Redefining Masculinity: Strength in Emotional Mastery
Have you been accused of being “emotionally unavailable”? Maybe you’ve felt insecure about not being “man enough” or “too soft”? Worse still, maybe you’ve felt like being a man means sensitivity, affection, compassion, and warmth are things that are just not available to you? If you relate to any of these feelings, read on.
What Even Is Masculinity, Anyway?
The fact that we have to ask this question, in a way, provides us an answer. Masculinity (as well as femininity and other norms surrounding gender expression) are socially and culturally constructed ideas. This means that masculinity is not a rigid, static concept but is fluid and contextual. Does this mean that masculinity is completely arbitrary, fake, or pointless? No, because each of us lives within a society and a culture. However, the feedback men receive from society and culture can further solidify an ideal of masculinity that may feel stifling or shallow.
In a 1987 article titled “Doing Gender” for Gender and Society, Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman described how gender (including masculinity) can be viewed as a performance one enacts on a daily basis rather than a biologically determined trait. Extending this metaphor, the stifling nature of that performance can feel a lot like showing up to an improv performance and trying to get through it just by reading the lines you’ve memorized from a Shakespeare play - you may be able to make it work for a while but you’re likely to feel pigeon-holed and struggle to adapt.
The Emotional Toll of Rigid Masculinity
In our culture, boys often receive messaging from a young age to “stop being so emotional”, “toughen up”, or “get it together.” This creates a negative incentive for boys to restrain themselves when it comes to emotional expression. Dr. Ronald Levant first coined the term Normative Male Alexithymia (NMA) to describe this phenomenon in a 1992 article. Let’s briefly breakdown the term:
Normative, meaning conforming to or related to norms.
Male, meaning pertaining to men, boys, and people who are perceived as predominantly masculine in their gender expression.
Alexithymia, meaning an inability to express or describe one’s feelings.
NMA can lead men into believing that emotions, in themselves and often in others as well, are inconveniences to be ignored. The truth is, however, that our emotions don’t go away just because we ignore them. Instead they get buried and eventually start manifesting in other ways: rage, shutdown, anxiety, depression, addiction, workaholism, isolation, and more. Furthermore, it’s common for men to see these undesirable manifestations of their emotions as personal failures, but in reality these are side effects of a cultural survival strategy. Clarity around the cultural root cause of NMA coupled with self-compassion for oneself, especially around perceived “mistakes” or “failures”, is often the first step required for men to begin healing themselves and their relationship with their own emotions.
How Are You Supposed to “Feel Your Feelings” Anyway?
If emotions are not an “inconvenience to be ignored” then what are they? Think of your emotions as the same kind of feedback your body provides you in instances of physical sensation, but for your mind.
This thinking can lead men into making three critical paradigm shifts, in order, with regard to how they think about their own emotions: understanding validity, avoiding judgment, and encouraging curiosity. Firstly, If you touched a burning hot stove, you likely wouldn’t discredit your pain response as being “invalid” and go back for another burn. Secondly, you likely wouldn’t “judge” your hand harshly for getting burned. However, you probably wouldn’t need to reflect on why you got burned outside of simply “stove hot.” This is where the third and final aspect of encouraging curiosity is so important for understanding the feedback our emotions are providing us.
Getting curious about what we are feeling, why, and how we can explore those feelings begins with a few simple methods of reflection. One powerful method of reflection can be tracing our desires back to a potentially unmet need or point of tension in our lives. Often feeling the weight of an unmet need or intolerable point of tension prompts an equal but opposite reaction, for example:
“I hate going to work, I’m always miserable there” = “I need to quit my job”
or
“My wife never listens to me” = “We need to get a divorce”
How can we turn these knee-jerk, imagined solutions into balanced insight into our own emotions? First, of course, we have to see these thoughts as valid, and meet them free of judgment. Then, we engage in curious reflection to begin seeking to name the root emotion underlying these solutions. And so,
“I want to quit my job” can potentially become “I feel unhappy with the way I’m treated at work”
and
“We need to get a divorce” can potentially become “I feel unheard in my interactions with my wife”
Naming these feelings alone does not provide us with solutions, but having clarity around these emotions is a necessary first step with deciding upon a solution that feels measured, safe, and authentic to ourselves. You may well discover after sitting with the feelings, reflecting on them, or speaking about them in therapy that your initial reaction does, in fact, feel like the best solution. Sometimes, however, finding a solution that works best for you may involve working in gradations backwards from your initial reactionary desire to find what feels right. Looking at our same two examples to illustrate what this could look like:
In doing this kind of exploration, it’s possible that you may find that one of the gradations closer to the center feels more comfortable. Perhaps trying the simplest step first will lead you to revisiting a previous, more intense gradation. What’s important is that each possible solution within the gradient honors the original emotion in some way. Honoring our emotions by expressing them and/or allowing them to instigate some kind of change is just one of the many ways we can avoid burying our emotions and allow ourselves to feel them more fully.
Making Space: Emotions + Core Ideals of Masculinity
So, if normative male alexithymia’s existence implies that being capable of the kind of emotional reflection described above is not within the norms of masculine behavior AND that doing so can often lead to men being vilified for deviating from those norms - then how can we redefine masculinity to include things like rich emotional reflection, meeting all emotion free of judgement, and compassion for oneself and others?
Take a moment to reflect, what words come to your mind first when you think about the concept of masculinity? You’re likely to have thought of some variation or combination including these three words: strength, perseverance, and loyalty. Just like masculinity, these concepts have a degree of contextual flexibility even though you may be accustomed to more rigid definitions. Consider the following reflections on how these terms may have more space for emotional mastery than you may initially think:
When it comes to strength, are the sensations associated with feeling the fullness of our emotions, especially those that are painful, not sensations that require a tremendous amount of strength to endure? Would you truly call someone who has maneuvered through grief, addiction, abuse, etc. not a strong person? Is moving from one distraction to the next truly a feat of strength or just avoidance mixed with a little ingenuity? Is the be-all-and-end-all of strength tied to productivity alone?
When it comes to perseverance, is it truly possible to accomplish your goals if your emotions are waiting to erupt at any moment? Wouldn’t it be easier to slow down for moments at a time to reflect rather than pick up the pieces after a catastrophe? Will there really be time to “figure it all out later” when you’ve met your goal? Will you like the person you are and the people there with you when you get there?
When it comes to loyalty, are the people you are gracious enough to extend your loyalty towards deserving of it, do they make you feel safe enough to be your full self? Is loyalty still a positive if doing so has to come at great personal cost to you? Is your loyalty performative, given as an obligation or with the vague promise of a return, or no return at all? Are you loyal to yourself, your needs?
The answers to many of these questions may be difficult, painful even. It should be said that embarking on the journey that is making more space for our own emotions is rarely frictionless- after all, that space may need to be vacated first (and it may not go willingly). The idea, however, is that it is immensely difficult to live authentically, honoring your truest self, without finding ways to hold space for, and honor, your emotions.
To do so is human, but it can also be, without a doubt, masculine.
You don’t have to do it alone. For all the friction-full times, therapy is a big way you can make space for your feelings.
