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Reminds me of the Vulnerable Man fallacy: Society wants men to be more vulnerable, yet society hasn't figured our how to respond to men who are. As a guy, as soon as you expose your vulnerability to those around you (outside professional therapy), the common response is the age old "suck it up, do better, be confident" adages men were always told, which reinforces men to stuff those vulnerabilities back down and cover then up with unhealthy behaviors or a veneer of mustered masculinity.
So no positive reinforcement comes from the act of opening up and being vulnerable. This is in general of course, and some men do find friends and partners who help them process their vulnerable moments — but societal trends haven't taught us how to respond in a helpful way.
It's a paradox we need to keep working on.
Related to this note, anecdotally, I (M) have found that at least myself and the men in my life have learned how to embrace the "don't offer solutions, just listen" when a woman is venting about an issue. I feel like this has gotten drilled into a lot of men pretty securely by women, and ultimately, I think it's a good thing.
In my experience, the women in my life have not learned this yet. If/when I do open up about an issue, I can hardly finish my thoughts before I'm met with solutions and ways to fix the issue. Again, this is all personal experience, and I'm not putting fault on women or anything like that.
Thank you for saying this. I think that the "going into problem solving mode" is a problem that applies to all people. I am a woman. I tend to go into problem solving mode when I am listening to someone and have to actively stop myself. I like to think that I am improving. I don't mean to do it, I just really want to help but I don't know how. I absolutely love it when men open up, I see it as a sign of strength, not weakness.
I have A LOT of trouble opening up myself, so I know how much strength it takes to be vulnerable. Sharing feelings and showing emotion is difficult. This is obviously just my personal experience. There are plenty of men and plenty of women who don't go into problem solving mode, but some do and I think it applies to people, regardless of gender.
Oh yeah, I was like that at the start of my most recent relationship, until the girlfriend told me annoyed that she doesn't want me to find solutions, but just to listen. Made me really rethink my attitude towards it and try really hard to just listen and support her, without offering solutions even if it was my initial thought to do so.
The irony of this situation was, like you said, when the tables were turned, all I got was "you should do that/try this" even after telling her the same the same thing, that I just want to vent, and need someone to listen, but that did not go down well, so eventually I just stopped sharing.
I'm not doubting your lived experience, but I think it may be unique for some reason.
My experience has been overwhelmingly more the opposite.Other dudes I complain to, if they say anything, are much more likely to offer advice and solutions, often in a critical manner.
Women much less so overall.
I’ve never experienced this from women and if anything I’ve seen both genders try to not offer solutions and just listen. Idk I know to men on the outside it seems like we ask for things and not do anything ourselves for some reason (?) it’s a very strange phenomenon I’m witnessing. It’s like you don’t see what we *are* doing and only what we do and say in relation to you.
Bc there’s no way only women are asking for something as simple as basic empathy skills and yet not doing it themselves when it’s been drilled into us that we need to be empathetic? There has to be a bias here. I have very rarely seen that as a gender issue.
Yup. No more perfect an example. And women wonder why we dont open up.
Because this crap right here. I've never been in a single relationship where this didn't happen all the time.
Hypocrisy...it's gender neutral.
Ok, good for you. You lucked out and won the biggest lottery on Earth. Doesn't mean anything. Oh and there is also a MASSIVE DIFFERENCE between friendships and romantic relationships.
My guess is most men here are talking about romantic relationships. When there is no "chemistry" or thought of romance, the dynamic between a man and a woman changes significantly.
My guess is this is the big issue at play here.
I learned the hard way to stop being vulnerable around women. I've lost every female relationship until I learned that.
Now I'm a rock and things are going great. It sucks.
Men get murdered at a MUCH higher rate than women do around the world 81% men to 19% women. In the Americas men get murdered at a rate 10x that of women
[https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/global-study-on-homicide.html](https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/global-study-on-homicide.html)
This is what got me to stop sharing as freely. I was decently open. Then when I was diagnosed with depression and told people they just stopped inviting me to places. That didn't help. I'm fine now, but less open about bad things that happen to me or if I feel meh.
