Most men think we have to bear our burdens alone. We don’t confess our worries, our sadnesses, our confusion, our despair. And that kills men.
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I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone. — Robin Williams
Most men think we have to do it alone. Bear whatever burden alone. We don’t ask for help. We don’t confess our worries, our sadnesses, our confusion, our despair. We don’t engage other men in vulnerable conversations, and we sure don’t let women know what’s really going on inside us—unless we think doing so will get us laid, or admiration, or something.
We don’t even tell our intimate partners our deepest truths. Yeah, sure, we hear them say they want the truth. But we don’t believe them. One of my close man-friends recently told me he grew up in a home with this core message:
“Always tell us the truth … and we will NOT be able to handle it.”
Somehow I learned that message growing up, too. You?
Another close friend grew up believing he would be abandoned and essentially die if he told a truth he thought might upset his family. He was sexually molested. He told no one and carried the confusing shame alone into adulthood, and then into his marriage. Although he told his wife about the actual event, he didn’t tell her about the unhealthy behaviors he had developed over the years to distract himself from the burden of that memory, notably an addiction to porn and excessive romantic flirtations with women who never knew he was married. His inability to share the depth of his very human challenges nearly sabotaged their marriage when she suddenly found out by looking through his phone.
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There’s a core cultural message that says men can’t ever show weakness.
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There’s a core cultural message that says men can’t ever show weakness. We can’t need to rely on anyone, and we can’t make a mistake. If we do, the world will fall apart. Or at least we won’t have an honorable place in it anymore. Our partner will leave us. Or they’ll no longer respect us, in which case they might as well leave us.
So we grin and bear it. We do it ourselves. We bear our own burdens and don’t let anyone else help us carry them. When it gets too heavy, we check out. Run away. Drink it, porn it, fuck it, TV it, work it, war and rage it out. In those check-out moments, even when we stay in the room, we leave our families and our communities to fend for themselves. We send everything to hell, screw the consequences.
That’s probably why women outlive men. We slowly kill ourselves with unhealthy behavior. Women don’t drive men to an early grave, as comedians would have us believe. We drive ourselves.
At its worst, “grin and bear it” leads men to the gravest act of check-out possible: suicide.
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At its worst, “grin and bear it” leads men to the gravest act of check-out possible: suicide. What Robin Williams just did. What 22 despairing military veterans will do today, and again tomorrow, and again the next day. What aging NFL football players do to themselves. The same thing many teenage boys do, who die by suicide four times more often than girls.
According to Forbes magazine, despite women experiencing higher incidents of depression, men across the planet commit suicide more frequently.
Jimmy Stewart, a defensive back with the Saints and Lions who retired and became a family therapist to work with athletes and military personnel suffering from PTSD, told ESPN Magazine,
The four years I played pro football were some of the most horrendous of my life. I cried alone. I was frightened. I badly needed somebody to talk to, and I know so many guys today who feel the same way … Players are not committing suicide just because they have CTE [brain injury]. They are committing suicide because they refuse to be vulnerable. CTE can cause symptoms of depression, but it’s isolation and invulnerability that causes you to commit suicide.
We must stop trying to do it all alone. We aren’t supposed to do it alone.
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Throughout human history we have been a tribal creature. We have always banded together to protect ourselves, our families and communities, from the threats of the day. Today, in our fast-tech individualistic society that still rewards masculine expression (e.g. competitiveness, ambition) over feminine (e.g. vulnerability, sharing), male aloneness and isolation is one of the biggest threats we know. Especially, as Robin Williams pointed out, when we’re actually surrounded by people.
Even as men whose culture tells us we’re supposed to know what to do next, the fact is we often don’t. We’re each as clueless as anyone else on this wild miraculous planet. We daily deal with emotions and burdens that are way too big for us to carry alone.
We’re each as clueless as anyone else on this wild miraculous planet.
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These are not weaknesses we’re supposed to manhandle into denial. They are our human realities.
Confessing that is as good as place as any to start.
We can be strong men and still not know what to do. We can be strong men and still ask for help. Actually, it takes a stronger man to reach out and ask for help, because that man has to push through his internal masculine resistance to the act of being vulnerable.
