Randie Shane Tollefson discovered that the clearest window into men’s emotional lives may be through their songwriting.
“Songwriting is sort of the last sanctioned outlet where men are allowed to talk about their feelings. It’s like men are telling us something important about who they are in music that I think deserves special attention.”
This is what I said in my Kickstarter video when explaining my idea to do a show where I, as a woman, stepped into a man’s experience of love through the music of some of my favorite male singer-songwriters. I was actually putting theater and performing behind me to focus on getting my Masters in what turns out to be my true passion, Marriage and Family Therapy. But my studies had planted an idea in my head I couldn’t quite let go of, a way to combine my two selves.
In my studies, I discovered the work of Susan M. Johnson, one of the founders of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. She speaks compellingly about the idea that all of us, male and female, have the same, fundamental fear that we are ultimately unacceptable in some way, that we are somehow unworthy of love and will be rejected and abandoned by the person for whom we care the most.
She describes how, when these fears are triggered, we tend to cope in one of two ways; we either heighten our needs and feelings in an attempt to influence the other to heal our pain (“Pursuers”), or we tamp down our needs and feelings in order to try to eliminate our pain (“Withdrawers”). Though people of both genders fall into both of these categories, the truth with which most of us are familiar is that women more often tend to pursue, and men more often tend to withdraw.
But why is that? It may have to do with the extent to which the genders experience what is referred to as “flooding” or hyperarousal, which is a kind of sensory and emotional overload that makes it impossible to think clearly. Drs. Patricia Love and Steven Stosny, in their book “How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It” describe how men’s heart rates skyrocket more intensely and for longer than women’s during conflict. And it may also be about the different relationship we teach our boys and girls to have with their emotions; women are taught to lean into our feelings, men are taught to lean away.
So this is the background in front of which I began my search for what I referred to as “my hero’s journey” in music. I wanted to find songs that took him from love found, to love lost, to love sought for and found again. And I was so excited to find that many of the songs on which I landed spoke mostly to that common experience of love and heartache. Lyrics like “No one understands me quite like you do, through all of the shadowy corners of me” (Landon Pigg, “Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop”), and “Now I understand what every step is for; to lead me to your door” (Elbow, “Mirrorball) could be sung by anyone in the throes of love. And lyrics such as “Do you want to make me want to cry” (Dan Wilson, “Cry”) and “I don’t want to get over you” (Magnetic Fields) and “I’d rather be a mystery than she desert me” (John Mayer, “My Stupid Mouth”) seemed to me almost entirely genderless expressions of heartache as well, regardless of pronouns. And lyrics like “I’ll be taken for a fool”, and “A lesson once learned is so hard to forget” (Sting, “Be Still My Beating Heart) are as easily sung by a women scared to love again as a man.
But then there were lyrics that felt more foreign to me as I sang them. In Dan Wilson’s “Cry”, he sings, “Don’t you want to make me feel I’ll never fail, I’ll never die?” Robin Thicke sings “Tell me you depend on me, I need to hear it” in the middle of yet another of his sex ballads (“Lost Without You”). Later in “Be Still My Beating Heart” Sting sings, “Never to be wrong, never to make promises that break”. And pretty much the entirety of John Legend’s “This Time” is about a guy who failed to step up to the needs of his relationship and now would give anything to have a second chance. In these lyrics, there is a preoccupation with the idea of failing the person they care about that seems uniquely male.
In that book by Love and Stosny, the authors talk about how men trigger women’s fear by leaving them emotionally alone, and how women trigger men’s fear through shame. This really resonated with me, as I had felt that fear myself, and had used shame as a weapon of influence in response. And, as we have been learning from researcher Brene Brown, shame never works, because it “corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change”. It shuts us down. And there it was in the music; if a man’s biggest fear is that he is failing us, the quickest way to shut him down is to tell him that he is.
