of the causes:
- Don’t understand its importance – if you have been told all your life to not express your emotions, you do not get a chance to see the impact on you or others close to you by actually understanding and being able to express emotions. If no male in your life as a man has ever modeled the expression of healthy emotions, it is really difficult for you to understand its importance. You believe it is normal to push down your emotions and to not share them.
- Problematic Childhood – childhood is where people begin to form their personalities and learn how to cope with the stressors of the world. When a child grows up under a stress-filled and possibly inappropriate childhood their perception of “normal” is formed. They learn how to cope on their own – and it is not usually a healthy coping mechanism. When young men have to stifle or redirect their emotions, they do not learn to communicate effectively and understand the source or substance of their emotions and it usually comes out as self-destructive or “other destructive” behavior. Emotions are complicated to start with and when you throw trauma in the mix at a young age, it can lead to closed or suppressed emotions.
- Judgment – being afraid of being judged for how you feel, causes you to not express emotion. This is one of the main factors for men to keep their emotions to themselves. This leads to varying levels of stress, which has other complications.
- They don’t know how – little boys often have very little direction on how to express their emotions. Boys are often taught to “toughen up”. When you tell a boy that long enough without teaching him how to express emotion, as they age they learn how to refuse their emotions and it stunts emotional maturity. This of course impacts future relationships of any kind. It keeps the relationships surface, non-emotional, and task-oriented only.
- Trying to Demonstrate confidence / Fear of weakness – the old slogan, “fake it until you make it” is real here. The other one – “be a man”, without definition or direction, is also problematic. These men live in fear that they will be found out who they are emotionally. They often refuse to admit shortcomings, which ultimately can hinder their career as well as relationships. It leads to emptiness as no amount of faking positive strength will lead to fulfillment.
- Don’t want to burden their partner – many times as protectors and providers, we feel that if we share what we are feeling, it will create insecurity with the one whom we are trying to protect. They often do this for the right reason – protect your partner – but with the wrong outcome. The partner often feels more isolated and fearful of being completely honest on their side as well. Partners want to be able to understand what each other is dealing with – not that they have to solve it, fix it, be insecure because of it, or run from it.
