It is no secret that many men are raised from boyhood to dismiss their feelings; to treat them as of lesser importance to the more valued masculine abilities to think, reason, problem solve, and act. If they were a “good boy,” they internalized the masculine ideals of being hard working, competent, and rational. In their peer groups, they learned early on that they had to be tough.  To be resilient and resourceful in the face of threats and setbacks was respected. To be vulnerable and honest about how one felt was to expose yourself to attack and criticism in the form of bullying, being beaten up and being kicked out of your peer group.   

Unfortunately, that makes a boy’s social world restricted. It’s as if their gender roles cut the range of human experience available to them in half. By adulthood, that has left many men with a disconnect from their emotions. They are hyper competent in the work world, and they may have some understanding of a limited set of emotions tied to their work and their individual past times, such as the feelings associated with competition, games and sports. But when they enter close relationships, they suffer because they are undeveloped there. The crucial set of relational feelings essential for entering close, face-to-face relationships are foreign territory for them.  Their adherence to the emotional codes of masculinity has left them with no maps.

The capacity to feel is one all humans share, of course.

But the ability to be open hearted and vulnerable and available for close relationship with another; these are not distributed equally across gender roles.Many men almost seem like they come from another planet when it comes to the emotional abilities necessary to engage in close relationships with partners or children.

  • They strain to read their own feelings let alone read the emotions of another person.
  • They are unable to offer emotional support to others.
  • They feel nothing or they become tongue-tied at moments when heart-felt expressions of sympathy are called for.
  • They become overwhelmed with the feeling needs of their children so they avoid them.
  • They seem so preoccupied with themselves and their own story of work and success-seeking that they are unable to truly listen to another.

That leaves many men undeveloped and unavailable in their adult relationships to their mates and their children:

  • The openness to feel and experience emotion without needless defenses,
  • to perceive them in yourself and others,
  • to anticipate how others will react emotionally to your actions and words,
  • to read facial expressions and body language, to sense the give and take of intimate conversation,
  • to be able to listen and respond appropriately.

Whether or not you call these skills, abilities, or facets of emotional intelligence, they need to be learned and practiced to develop them.There is the rare man out there who seems to possess advanced emotional-relational powers of perception and experience that have been acquired with little practice, but they are a rare breed.

For most men, these emotional skills-abilities-powers don’t just drop from the sky because a man is good at work. They require practice and trial and error just like any other skill. Maybe most revealing, they require give and take with another – since they are relational in their essence. For men raised to be individuals and to prioritize responding to their own impulses, to be put in situations where the unit is two and the vehicle of connection are feelings  – that’s dumbfounding for them!

For many men, that amounts to a situation where they have to drop their hard-headedness and know-it-allness and acknowledge their inadequate condition. In other words, they have to be vulnerable to those with whom they want to be emotionally close. To open the heart, to drop the defenses and run their mind-body energy in a new way; not through superior acts of the reasoning mind, but through their feeling sense, through their heart. That is a turning point. Yet to approach it like a thing on a to-do list trivializes the timeless, soul-touching power of the heart and its feelings.

If you want to be intimate and in a close relationship with your mate or your children or your best friend, you better be able to be vulnerable. 

Terry Real, a leading expert on relationships and male psychology (and by the way, a regular guy in the best use of the term) admonishes the men he works with who pretend they can be in relationship without vulnerability.  To them, Real bluntly states, “pretending to escape your own vulnerability is like trying to outrun your rectum.” Yup. Try to do this and you will be a certified a-hole!

Where to begin?

  1. First, men must acknowledge their lack of understanding, skill and ability in this domain.For all their command and control they demonstrate in their work world, they are beginners here.You can’t fake this stuff, either, to do so is to not be vulnerable.
  2. Second, beginners make a lot of mistakes. Accept it. Avoid beating yourself up for not having it at your immediate command. If you are being bullied into being vulnerable, you cannot be vulnerable.  Find other companions for your journey or have a courageous conversation with your bully.  You have to feel safe. 
  3. Third, recognize that this takes two.Whether it is an adult partner or a child, it is in relationship, one that is vulnerable, open hearted, deeply feeling, and that allows for the free-flow of empathy that will allow you to begin this wondrous journey toward love, intimacy and close relationship.It is a long and winding road to your heart, as the Beatle’s Paul McCartney sang.
  4. Fourth, find a partner who loves you, who has gotten a taste of what intimacy is like with you and wants more, or sees the possibility of sharing intimacy with you and who would love to stumble forth with you in the days, weeks, months and years to come. Look them graciously in the eye and from a space of humility and equality (not command and control) tell them how you feel. Then, begin the journey. Some men find that a men’s group of supportive peers is helpful as they learn how to drop their defenses and open to their feelings. Others find a skilled psychotherapist will help them learn how to feel and respond to others empathically (which will lead to deeper exchanges going forward).     

However you proceed, it is worth remembering that life without heart, without close relationships, is a life not well lived. You are missing out on some of the deepest, most profound experiences available to human beings.

In the end, to quote McCartney again, “the love you take is equal to the love you make.”