It did not occur to me to question this fear. My feeling was that if men and women want to have better relationships, it would be better to accept and honor these fears, and therefore be mindful of when we are triggering them. And so my intent with my show was to honor the male narrative by acknowledging his desire to be a hero – after all, I love that my husband wants to be my hero, and he is, even if I am not a damsel in distress. I did not see the point in calling into question the way a man sees his value in the world. But now that the show is over, I find myself wondering, is the hero narrative helping anyone? Does it do more harm than good? And if it is a problem, how do we change it without robbing men of their sense of worth?
Fascinating article. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot. As a child, I grew up in a family with a lot of music and books, and I always loved listening and playing to music. In my early teens, I got into punk, pop-punk and 90s emocore as a way to escape from bullying, and now, a decade later, my default response to any emotional stress is to go to my bedroom and pick up my guitar and a notebook, or put on some post-hardcore on my CD player. One of the reasons this article interested me is that ‘hero narratives’… Read more »
Certainly, Declan, there is music that expresses all sorts of emotional experiences, and men and women both find music a powerful outlet for whatever their experience is. I think my point was that there aren’t a lot of other places men are allowed to express feelings of failure and shame, of who they want to be in relationships, and still be considered “men”, with all of the socially acceptable associations we place on the word. Songwriters are highly desired by women and looked up to by men, even if what they are writing about would possibly be considered “unmanly” if… Read more »
Fascinating article, well worth further consideration! I’m a choir director, have worked with boys and men of all ages, and have observed that it is a powerful way for boys and men to express emotions.
Peter, this is great – what is the culture around your boy’s/men’s choirs? It seems to me a brave act, for a boy or man to involve himself in this kind of artistic expression…
Great Article
I personally feel that James Hetfields Lyrics (Metallica) often express emotions from a male perspective or the lack of ability to cope with certain feelings
check out the unnamed feeling or the unforgiven for great examples
Hey, KaineH – this is so interesting to me for the same reasons I express to Kevin above; I think of heavy metal as such an angry medium, and not particularly vulnerable. I wonder if this approach to the music gives a male song-writer permission to voice some of his most difficult experiences couched in an aggressive musical form. I am always struck by the vulnerability of the singer-songwriters of the type I used in my show, but I am intrigued by this juxtaposition and need to look at these songs you have recommended!
There’s a lot of truth here. As a guy, you can maintain your masculinity if you successfully play music, regardless of whether that music is deeply about the feelings you’re supposed to suppress as part of that same masculinity. Writing/play music is a totally great, unique outlet in that way. But, in addition, listening to and engaging with music allows for a similar kind of outlet for lots of men. I attended a homophobic, hyper-masculine all-male high school, and I listened to a lot of punk and hardcore as an outlet for my feelings there. Not only could I go… Read more »
I really appreciate this response, Kevin, and it makes a great deal of sense to me. I had to look at a catalog of music that I could sing with some credibility, and so didn’t even look at the punk rock cannon. This may have been a huge mistake, as there must be a lot of material there that would be ripe for reinterpretation. It’s really interesting to me that you experience punk rock as a antidote to shame and anger, because I have always seen punk as a kind of angry medium. Clearly I need to give this genre… Read more »
Hi Randle! Thanks for the interest! Yeah punk rock, depending how one uses it, can be everything from an “angry medium,” that promotes the worst sides of masculinity and misogyny (lyrics about violence, weirdly gendered hatred of ex-girlfriends, slurring and reaction against outgroups, etc.) or it can be one that uses the ostensibly male emotion of anger as a cover for much more complex emotions. By “a cover,” I mean that punk, which is ostensibly angry, allows men to feel and look like they’re listening to something hyper-masculine (because it’s “RAH RAH RAH, ANGRY AND MOSHY), when actually they’re engaging… Read more »
Yeah – I totally get what you are saying, and that “cover” is what I was referring to when I said angry. Which makes it a really interesting genre of music to examine for possible reinterpretations. You may have given me an idea for my next show!