The Crossroads of Toxic Masculinity and Feelings

Men, historically speaking, have done a lot of shitty things.  I mean A. Lot.  Most of them looked like me, so I acknowledge up front my place of privilege and the fact that my voice may not be vastly different from many of theirs.  Before I go further, I want to say this piece is specific to men and more specifically men in heterosexual relationships.  I recognize many women and many people in non-heteronormative relationships face similar struggles and often even worse struggles at the hands of again, men who look like me. I am in no way discounting that, diminishing that or denying them their space, safety, and comfort.  Rather I am focusing on where I believe a great deal of toxicity in our society is stemming from today and seeking a way to understand and combat it. Recently, there is an increasing strong division in the men I am working with, and even within myself.  I often point out that those of us straddling approximately the 25-50 year old range of age are in this place where our childhoods were filled with the old adage of “men/boys do not cry” as well as “rub some dirt on it, walk it off, you are fine as long as the bone is not sticking out”.  However, as we have aged, we have been forced to reckon with the fact that we feel things.  A lot of things actually.  Many of us struggle with expressing those things because they are the very sort of thoughts and feelings we were told would make us seem weak and vulnerable.  There were countless names we were called if we were voicing being sad or god forbid if we shed tears.  We grew up with fathers who were emotionally closed off at best or completely absent and unavailable or downright abusive at worst.  The toxic masculinity culture was prevalent every single place we went.  In movies we watched men who walked across broken glass in bare feet without a single tear, we saw men who dealt with heartache and heartbreak with a strong glass of brown liquid and active avoidance of feeling.  Many of us were made to feel weird or bad about our more feminine sides like wanting to be in a long term committed relationship and not just sleeping with people we were attracted to.  I often say we are battling the “John Wayne” image from our youth and the “I bawled my face off watching Coco” of our present.

Over time, we have tried to straddle this line and it has made us suffer.  It has made those we care about suffer too, because we are afraid to be vulnerable or show emotion.  We desire deep intimacy with our partners but are also actively afraid that they will judge us and reject us if we dare to expose that “softer” side.  So many men I work with are afraid to tell their wives or partners of a decade or more that they have some needs, because they will feel exposed.  Even worse, many of the men who have drummed up the courage to share with their partners that they want or need more have ben mocked or belittled by those they trust and love.  This only adds to the dissonance the men are feeling and they come to therapy feeling like they have no recourse and are simply not made for vulnerability, emotions, or connection.  These men express an emotional need, and are met with anger, one upping, or even silence.  These leaves them feeling broken and like they have no place to turn to.  Often, the more this happens, the more those relationships begin to dissolve.  These men have unmet emotional needs dating back to childhood, and they have often chosen partners who have similar unmet needs.  The initially complimentary trauma responses they each have seem to make them a great fit. Attachment style and trauma responses have led to them feeling a deep connection.  These men feel loved, desired, appreciated and safe.  But that goes away when they begin speaking their needs and asking for a little bit more.

The rejection men feel in these moments leads to them turning to the internet to seek knowledge and connection.  Unfortunately, that is where this story gets worse and more nefarious.  You see, these men who are decent people seeking love and connection and emotional validation discover the ultra-toxic “men’s rights” or “red pill” groups. These men soon see all these other people who have gone through similar toxic relationships and discover that it is all the fault of “low value” women.  This is bullshit.  I want to make that REALLLLLLLLY clear.  This is where maladaptive coping skills meet toxic beliefs, and it creates a cesspool that is all over the internet.  Those who run these groups and speak about them and support them all have a backwards view of relationships.  They see for whatever reason that only these women are at fault, and they do not take accountability for their own choices and actions. It goes back to the old standby of toxic masculinity that men are just seeking a “high value” woman to share their lives with.  This discounts both the man’s experience as well as the woman’s experience here.  These men have their own issues and removing that from the equation means they expect a woman to simply accept them even with their unaddressed issues, while expecting the women to be some version of pristine undiscovered fountain of youth style bullshit.  As a man who has been rejected and who has unmet emotional needs, it can become super easy to just say “yeah, this has nothing to do with me” and buy into this stupid idea.  Not many of us want to take that long look at ourselves and see that we carry some of the blame too.  

As men, we need to seek relationships where we can express ourselves and be ourselves.  This applies universally, because that is what makes a healthy relationship, but I want to address the toxic masculinity side of the world primarily here.  All of these men have learned along the way that they have to stay quiet and treat the woman in the relationship like a queen.  Both partners should treat each other with love and respect, but these men learned early in their lives to stuff their feelings to be a better partner.  Once the dynamic is established that a man does not feel he can speak his needs, he keeps repressing those feelings and it builds and builds until he finally lets it out, usually in the heat of an argument.  After some work in therapy, he may learn to confront those feelings in more real time and approach the relationship in a healthier way, but if his partner meets him with anger, or silence, he will feel like he made a mistake.  It will turn to shame and he will feel like he is the mistake.  That is why the connection with the men’s rights groups gets so strong.  He suddenly feels validated, seen, heard, and not like this is a him issue, but a them issue.  This removes the men’s accountability and to my mind, makes it where they actively turn away from empathy and turn to a more selfish approach.  These groups encourage men that they are doing it right and they deserve a woman who is somehow this virgin goddess who vacuums in pearls but also is willing to be a sexual object in the bedroom.  Instead of seeking a mutually satisfying relationship, these men begin believing they are entitled to a woman’s body and obedience.  They begin to see themselves as superior.  They have not crossed from having shitty maladaptive coping skills into misogyny, where they have the backing of all of these other people supporting them.  From there we easily move into rape culture, “boys will be boys” bullshit, and racism of the “looks around before sharing the joke” type.  The world is inherently worse because of this.

So, as a therapist what can we do? For starters, we must teach our boys and reteach our men that they need to create validation within.They need to see that they matter and their experience matters.They need to see that empathy and compassion are great qualities and furthermore they need to be taught that it is okay to feel what we traditionally saw as “negative” emotions.As a society, we have run away from feeling our feelings, but for many of the men, they were never taught to feel them and never allowed to feel them.Stuffing our feelings aside makes us easily malleable to whatever brand bullshit is being peddled on the internet.All our children deserve to be able to grow up being themselves authentically and not having to hide what they think or feel.These men need to learn that sadness, anger, anxiety, disappointment and frustration are normal, and that sometimes we need to allow ourselves to feel those things in order to really decipher what we are truly feeling.If they are being hurt in a relationship, they need to be able to see that they have sufficient value to leave that relationship rather than continuing to subject themselves to that.All humans deserve love, respect, support, compassion and understanding.The sooner we men begin showing ourselves that and understanding that we must address our own shortcomings and even the toxic relationships that have arisen from them, the sooner the world will begin to be a more loving and welcoming place.None of us are perfect, but all of us deserve to be whole.