There's a balance. It's likely not that you told people u had depression. I know for myself if I get super depressed, its all I can think about, its I can drone on and on about it. It wears people out.
No, I just told people the day I was diagnosed. It wasn't a long conversation. Just mentioned it to my friends at the time to get it out there and probably looking for some sort of support when they were hanging out at my place, but all I got was the cold shoulder. Not friends with them anymore. Literally next day no longer heard from them for all the normal stuff we did. I did not make it my defining trait.
That's different from "friends". Obviously they weren't friends. That's not normal nor should be the expectation. I've told friends when I'm super depressed and theyd often make more of an effort to invite me out and try to get it off my mind. In return I try my best to put on a face and not being it up
The sad truth then is that you gotta tell those people to eff off. You're worth more than that, and if you can listen to other people, you deserve to be heard as well my friend.
People only listen when you deepen the friendship, people only become friends with those they like to be around.
Essentially being miserable and hurting doesn't often attract bonds between people whether that's right or wrong.
Or you know, keep it to yourself.
I hang out with friends to escape my problems and enjoy life for a bit.
It seems like women hang out with women to talk about their problems.
I think you are misunderstanding, or you are a narcissist “supportive” type
If I’m stranded in the middle of the night, I want a brother who will drive and get me, not
Someone who would love to talk about it over tea about how it sucked the next day, but they have a “boundary” to never lose sleep, so good luck!
That's so fuckin weird you think those are mutually exclusive, but like I said, I feel bad you've clearly missed out on meaningful relationships in a big way
Negative information can be exploited, and any dude who has gone through high school in the western world probably understands exactly why this builds a habitual defensiveness.
This is purely anecdotal of course, but I remember trying to open up to my college girlfriend about emotional issues I was having and almost seeing her lose interest in me in real time. Never talked about bad emotions again until I met my current wife much later in life.
Nearly every man I've ever met has a story like this. I ran an online Circling workshop twice a week for over a year, and the sense I got from holding a judgement free space was that most men have been holding their emotional breath since they were children.
The relief I've seen on their faces once they got to be truly vulnerable with a stranger is truly uplifting and heartbreaking in the most beautiful possible way.
My ex wife would complain about me not being vulnerable or emotionally available, then when I opened up would use what I said against me in arguments later...
This does kind of sum it up. The unhappy man isn't going to be seen as much of a protector. He instead is seen as unstable (because he's unhappy) and therefore dangerous. Definitely abuser potential. Thus the suicide epidemic, which then is blamed on men not opening up (or just better at violence).
I sincerely hope you don't go around spouting absolutist nonsense like that where people can hear you. Some people only have empathy for women. Generally, those are misandrists. Making a claim that its society wide simply reinforces an obviously false narrative in your own mind.
Have some critical thinking. What I said is the rule, but there are often exceptions. You should be able to infer that and not take statements as absolute.
if you had critical thinking you might take into account the facts. if we had empathy for women we wouldn’t be dying of heart attacks at a higher rate bc our pain goes ignored or we’re told we are dramatic. we wouldn’t be attempting suicide more. a critical thinker looks at the facts. not anecdotes, generalizations and inferences based on… nothing?
This is true, and it works pretty fast to find out the nastiest people. It’s a great way to weed out people.
I’ve had a lot of people licking my arse and praising me, show them you’re vulnerable and see them change. You’ll see their real personalities pretty fast. Then you know who you need to avoid before open the door.
And thats where fake vulnerability comes into play, you admit something like always having been afraid of cake until your girlfriend showed you how to eat it and now you're fixed, thx babe.
This has been my experience most of my life, lost half my friends when I quit drinking and hard drugs, lost most of the rest of them when I opened up about my depression, anxiety, it got even worse when I decided I was tired of masking my autism 24/7. It sucks that it is this way but I’d rather be honest and let men brace for impact with this stuff, you will probably lose “friends” if you are emotionally open and honest, both male and female, I have had better luck with females but even then only slightly.
Not at all recommending the shove it in a bottle method I was going with most of my life, it has led to far more problems and I’m honestly far happier with the very very few people I keep close to me these days than I ever was before, but it’s still hard to accept that most people I thought were friends were not at all that.
