@Catoline
I really appreciate you making that edit. I 100% agree with your new edited version.
@texzenguy
I am so sorry you have been through all of that. And to grow up in that too must have been beyond difficult. Hugs to you. Thanks for sharing.
@Catoline Thank you for the edit. Suddenly I feel like we are on the same team when before it felt drastically different.
You are right. I was raised to believe that my significant other (for me a woman) would be my only source of support. And it hurt me and stunted my growth. Luckily I eventually realized this was not true and have sought out support from other women, from men, and from professionals. It was too much pressure on my ex-wife to be my main source of support (main, not sole). But to be fair, she put the same pressure on me. And it crushed the love we had for each other. We went in wanting to love each other, but we didn't know how.
I've been on my healing journey since 1999. I had made plans to end my life. Had it all figured out. Wrote goodbye letters. But then I thought about my brother, and how I couldn't do that to him. I've never told him this. But I got therapy instead. And so many,many, many other things. I've spent tens of thousands of dollars on therapy, workshops, books, etc. And finally I feel like I turned the corner. Only this year. 25 years into it.
But, mental health struggles are real and they are just about the worst thing. Sometimes I have felt bitter that I've had to pay for most of the help I've received. I've felt bad about myself for not being able to fill my life up with people who could help me more. But my loved ones have all mostly been drowning too. And I don't feel bitter towards them. And I'm grateful I have am amazing therapist now. She's phenomenal and so worth the money. But it doesn't make it any less sad that I've gone without that support most of my life.
But like I said, I've finally turned the corner.
@billiam
It's so awesome that you've turned the corner. Hearing all of the progress you've made is really inspiring, especially since it shows that it's a journey.
I've always felt that hope is so important for all of us. When we lose hope, that's when everything really falls apart. So even though it's been a long journey for you, I'm hoping everyone can use it as motivation to keep on going and to keep hope, especially during the times where it feels like there's no light at the end of the tunnel.
It’s not easy to open up. Especially to a woman. Any sign of insecurity and she will look at you like a weak man.
That just further sends a man spiralling into further misery.
@Will564 Thanks. It is a journey. Thanks for the encouragement.
@DarkSecrets I'm sorry you've had that experience. I know it's very painful. I've been there. I have lived there.
Some women, and some men, are like that. And it's not always easy to tell. But I've met women who have not been that way too. My ex wife, and all the women I've dated, have been like you describe. But other women have been great about it.
I think it's trickier when you are in a relationship with the person because if you are both struggling, you can drag each other down. So often one person will pressure the other to be strong. Which is why it's easier to date when you aren't so needy.
But if your female friends are treating you that way, that is truly unfortunate. I've had friends and family both act that way too. It's awful.
It's hard to find the right person to open up to. Took me over a decade to figure it out. And I'm still wrong at times.
@billiam I love what you've written here and am happy you've turned a corner on your journey. Yes, it would be nice to live in a world where we don't have to pay thousands of dollars for someone to listen and bear witness to our pain. I'm grateful for stumbling upon these forums and finding people willing to have these important conversations.
Thank you for posting this.
Lost my younger brother to suicide.
Raising awareness is SO important.
@TD1964RGK I lost my younger brother to suicide last week, and my father to suicide when I was 15. I agree with you 100%.
It’s pride month and it’s also men’s mental health month. The pride thread has been alive and well all month but the men’s mental health thread was buried which doesn’t surprise me. Happy men’s mental health month.
Excellent Post @OverTheMooon
Sadly-Mental Health challenges are still widely unknown to the general public. Most of us don't think about these issues until someone close to us or ourselves go through it.
It is particularly challenging for family members dealing with the stress of a loved one who is suffering. They often don't know what to do or who to turn to for help.
Many people are incorrectly diagnosed-simply not diagnosed at all or in many cases refusing help [which is the most troublesome of all]. They refuse help for all the truly unfortunate reasons mentioned in the above comments-stigma- perceived sign of weakness-etc.
Equally alarming are all the Self appointed "Spiritual Gurus" who now claim to help people heal their minds.
While I am a big advocate of personal self development and Spirtual Growth- those with genunie mental health challenges need professionally trained therapists-
Not all therapists are equal either so carefully choosing the right one is also key to healing.
Again @OverTheMooon -thank you for bringing awareness to this topic
@texzenguy Healing and Prayers to you-Suicide has impacted many of us.
@OverTheMooon Thank you so much for being brave and sharing this information. I have lived a life where men are not taught to put energy into emotional work. The only place it was allowed like @Fematheist mentioned was the expression of either rage or sadness.