But we weren’t meant to bear the burden of our lives, even our internal lives, alone. We were meant to hunt together, live together, work together, heal together, dance together, suffer together … and learn together. We were meant to thrive everyday, together.
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In the quote at top, Robin Williams was pointing at the awful loneliness we might feel when surrounded by people to whom we don’t feel safe confessing our deepest truths. I’m not suggesting Robin’s wife or family wasn’t making him feel safe to be himself. I wouldn’t dare put this extreme decision on anyone but Robin. We are each ultimately responsible for whether we choose to allow ourselves to be fully seen, or not.
In the next 24 hours, I invite you to have a real conversation with someone you care about. Tell them about your deepest secret fear, and also what you love most about their presence. Get real with someone.
Tell them about your deepest secret fear, and also what you love most about their presence. Get real with someone.
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Your woman, your man, your family, your community—your own life—may very well depend on it.
There’s one more thing.
Just as you don’t have to do it alone, you don’t have to make others do it alone, either.
As thoughtful men, we must ask ourselves …
“Are we the kind of men others feel safe to fully be their human selves around, too?”
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Please leave a comment below and let me know what this brings up for you.
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Photo JJJJJPPPPP/flickr
Thanks for this article about a very important subject, but I just felt it important to point out, if no one else has already, that the Robin Williams “quote” above is actually one of many movie quotes. His character in World’s Greatest Dad, 2009, is saying that. See here: http://www.torontosun.com/2014/08/12/robin-williams-most-memorable-movie-quotes
Great article. I think my best mate holds a lot of things in. He’s exceptionally good at it. I’ve always thought that maybe it’s because he’s afraid of people judging him. But know matter what I say or do, he’s always “great” until he has a meltdown every so many months. Only then will he open up. But it’s short lived and then he puts everything in a box and he’s suddenly great again. Recently he melted down and admitted he may have a problem. I was proud of his admission, but when I try to talk about how he’s… Read more »
Great article – well sourced. Thank you. Have you connected with the ManKind Project? They have men’s groups and trainings that help men break the taboo of sharing. Often times, it seems that men need a crisis situation to ‘get’ that isolation is not going to help. There are over 700 ManKind Project men’s groups in the USA – and more around the world. (http://mankindproject.org)
*catch
It’s not just that we culturally tell me to deal with their pain as quickly and privately as possible (it’s not like we really “let” women express true emotions, either: “emotional” is a brush-off term which signals that our emotions are not being taken seriously even as we are “allowed” to express them). It’s also that we as a culture are not fostering the ability to deal with and care for others’ emotions in an honest, empathetic, healing and honoring way. I could list off all the culturally enshrined iniquities that, in my opinion, we have accepted as “normal” but… Read more »
@ Megan Although I doubt the topic police will complain about people discussing women’s issues in a topic concerning male suicide, I think you miss the point that at least being allowed to express your emotions especially weakness in a non-destructive manner is cathartic in itself. It also confers with it other benefits like shelters for women. If men are always strong and shouldn’t need help, why should society build them? It’s funny how people will assert that if a man sees a woman struggling with something like a flat tire or a heavy package he should be proactive and… Read more »
Yes Yes Yes.
I grew up with a father who hide his true feelings, was alcoholic and when upset would yell or make derogatory or negative comments. I learned at a very young age not to share any feelings, especially with other men. I have been fortunate to met a few men who have allowed me to open up and be myself. You never know when you will met that magic person who you feel safe with and are able to share and open your heart and soul to. It is a chemistry you can’t force to happen. Like a catalyst you find… Read more »
I read this article and contrasted it with the one on victim blaming and I see tons of similarities. Men are raised by society to “man up” and not ask for help, but the solution isn’t to change society, it’s for men to “man up” and over come their societal programming.
WONDERFUL article. I am a feminist, which means to me that genders should be treated with equal respect and consideration. To me that simply means the Golden Rule. As a culture I think we are brutal and dismissive in our attitudes about the hearts and souls of men. Many women think of men in such an objectified fashion, as providers or protectors rather than as complex, growing human souls, and it offends me. Women can do better. We can treat men with the respect that we would treat any human being, we can listen better, we can ask better questions,… Read more »
I would imagine some guys will read this, realize you’re right, then do nothing about it. Like me. Sorry, but some of us also realize we really don’t matter that much.
You matter more than you know.