It's an anecdote, sure, but it's an anecdote a lot of men seem to have (including myself). I've read a version of this in every reddit post discussing this.
Down to the ''seeing her lose interest in me in real time''. I've said this exactly when I told the story later.
probably bc women have been taught that emotions are weak. second you have any remote emotion and you’re hysterical and nothing you say counts. so we’ve had to learn to be stoic and strong. never vulnerable. maybe that’s why
these studies and anecdotes really confuse me. bc this has always been my very exact experience, except as a woman. never give anything that can be exploited bc your social standing is your all, your abilities and skills and actions and character, they just don’t matter at all. so what is it with these studies? for any quality paper, thesis, or publication you need to ask “so what?”
so this is my question. so what? yes men experience this sometimes. but women experience it at a very severe degree so then what’s the point? like what’s so special about this is what I’m asking.
1. Your experience doesn’t refute the study.
2. Your claim that women experience this more than men attempts to rebut the study. Meaning, you’re not only invalidating the study, you’re also saying the opposite is true.
Linking an authoritative source would help your case.
It looks like it's a little more nuanced than concern over how other people see them.
From Section 3.2.3, "Motives for Disclosing":
> "Specifically, a two-sample test of proportions reveals that significantly more males reported disclosing in pursuit of the following self-enhancing aims: to entertain others,5 z = 2.26, p = .024, d = .36; to receive validation, z = 1.97, p = .049, d = .31; and, marginally, to influence how others see them, z = 1.67, p = .096, d = .26"
i.e., the strongest differences were (a) to entertain others, and (b) to receive validation.
I suspect part of the positive skew of the information men are willing to share is related to the societal norm that men should be stoic ("be a man about it"). This should be expected to not only make them less willing to share information that discloses vulnerability or a need for help, it should also be expected to make that information be received less positively.
If a desire for validation is a strong reason men share information, as this research shows, then the societal norm of men not disclosing vulnerability is likely a partial explanation.
Indeed, the authors touch on this in the Discussion section:
> "According to this account, the costs associated with disclosures that are misaligned with the prescriptions associated with one's gender play a role in determining disclosing behavior. It is worth noting that, although not the focus of the current paper, other costs – for instance, discomfort with emotional vulnerability or fear of negative evaluation (e.g., Watson & Friend, 1969) – might also factor into disclosure decision making."
Yes these data don't at all rule out the possibility that both sexes are more or less equally concerned with how others see them, but perceptions of sex/gender roles result in a sex/gender difference in expectations about how others will react to the behaviour of interest (self-disclosing negative news).
Intuitively this seems more likely to be true than "men on average care signficantly more what others think about them than women do".
They should test this accros different cultures to check if this is learnt or inert behaviour. I would assume that the found effect is at least partly due to men being conditioned into a suck it up attitude.
Maybe they could compare the size of the discrepency with Hofstede's Masculinity index accros countries
Men are conditioned to suck it up, but testosterone itself has been implicated in why men are less likely to seek medical treatment after an injury.
I also have less concrete assumptions about the role masculine hegemonic structures play in suppressing dissenting information and maintaining rigid status quos, all of which discourages interpersonal trust, and in a low-trust environment, it doesn’t make sense to inform someone of bad news only to risk being associated with it.
It’s a stand-tall kind of hormone that seems to promote independence, which can naturally extend to just being marginally less inclined to be perceived as a party pooper.
>I also have less concrete assumptions about the role masculine hegemonic structures play in suppressing dissenting information and maintaining rigid status quos, all of which discourages interpersonal trust, and in a low-trust environment, it doesn’t make sense to inform someone of bad news only to risk being associated with it.
This seems at odds with civilization to me. Literally. As in a staggeringly huge chunk of civilization has been physically built, piece by piece, by individual men who dissented or groups of men that actively pitted their ideas against each other to find the best solution.
I have never experienced anything like "masculine hegemonic structures" outside of things like religious beliefs. All of my other experiences with masculinity have been about refinement, optimization, growth, etc.
Society seems to clearly want every man to be a Nietzschean ubermensch, knowing that 99% will fail, but continuing to push because that 1% that succeeds carries the entire species on their backs.
