Why there’s nothing weak about emotions

Do you sometimes feel like you just need to get done with all this emotional stuff so that you can get on with the important things in your day?

Enough already! Stop crying! We have things to do, places to go, people to see.

But hang on a minute. Emotions aren’t just a nuisance. They’re an important guide to how you’re doing moment-to-moment.

If you were a civil engineer and someone offered you a really sensitive instrument that would provide you with moment-to-moment data about the state of repair of a bridge and send you an alert every time the bridge got too close to failing, you wouldn’t say “No thanks, I have more important things to worry about.”

But that’s what our emotions are – a very sensitive instrument which feeds us data about the state of our system – mind, body and soul.

Just to really drive this point home I want to tell you a story. Back in 1983 I was living in Connecticut in the US. One of the rivers which passes through Connecticut is the Mianus River. At 1.03am on June 28th that year, the Mianus River Bridge collapsed and fell into the river, leading to the deaths of three motorists.*

Local residents were woken by the sound of the collapse, which shook their houses and sounded like a thunderclap.

While mechanically, the collapse of the bridge was due to poor drainage, rust and a fatigue crack, it was also attributed to the ″deficiencies in the State of Connecticut's bridge safety inspection and bridge maintenance program.″

But, according to Wikipedia there was more: ‘on the weekend leading up to the collapse, residents had complained about an increase in strange noises and vibrations coming from the bridge, including what one resident described as being "like thousands of birds chirping," but no action was taken.’

Those chirping noises are not unlike the small signs we get that something is wrong. A feeling of unease for instance or small doses of anxiety. Unfortunately they’re easy to ignore. The sense that feelings are for sissies, that they’re weak and they get in the way of the important stuff means we (well some of us) ignore them and just carry on as if nothing is amiss.

Then those feelings start to gather pace and still we ignore them, pushing them down and hoping they’ll go away. But meanwhile the fatigue crack is spreading and if we don’t take note of those emotions and ask why we’re feeling them, we risk a catastrophic collapse.

How patriarchy splits men off from their emotional life

There is a fundamental illusion at the root of the belief that emotions are just feminine fluff. It’s part of the big lie which is central to patriarchy. This is that one half of human characteristics belong to men and masculinity (strong, stoical, competent, courageous, loyal, logical, independent) and the other half belong to women (expressive, emotional, vulnerable, dependent, sensitive).

So women are allowed to be emotionally expressive and feel vulnerable. But for a man to be masculine he can’t be emotional, he can’t feel vulnerable, he can’t be sensitive and he definitely can’t be dependent on others.

So he’s actually not allowed to listen to the messages from inside himself that tell him that his bridge is in trouble and on the way to a catastrophic collapse.

That’s a really bum deal.

In Britain there is a subset of men who experience this alienation from their emotions even more intensely. I’m talking about men who went to boarding school. At boarding school, you can’t afford to express or even feel any emotion (apart from perhaps a sense of triumph when your team wins). The grief that the boy feels on being separated from his parents is quickly suppressed and it goes underground. Emotional expression is seen as sissy and so the boy learns to ignore those signs, repressing his emotions or projecting them onto others

He has to depend on his mother/wife/sister/best (girl)friend to tell him when he’s showing signs of metal fatigue and even then he’s likely to ignore her anyway.

Emotions are not a sign of weakness; they’re a sign of being alert, aware, connected to yourself. Of course men can do this if they choose to. And guys, your women want you to. We want you to be able to be vulnerable and expressive with us. We want you to open your hearts and share what’s happening inside you. We want to know when you’re anxious or afraid as much as we want you to share your joys with us.

If the women in your life take the piss when you show up vulnerably, know this – they are engaging in toxic femininity. They’ve bought into the whole patriarchal divide of masculine and feminine and it doesn’t benefit them or you. So be ready to challenge that.

How can I connect more with my emotions?

Let’s look at the positive side. Men are actually allowed access to three emotions: anger, lust and triumph (best kept apart I reckon). That’s a start.

Children in primary school start with the primary colours: red, blue, yellow. Then they start to mix them: green, purple, orange. Then maybe they start to see more nuanced colours: vermilion, violet, teal.

Perhaps we could see emotions in a similar way. We can move from the primary palette to one with more nuance: gratitude, love, remorse. And maybe there are strong emotions which you’ve been suppressing for a long time: sadness, grief, fear.

It’s partly a question of becoming more familiar with your inner world and partly a question of changing who you’ve become. That old-fashioned strong & silent masculinity is not who you are at your core, it’s like a cloak or a suit of armour you’ve put on.

You can change it for something more fully human. It may not be easy and it may take a while for it to start to feel like second nature. But you’re courageous aren’t you and up for a challenge? That old-fashioned masculinity is a kind of survival kit – it kept you safe through boyhood and adolescence, but it’s not fit for purpose anymore. You’ve outgrown it. And you can let it go so that you can embody a more modern masculinity.

My partner, Mark, would tell you how much there is to be gained from making this change. He made a decision 10 years or so ago to learn how to love better. That included a degree of sensitivity rare in a man. He’s the first man in my life to notice when I’m just a little out of sorts. I don’t have to show up sobbing or worrying in any obvious way, because he’s learned to read me – and it’s the little chirping sounds he’s responding to as my bridge starts to falter.

You can do this too. To get some help with it, download my guide to changing your survival personality, The Survival Kit Workbook.

That update to the way you express yourself and your masculinity will bring you more joy and pleasure than you’ve ever dreamed of.

* If you're interested in the collapse of the Mianus Bridge, this is the wikipedia article.