@billiam I am grateful for the Brene Brown share about shame being so debilitating. I also appreciate your mention of putting the burden of your "whole heartedness" on your partner. Thank you for sharing on so many levels. I know that isn't easy.
It was too much pressure on my ex-wife to be my main source of support (main, not sole). But to be fair, she put the same pressure on me. And it crushed the love we had for each other. We went in wanting to love each other, but we didn't know how.
I was reading bell hooks "the will to change" on an airplane ride yesterday and revisiting her intensity about how the traditions of patriarchy teachings have hurt all of humankind.
Throughout the ages, Men were raised to NOT put energy toward self healing/emotional work, EMOTING on most levels, and a fear of weakness which doubled down as a "control of the weak" creating all sorts of struggles. @Fematheist really coined it with "Thwarted Belongingness" because we ALL have a need to love and be loved in a real way.
I am curious for those of you who believe in professional therapy, WHOLE HEARTED LIVING, and in general turning the tide by first working this out within yourself and then ALSO helping by posting publicly for others to grow as well.... What would be a good book recommendation for a 20 year old man growing up in todays society?
Big hugs out to you all and ALSO to those reading who are dealing with the struggle in a similar fashion.
These personal accounts are very moving. I think this a very helpful, and positive, thread for men to relay their personal stories.
...the traditions of patriarchy teachings have hurt all of humankind...
But, please, let's keep the ideological blame game out of this.
let's keep the ideological blame game out of this.
The truth is not a blame game. Sometimes patriarchy is the root cause of problems by building up expectations on men to not show emotion, to not cry, to solve problems with fists rather than words and the list can go on. To reduce it to an ideology is an argument for maintaining the patriarchal system instead of examining the problems inherent to it.
While one can find "undesireable" qualities in anything natural, I'll defer to biology, which primarily concerns itself with survival of the individual long enough to seed the next generation, rather than some of the folks in the faculty lounge.
So, the reasons patriarchy is what it is are not ideological, but the motivation for calling it out are, especially today.
Interestingly enough, throughout history, many male warriors were quite capable of revealing their emotions, and seeking counsel with their queens or other trusted women in their orbit.
@sillysassy
While I don't have a book recommendation, I do follow a lot of youtube channels that I think are both masculine focused but also what I believe are pro therapy and healthy. This is one I just started following recently that I think is pretty helpful. Not directly focused on that exact age range, but does talk a lot about things men in their 20s deal with.
https://www.youtube.com/@HealthyGamerGG/videos
I can DM you some others if you're interested.
@TxTom I don't believe @sillysassy was making a dig here
The reason patriarchy is the way it is, and the reason matriarchy is the way it is, is due to inherent biological differences between the sexes embedded by Nature millions of years before anyone decided these traits were "problematic."
This is way too simplistic. Patriarchy is not simply “biological”. It is a social construct as well. Men are almost twice as likely to remarry after a divorce than women for example and women often cite the disadvantages of cohabitating with males as to why they choose to not remarry. In addition, women also cite more options available to them now than ever before and that is not from the generosity of men as women had to fight for it. If you really think that biology is the only component to patriarchy then you are ignoring the reality that just 40 years ago the idea of men talking about their mental health or seeing a therapist would have been anathema to a successful career. This was at a time when most of the workplace was male.
Strictly an opinion considering the women’s movement to change everything from voting to the workplace is a few hundred years old. And psychiatry is very young and there are several studies by that profession dating back several decades examining the effects of social structures and systems such as patriarchy and the negative affects it has had on both sexes.
And that is a very patriarchal thing to say to a woman to dismiss an observation she read about. This is also censorship.
So you are purely biological by that definition. Just a brute driven by his biological programming.
Funny how biology is waning if you go by the all time lows in the birth rate we have seen in recent years.
None of this holds water. You can deny social conditioning all you want which is what the system of patriarchy is—telling a woman over and over again her place is in the home, that a man does not show emotions, etc. PTSD from war was once called “shell shocked”, and other wars had other names but they were all the eruption from suppressed emotions.
Patriarchy is not the sole cause but it has had an unquestionable part in the history of men’s mental health. I don’t know why anyone would feel threatened by that conclusion unless they were under the sway of religious dogma or some political agenda.
We will have to agree to disagree on this.
Of course she wasn’t. She was talking about Bell Hook’s book.
@Will564 Please DM her. I know she is really looking for something addressing this.
We will have to agree to disagree
Absolutely.
I hope more men will post their stories. This a very beneficial utilization of the forums.
Wow wow wow. Okay... I want to apologize to the OP for any actions that caused this thread to devolve a little bit. 😳 That was never my intention.