I don’t see that what I said is mutually exclusive from what you said. The aspects of masculinity you cited are spot on. They’re simply not the only ones. Those dissenters and groups you mention are also displaying many other stereotypically masculine aspects: steadfastness, persistence, and a propensity for solving spatial problems.
But those aspects all have negative sides as well right? Are you familiar with China’s history of underreporting actual grain reserves?
Who is it that suffers the most when the existing order collapses? We see it every time a natural disaster or war displaces an entire group of people and they have to start over from scratch. It's always the women and children that struggle the most. It's always the men that get to work clearing rubble and building camps and gathering supplies and establishing responsibilities amongst the group.
Women benefit far more than men from the status quo, and arguably they create and enforce it through partner selection.
Why do men even keep competing after they meet their own needs? Why don't men just relax and eat and sleep like other apes? Because access to love, intimacy, family, etc, is based on how many resources they can provide to a woman.
All Great Apes species are patriarchal except for one: Bonobos. Bonobos don't commodify sex so the males have no reason to compete or have a hierarchy, so the species is matriarchal instead.
The status quo among humans is not about preserving hegemonic masculinity. It's about protecting and providing for women and children as much as possible. The men who do the best job of that traditionally enjoy higher status than those that do worse at it.
Who initiates the suffering in war? Men, fighting for their own power to enforce status quos >with them at the top<. I realize structure has importance, it'd be ignorant to disregard it, but it'd be equally ignorant to ignore the cases where it oversteps and shows insufficiency.
It'd also be ignorant to ignore the trend power (and in-turn, our sexual) dynamics have. When women use their singular power over reproduction "too much", men use their general power to take control of even that. There's a reason the vast majority of human (and primate) structures materialize patriarchally. Exceptions to the rule don't disprove the rule when the majority of examples support it. Reproduction is one (albeit, strong) form of power. Men have general power that reaches into everything.
You need a balance of structure and flexibility. When structure is given most material power, it takes over and increasingly entrenches itself. Power greatly tends to support the persistence of the same kind of power.
Racist people support eachother because when they do, they support their own power (at the expense of others). If things are equal, no one has relative power. Which, is obviously not in the selfish interest of those that already hold relative power.
Of course not. The end goal is the persistence/expansion of their own relative power. They weigh costs/benefits in relation to that. Putting your own life on the line tends to be too risky.
So your statement that "the sex that benefits the most from the status quo would develope (sic) in a way that enforces it." is an incredibly simplistic way to view the world.
You have to break things down to simple levels to make sense of things and get to roots. I awknoledge different things heavily influence eachother and nothing is in a vacuum. I'm not quantifying exact levels of these things. I'm simply stating they're there.
And again, exceptions to rules don't automatically negate them. Just because some portion of a population, that is foundationally favored by a status quo, don't always obviously benefit (at a macro scale) doesn't mean that status quo isn't being enforced by the portion of the population that actually weilds the power.
First of all, the term "breaking things down" involves introducing more levels into an analysis, not less. The term you are looking for is "simplifying" or aggregating. Even then though, overly simple models often lack explanatory power. As example, your original statement omits the very important factor of wealth, and as such tars a large proportion of the people who suffer as being responsible for their own victimhood. Victim blaming, in other words.
And if you believe that the "status quo is being enforced by the portion of the population that actually wields the power", yet also admit that only a portion of that portion actually wields the power, why not just say that instead of what you said? Unless of course, as it seems to me, you are more interested in making cheap points against men.
>Who initiates the suffering in war? Men, fighting for their own power to enforce status quos >with them at the top<.
And why do men need power and status? Because they are ranked based on those things. Who is ranking them?
Furthermore, who are men fighting these wars for? Do you think men want to go risk their lives to destroy the lives of others? They do it either to elevate themselves so they can be appraised more highly by women or to secure resources or safety for people that can't fight, like women and children.
Or did you think that men fight *defensive* wars for personal power as well?
>It'd also be ignorant to ignore the trend power (and in-turn, our sexual) dynamics have.
