Constantly and all the time.
I gave up on being manly and reserved and whatever other BS a long time ago. Never made me happy. Problem is, most men haven't, and even men who have generally have no social training in how to emotionally support each other. And, just in general, American culture doesn't value or care about the emotional lives of men, at all. "Go to therapy" is as much a demand that you stop having emotions as it is a demand that you learn to regulate negative emotions.
And I honestly just don't have any close men friends anymore. or close anyone friends, really. Nobody wants to talk to me, or share anything about their inner life. I think part of it is most of my "Friends" are Minnesotans, and white Minnesotan culture is... characterized by extreme cliqueishness, by being extremely emotionally unavailable, by an unwillingness to acknowledge or confront any interpersonal problems. Honestly kind of a shit place to be in touch with your emotions and have an extremely distressing severe mental illness.
I've seen a lot of men talk about this. You're told to shed toxic masculinity, get in touch with your feelings, develop emotional intelligence, blah blah blah. And then when you do you realize with a deep, piercing insight that no one gives a shit. No one cares what you're feeling. No one wants to know about your thoughts and how life harms or heals you. No one cares. I mean, obviously there are exceptional individuals, but for the most part? People don't care. They don't want to know. They don't have any model on how to support men.
There are a lot of complaints about how men exclusively demand the support of women they're involved with, but the other side of that? There is no other source. No one else cares. You're honestly lucky if your partner cares. If you can't turn to your partner for support, and you're not closely and intimately aquainted with the handful of people in North America who actually value the emotional lives of men, you're just stuck, alone, in pain, keenly aware that the society that demanded you develop this knowledge really just wanted you to stop expressing any emotions at all. Like yeah, it's better to know, being emotionally aware and developing emotional intelligence will make your life better in many ways, and if nothing else truth is preferable to ignorance, even when it hurts, but one of those "What has been seen cannot be unseen" curses. Now you know that most of the people you care about don't care about you, the inner, real, authentic person that exists under all the masks and posturing and assigned social roles. It's a terrible thing to learn. I really hope some day men can actually, really turn to each other and expect support and compassion, but we are not at all there yet. Hell, probably half the reason all my friends are queer is that, painting with a very broad brush, queer people are much more open to non-normative gender expressions like "Acknowledging that you're in pain and need support instead of just punching holes in the drywall".
"Go to therapy" is as much a demand that you stop having emotions as it is a demand that you learn to regulate negative emotions.
Between that and the internet warrior silver bullet of "WHO HURT YOU?"
it's no wonder that so many contemporary men are afraid of being vulnerable at all; that fear is somewhat justified.Wasn’t there a poem that went around about how Putin invaded Ukraine because his mother didn’t hug him enough? I dunno, all the discourse around men’s relationship to emotion is caricatured and it’s so frustrating.
I remember hanging around some fellow teenagers back in the day and there was a fairly common refrain, "Guys who talk are hot, guys who cry make me uncomfortable and should not do that."
Your comment reminded me of that.
Now you know that most of the people you care about don't care about you, the inner, real, authentic person that exists under all the masks and posturing and assigned social roles. It's a terrible thing to learn.
I had a hard time realizing this about my parents
Male, hetero, Gen X.
In short, not at all; not ever. I've been in and out of therapy (back in currently). I have a few other dads I'm cool with at soccer practice, and coworkers as well. But honestly, not really anyone I would call if, say, I needed someone to just "be there" in a time of need.
Someone else pointed out in this thread as men we're told to get in touch and be better. And then when those eventual emotional insights are made reality kicks you in the balls: you have no friends outside of your family and hopefully your spouse or partner. Men my age are wholly transactional. Work and status (totally intertwined) are all that matters.
All the Gen X people I know, especially the men, are like you say: transactional. They often seem performatively nice if you're in their in-group but in my experience are always trying to sell you something, trying to get you on board some grift of some kind, or expect you to be their cheerleader for some personal achievement theater they're performing.
That's sorta true. But since I'm "in the club" it basically goes like this and i think its even more emotionally depraved than just trying to sell you something:
Parents get together for Event X (example: soccer game), dudes gather around to talk shop, everyone complains about work (this can last for hours), drinks flow, dudes now start letting loose... and everyone basically talks about their hobby (usually consumerist based) while other dads figure out if they personally will throw their money away on the same or similar venture. Example: Dude A buys a fishing pole, goes fishing, catches 10 fish. Other dads will then ask for amplifying details (how much did the reel cost? Where did you go fishing?) and this constitutes sharing.
By the way, I'm not even accounting for the bros who like sports. And that's another level I can't begin to explain. Personally I don't care about sports which has resulted in many dads calling me gay (but please tell me more about who "looks good on the field" since grown men chasing balls while grown men watch on them on TV is soooooo hetero).
To be fair, some bros might help each other out (working on cars) but the expectation is tit for tat - I work on your car, you work on mine next weekend. Ultimately though, there is no support system beyond Show & Tell - Mid 40s Edition.
I never seek out emotional support. The only men in my life are my dad who I live with and my brothers who live across the country. I have zero interaction with other males besides the casual hellos and good mornings with coworkers. I don't really see what the point would be, they can't help. I have a girlfriend but I mostly don't tell her my true feelings. I learned very young to handle it all myself and it tends to make me resent really emotive people who always want to talk about their feelings because it's like. Get it together, ya know. Hard to relate to people. I'm more vulnerable with people on Hexbear than I am with anyone I know in real life.