Let me add a little bit of clarity and brevity to say THIS
To work towards a new world that would "normalize men needing emotional support." To work towards discussing things openly instead of becoming another suicide statistic.
TO CHANGE THIS KIND OF THING IN OUR WORLD.... like @texzenguy shared
We have such constraints placed on us when it comes to sharing feelings and physical touch with other men. It is literally killing us.
Thank you for sharing LOUDLY..... no matter if society tells you that you should be quiet about it.
Are the constraints "placed on us", or self-imposed?
This site serves a great purpose, and I've questioned multiple times on these forums why the stigma associated with cuddling. I feel no constraint upon me to admit the need for touch.
Half and half . We can only speak for ourselves .
@sillysassy wasn't taking a dig at anyone. I've had side conversations with @sillysassy and I truly feel like she was giving support to us men here.
There's so much I want to say, but this thread was supposed to be about how men are hurting. And maybe to support these men. Maybe just a little. In fact, I just typed a long post, but I'm deleting it. There is no point in posting when so many here are not trying to communicate. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. I'm not interested in being vulnerable with those who won't abide by that simple rule anymore.
Yes, some men have hurt a great many people. It doesn't change the fact that I, and a number of other men in this forum, and our family members, are hurting. And deserve support, especially when we make ourselves vulnerable. If WE want things to change, WE have to POSITIVELY reinforce this behavior. Period. You can't shame a group of people, tell them they need to behave in a certain way, and then continue to shame them when they behave the way you want them too, and expect them to keep trying. It doesn't work that way.
Eleven days ago, a man posted something very painful in his life that had just happened. And not a single reply. Sure, the thread was buried so not many saw it. But doesn't that say something too? So few people wanted to step into a thread about men's mental health. So few people wanted to look at it. Our collective apathy...
And to this man, I am sooooo sorry you went through that. And didn't get support here. I know the feeling. I hope you got some private support here in the DMs. I know I spoke with you a little, but it wasn't enough.
@billiam I would hope that you wouldn't delete your story. I think it's helpful for other men to read it, even if they don't respond. And I'm sure it will give others the motivation to post their own stories, too.
@TxTom "Are the constraints "placed on us", or self-imposed?"
I'm glad for you. Truly. People like you can help normalize it for the rest of us. It has not been that way for me.
For example, when I was very young, jelly bracelets were all the rage. Girls wore them. A few guys did too. And I bought some with the few dollars I had because I liked them and wanted to fit in. My dad nearly took a belt to me for being like a girl when he saw them on me. And I knew what his belt felt like, so I didn't feel the need to test him on that. I just gave them to my sisters.
When my brother came out as gay, my mom and two sisters ostracized him for years. Me and my father, surprisingly - he did go through a transformation after therapy - did not.
But whether I was ever told that it was not ok to cuddle with a man, it was very clear to me that there would be significant consequences to doing so. Not to mention the messages I got at church, where the consequence of this kind of 'transgression' would have been eternal hellfire. I know I sound extreme with my words, but that is how it was for me and my family. These are the messages I was taught, when I knew nothing of the world myself.
You could say it was self-imposed, but I think you would be wrong. These kinds of things happen in the unconscious and subconscious minds. We don't have control of what we respond to in a flight-fight-freeze-fawn response kind of way. And make no mistake, as a child, being ostracized from your family is felt as a survival threat.
It was not then, nor has it ever been, just men passing these messages on to me. Most of the people teaching me, at home, at school, and at church, were women. And my mother hit me more than my father did.
I'm not blaming women. I'm not blaming anyone. Human beings have weaknesses. The human condition so to speak. And these weaknesses have affected us all. Most of us are suffering in one way or another from them. To fix it, we have to come together. We can't come together if we are shaming each other. If we are not listening to each others pains and fears and anxieties. It takes a lot of strength to listen to that kind of truth and not react, especially when you have hurt others in similar ways to what you are hearing. To do that and keep an open heart is so hard. But that is what it takes. And it takes both sides willing to do the work.
@TxTom I appreciate your encouragement. But I can only take so much rejection and hostility. I post some of it, but not all of it. It hurts when you say things and then other people on this forum just show you how angry they are at you. I have to do it at a safe pace.
@billiam I'm sad thinking of you deleting your post. Your posts are filled with heart and honesty, and I admire that. It's always risky posting something, not knowing whether or how people will respond. Please continue doing so at a pace that feels right for you, and know there are others out there, myself included, who value and appreciate what you have to say.
Being a man is not as easy as people think. The only emotion you are fully encouraged to display in public is anger.