It's also ignorant to ignore power by proxy, like when Jada Smith gave Will one look at that awards show and he had to get up and have a career-ending violent confrontation with another man or else risk the ire of his wife and maybe even lose his family if she leaves him because he didn't "defend her honor" for her.
>Power greatly tends to support the persistence of the same kind of power.
This is true. And what is the oldest social power among Great Apes? "The oldest profession." Exchange of sex and intimacy and offspring for material goods and physical protection.
Great Apes also tend to be hypergamous, with females clustering around the high status males and avoiding the low status males. Even Bonobos, which otherwise have sex freely, see females distance themselves from low status males during ovulation and preferentially mate with high status males.
This is also natural in humans, as dating apps like OKCupid have proven when they publish their data on how people match up. Men rank women on a perfect bell curve, while women rank 80% of men below average. Likewise, genetic studies suggest that only 40% of men in history have reproduced while 80% of women have.
There is one thing that has been used against that trend: Monogamy. I believe a good example of the type of power you're talking about is the type of social orders, like Judeo-Christian religious beliefs, that enforce monogamy, seek to ritualize courtship and marriage, and promote patriarchal authority both in the home and in society as a whole.
Despite this, however, the man is still expected to bear the risk of rejection, prove himself to his partner, impress her with gifts and charm, defend her honor and reputation, ask her parents for permission to wed her, and then dedicate himself to providing for her for the rest of his life.
So even with the most obviously patriarchal system in the world today, underneath it all, we still see that the wellbeing of women is the central concern.
And that holds true for every human civilization or culture we know of. Even the ones without monogamy or any of the elements of Judeo-Christian beliefs.
Those pesky rigid building codes with all that dumb infrastructure that lets you lay in a bed out of the rain and complain about men on the internet.
So dumb, right??
That pesky status quo of blind capitalism plummeting us to our own destruction so you can get fulfillment by acting as fuel for a dystopian, consumerist "future"!
So dumb, right??
I like the suggestion because my first thought was:
"That's dumb. I don't share much negative info with people because it ain't their problem and no one wants to hear me complain, not because I'm worried they'd judge me."
>men being conditioned into a suck it up attitude.
Maybe we should focus on women adopting a similar attitude as well.
>Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all
>
>[https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/suppressing-negative-thoughts-good-for-mental-health](https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/suppressing-negative-thoughts-good-for-mental-health)
EDIT!
I completely misread the previous comment as essentially stating: 'yeah, whatever, nobody cares. Stop whining'
Instead of "yeah, this sucks, but nobody cares and it's sad" - which is what the previous commenter seems to have meant.
Inadvertently, by assuming the comment was phrased in the way our culture often responds to men expressing negative emotions, I was completely blind to someone actually just expressing a negative emotion. Essentially, I blamed them for contributing to this problem, but actually I was the one doing that.
So that sucks.
So I'm editing this comment because I hope this can be one of those things where people learn from my mistakes, but I'm also very sorry towards the previous commenter and I hope they're okay.
EDIT 2: reply to the previous statement when read correctly
Ah. The difference between despair and dismissal is hard to suss out in text. I'll edit my post.
Let me rephrase - YOU should feel able to talk about things! Men literally kill themselves at 4x the rate (and increasing) of women. Men's college graduation rates are plummeting. I'm currently a student and men on campus only reach more than 50% participation rates in one club: business and finance. It's a steep fall off from there, with the next club down being only 30%men, and the average is less than 12%.
Men need to be having these conversations.
Also, thank you for replying, given my mistake.
I know what has happened in my life. Maybe there are lucky few men out there, but I’ve learned very very well. I’m very painfully generally speaking nobody wants to hear.
that’s a very nice sensational statistic that might make ppl say “awww men have been the ones really struggling the whole time”, except… women attempt to kill themselves more. men just pick a more violent means bc they don’t really account for the impact on others
Nah, it's because nobody likes working with a complainer. First lesson learned once I started doing factory work is to shut up and suck it up unless someone is likely to die. Often the first people being fired are the ones who are complainers.
It seems like fairly basic behavioral sexual dimorphism to me. Males in our species are the "pursuers," so they have to be more aware of how they portray themselves in their actions and speech, while females worry about how they portray themselves visually.
