Say What You Feel

Two poison-polarized positions

You have probably heard the following:

Men don’t say what they really feel. They hide their feelings.

Or, perhaps you have heard the evil twin version:

Women don’t say what they really mean.

Let’s forget for just a moment, that human gender and sex are on a long spectrum, albeit one with large binary distribution. Even if that were not the case, human beings are not all men, nor are they all women,.

The fact is we all are fully human.

William Blake wrote a poem called The Poison Tree. You have probably heard of it at one point or another. Here it is:

The Poison Tree
I was angry with my friend; my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe, I told it not, my wrath did grow
And I watered it with smiles, and with sweet, deceitful wiles
And it grew both day and night, till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine, and he knew that it was mine.
And into my garden stole when the night had veiled the pole
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

I don’t believe Blake was advocating for us to murder our enemies, here. That is a radical interpretation that shows us what happens when people believe in lies, or “sweet deceit” designed to assure them the speaker is their powerful, weapon against a marginalized, supposed enemy.

We learn this poem at such an early age that due to its simplicity, I think we don’t really see the wisdom that it provides.

When we are honest and open about what we feel and think with either a friend or a foe, we create a space where quite bluntly, wrath can end.

Blake does not speak of wrath in a biblical sense.

Initially, “wrath” just means offense, frustration, annoyance, or non-extreme resentment, although it can be watered and sunned into something worse.

Men, women, and an apple a day

Men, indeed, are programmed socially to hide their feelings, but so are women, and in sometimes very different ways. Men understand that being assertive and sometimes aggressive can allow them to vent anger, but they are less inclined to honestly say “I am just sad.”

A man, when asked “How are you doing?”, is more likely to deeply realize his positivity could come across as confidence and/or courage. He may know his job, or role performance, is being evaluated.

A woman asked “How are you doing?” may also mask her true emotion, but it is more likely to be because women are socialized to be easy-going and polite to please others. Women also may be thinking of wanting to placate any assertion or personal female concerns about her appearance, sex, role, gender, bodily vulnerability, or more.

Women are not going to bluntly tell someone interested in romance that he is undesirable, or that he is unattractive to her, politically, socially, or religiously non-aligned.

Girls and women don’t know automatically if a person is a rotten apple or a perfect fruit. She can’t guess his reaction.

Human beings protect their privacy and their autonomy through these little socially acceptable white lies. However, roles are beginning to change. More young people today will speak their minds. This can come across as being privileged, spoiled, or even as trying to cancel others.

Race, sex, gender, social class and much, much more are currently being resorted, and reexamined. This is how societies evolve.

Men and toxic stereotypes

In fact, one truth that most women will say is: “I want to be friends”. And she may truly mean it. However, there are still plenty of people, and plenty of men who think being friends is unrealistic for traditionally “opposite” sexes.

Deep friendship among those who are dating is a new force to be reckoned with, and worthy of discussion.

The outdated idea that a man wants only one thing from a woman is cruel to anyone who needs friendship, and that is we who are human beings.

The already deepened dynamic

Deeper discussions among already established relationships are also quite prone to the misleading masking of feelings.

We are conditioned to know our partners and family members. We rarely tell them anything we are vulnerable about because long ago we already made up our minds about their probable reaction.

A husband will tell his wife, “It’s all good at work,” because he doesn’t want to dig into details that are messy, or possibly even threatening to his sense of managing it. A wife will say: “I’m fine,” when she visibly is annoyed to avoid being vulnerable to his probing.

Most people, often, are conflict avoidant, in this way.

Both men and women will at times mask what they feel because both are human. They have built up feelings of feeling unsupported, or of simply not trusting that another person can give them what they need in that moment.

Men are often accused of calling women overly sensitive, and the opposite, that women say men are insensitive, is also a cultural trap.

A woman will hide many feelings. (“I’m fine!”) when she is better off venting. She will usually do this in order to not be seen as “hysterical” as the term itself originates in female biology.

Similarly, a man who may not even realize how vulnerable he feels will put himself in the boy box, or man mask.

Falling for each other like Newton’s apple

Over all, girls and boys, men and women, all need to be taught that empowerment comes with honesty and dialogue.

It does not always come naturally, and it is certainly not socially programed. At least not yet.

Listening and speaking up require real effort.

Sadly, by the time most of us reach adulthood, we have learned vast methods of making the sweet, deceitful apples shine.

We do not even realize that we have the potential to keep people we see as foes, as our most supportive friends.

Nurturing others, then, is not about gender, sex, and roles we take on as much as it is about feeling heard, being helped, or even invited to share our vulnerability in order to built trust.

Being listened to is an ultimate nurturing tool, one of natural sun and rain that we all should be sharing rather than hiding through smiles and wiles.

People are naturally drawn to one another the same way gravity pulls Newton’s apple to the earth, but in order to really hold up one another, we require more than gravity, we require mutual support.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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