I'm more vulnerable with people on Hexbear than I am with anyone I know in real life.
This one got me good. My cat passed last year after sixteen years and I commented about it on Hexbear that day while struggling to deal with the emotions that I normally lock away. I didn't tell any of my friends about my cat's passing for like three months because I didn't want to tear up around them because it would feel weird.
I find it much easier to be emotional and vulnerable with other guys and male friends than anyone else. I've actually got the most negative responses to opening up from women, counter to gender stereotypes. I can't put a number on how often I share with others, it just happens.
I always hear about men just talking about football and punching the walls, but I have pretty emotional and deep convos with my buddies. And they're pretty standard dudes. So IDK if I'm lucky, or it's overblown. Might just be American culture?
The fact that you even have buddies makes you an outlier in the first place tbh. A lot of men don't actually have friends
I am cishet all that but I am not like... a regular dude you know? I don't think the general hexbear user is really representing any kind of particular population of people.
That being said I have a friend I will smoke and talk about stuff with sometimes. Which I think is a classic form of it. From what I have read the general population of males use their female partners for emotional labor. I do have a friend who I think really only likes spending time with me because he can be emotionally open with me and he doesn't really have people in his life he can do that with. He is pretty chill though
how often? seldom-ish lately. though it comes and goes. i feel that i have been in more of a emotional support provider role of late, due to some stuff going on with a friend and some other family stuff.... but nobody seems to be doing well. it's disgusting to me personally how much emphasis is placed on professional/economic productivity as some kind of index for fulfillment. like, if you keep your head down, do your job, pay your bills, and save for a rainy day.... that's all there is to it. edification, self-understanding/mastery, non-monetized hobbies feel regarded as eccentricity/elective. when i saw that headline about how everybody in america has depression now, i was like, "no shit."
i have to echo the fear of sharing complex emotions with others, in general, is that the others will express disinterest or otherwise act in a way to discourage it... and how that fear is routinely validated by the way others have been socialized to react to men looking for emotional support. aside from close family, my better experiences in being vulnerable are with other men. not all of them, but if done in private, the men in my social sphere have more intuition on what it means to live inside the mask of emotional mutilation and are more patient and gentle with the confused/clumsy way distress expresses itself in other men. a lot of people just want easy friendships and the shorthand for men, in my experience, is that we're easy to be friends with so long as we keep it light.
all my life growing up, i can't tell you how many times i heard women (not men) casually say shit like "i can't stand when old men cry" because they found it so distressing. like those documentaries where some old as hell WW2 vet would talk, after encouragement, about their traumatic experiences and get choked up... the commentary would be about how the one time they saw their grandfather cry, they were very disturbed by it. "didn't know what to do/felt helpless." with absolutely zero awareness of the collective role we all have in pushing men to keep a lid things, as though we weren't taught to be like this by literally everyone around us, not just the men in our lives.
all my life growing up, i can't tell you how many times i heard women (not men) casually say shit like "i can't stand when old men cry" because they found it so distressing. like those documentaries where some old as hell WW2 vet would talk, after encouragement, about their traumatic experiences and get choked up... the commentary would be about how the one time they saw their grandfather cry, they were very disturbed by it. "didn't know what to do/felt helpless." with absolutely zero awareness of the collective role we all have in pushing men to keep a lid things, as though we weren't taught to be like this by literally everyone around us, not just the men in our lives.
Are you me? I've had nearly the same identical experience.
a) never
b) never
thx ingrained masculinity and capitalist isolation
I feel you. I recently got a trip to the emergency room. Ambulance ride. All I did was ask the guy doing my blood work about his family and how he felt about his job. I offered nothing even when they put the IV in my arm. Toxic masculinity is a fuck.
all my guy friends are queer lol. we're affectionate but i'm basically an unusually reserved person. couldn't really say why that is, i just had a socially isolated adolescence and i've never fully gotten past that frame of mind.
if i may fully recline on the divan: for me the pain of vulnerability with my loved ones isn't that my feelings will be dismissed or belittled, but that i don't have the ability to make myself really understood. like sincere support from someone who i don't think really gets what i'm saying feels almost as bad as actual rejection. which is of course absurd and unhealthy, but i mostly can't overcome it.
I don't seek out emotional support nearly as much as I probably should. The two guys in my life I am (was) closest with died very young, one at 18 and the other just recently at 27. It's been very difficult to be open with how much losing them has eviscerated me as a person, especially since they were the ones I would have gone to.
How are you supposed to explain a whole-ass person and how losing them has transformed you into a shadow of your former self to someone you're getting to know?
I once admitted to another guy that an ex-partner took advantage of me while I was drunk and he laughed in my face. He was also drunk, and I know this dude is extremely immature.
That guy was a long time friend. 
I’m really sorry to hear that. It’s already such a disempowering feeling and people really do try and laugh it off pretty often. I hope you’ve had time and space to process that.
AMAB and still living as a guy... not on HRT or anything yet. To answer your first question: pretty much never. I never talk to my male friends about my problems, honestly for a long time I didn't have much to talk about. If I did talk to someone about my problems they pretty much have to be female. Not sure why, but I just don't feel emotionally comfortable with men. Actually, I have one friend who ill talk to about my feelings, and I've gotten support from them, but even then I think maybe I've had one deep talk with him. It just doesn't happen.
Uhhhh
Never.
Isolation is what it means to be a man. And than to become completely isolated and dependent on your wife for all social interaction is what it means to be a married man.
Who are you?
