They used to say that real men don’t eat quiche. If that was ever true, real men didn’t know what they were missing. This highly informed group only known as they also were absolutely certain that real men didn’t cry. I guess they never watched a football game.
If you listen to them, you will never learn any true things about real men. Worse, if you are a young male trying to figure out what it means to be a real man, there are not many good examples in popular media. This is especially true when it comes to what is and isn’t cool for real men to talk about, particularly with other real men.
The human race would be immediately improved if more men talked about the following:
Struggles
For whatever reason, men like to pretend that they are not struggling with anything. They have it all taken care of. No worries. But that’s a pungent load of hoarse hockey. Unfortunately, it does fool a lot of other impressionable young men into believing that being struggle-free is the way of the real man.
It’s not.
Georgia drug rehab facilities know differently. Rehab centers around the world have helped men who were struggling with heroin, alcohol, Xanax, opioids, and methadone. All too often, these struggles are a result of other struggles that men don’t talk to anyone about. Many of those struggles are related to:
- Work
- Relationships
- Excessive pain
- Depression
- Fear
- And much more…
When men are honest with other men about their struggles, fewer men will feel like they are the only ones struggling.
Feelings
It is not that men don’t show their feelings. It is that the feelings they show are to the spectrum of feelings what a box of 8 crayons is to the color palette. For the most part, men feel comfortable showing elation, disappointment, anger, and lust. But there is much more to the emotional pallet.
It is easy for men to show the feelings of control and power. But they tend to be reluctant to discuss feelings that paint them as powerless and vulnerable. This is all a part of why men don’t seek therapy. They learn to think in terms of what to do about a problem rather than how they feel. If they can’t do anything about it, they feel like less of a man.
What men need to realize is that seeking therapy is doing something about the problem. Often, avoiding one’s feelings makes the problem worse than it has to be. It could be that the puzzle that needs to be solved is only half the problem.
The other half may be the fact that you feel like a failure, or like you have been cheated, or that you can’t protect your family. When men can find appropriate ways to deal with their feelings, they can cut their problems in half, or more.
Mistakes
While we can learn a lot from our mistakes, we can learn even more from the mistakes of others; that is, if we knew what they were. That is just one of the reasons why in business and elsewhere, it is vital that we learn to acknowledge our mistakes. That way, we can not only learn from them but teach others by them.
There is a lot of social pressure on men to be leaders of other men, as well as their families. They are afraid no one will follow them if they admitted to their struggles, feelings, and mistakes. But the benefits of opening up are that people will better understand you, provide you emotional support, and be more willing to forgive when you mess up.
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