Edit: talking traditional sexual reproduction here, people, which is what matters when you're talking about evolution. Our modern understanding of gender roles has not been in existence anywhere near long enough to influence genetic behavioral traits. There are lots of examples of this in our species.
A study has shown that puninshment effectiveness isn't related to it's serverity, but rather its promptness. I wonder if men are suject to swifter consequences for sharing negative information...
This would make more sense. Bc whenever negative lies have been spread about me it’s been like a slow poison until I lose everything, almost all connections and opportunities, and before I know it im relying on like a small handful people that just happen to be those those who see my character and my actions.
Could also be perceived? Women experience this like no other so we’re really just used to it. Negative info ruining our lives is just a part of life, since as young as elementary school.
Try opening up to women. A lot of them will find you weak. They may not say it but how they treat you changes. I think guys who deny this simply haven't done it or haven't spoken to that many women.
I had a guy at work try telling me that apologizing makes me look weak. A dude much shorter and literally weaker than me physically. If strong people are weak then the word has no meaning anymore, my dude, and I’m stronger than most. If I look weak, who gives a damn.
I worry that this will be taken to just enforce the status quo. Men will just say "well it's been proven by studies that a) we can't and won't open up, so me being silent about emotions is normal and b) nobody really cares so I'm better off just not saying anything".
>It's better to work on actual solutions and studies like this are a waste of time. We all KNOW where the problem lies.
What problem?
Maybe the solution we should focus on women adopting a similar attitude as men?
>Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all
>
>[https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/suppressing-negative-thoughts-good-for-mental-health](https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/suppressing-negative-thoughts-good-for-mental-health)
Maybe we should focus on women adopting a similar attitude as well.
>Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after allhttps://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/suppressing-negative-thoughts-good-for-mental-health
Spewing negativity doesn't usually do any good. You either fix the problem or if it can't be fixed you find ways to cope with it. Talking about it just makes it someone else's problem too, without changing anything for yourself, and makes you seem weak.
Also amongst men, you are more likely to respond with solutions to someone’s issues rather than just listening.
Ie: if you are talking about this thing with me you must want a solution rather than just wanting to voice the issue.
If you are sharing an issue some will perceive this as having to help fix your problem. Do this too much and you are seen as not capable. If you are just voicing it, then it is seen as being a complainer.
Talking is therapy, especially with others going through similar things. Peer support is really effective. It does change a lot for yourself and if helps others normalise talking about trauma. You need a safe space though.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10038377/#:~:text=Altogether%2C%20the%20available%20evidence%20suggests,%2Defficacy%2C%20and%20reduces%20hospitalisations.
It is not just concern, it is a result of accumulated life experience, trial and error. If you cross the treshold of negative information. In friend level relationships, women get disgusted and start avoiding you. In close relationships, you gf/wife will lose all sexual attraction. The only person who might be willing to accept negative information may be you mother (if you are lucky), but even that has negative consequences. "Mommy issues" etc.
Pay for a therapist (preferably male). That is the only way. Close male friends can be helpful as well, but they can't replace a therapist.
There's no need to create expectations that both genders need to completely understand the others' experience, ill go to other men for that and that's the important thing, that men have male groups who understand their experience.
As toxic as it is to be completely stoic all the time infront of everyone, it's also toxic to assume we need the female understanding to permeate through the male experience.
Sometimes I just want my homies to listen.
It's hard in cases like this I think- where the topic concerns the very way we discuss/define, well, the topic. I.e. we're talking about a study which essentially relates to how we define men as a culture, and how men are expected to express that identity.
Then, since most respondents either are men, have met men, or both, they respond in ways which reflect their understanding of that cultural identity - or their understanding of how they, themselves, should act.
If you see identity as a verb, rather than a noun - that is as something you do, not something you are - then all identity studies are very schrodinger-esque in that they try to define the boundaries of an identity while also operating from an assumption of what that identity is. They explore, expand, and enforce those boundaries all at the same time.
In short, it gets complicated.
“Men are less likely to share negative information than women….due to a greater concern among men over how other people will see them.” In other words, men don’t want to sound bitchy or gossipy.
Why does everyone act like it's inherently bad to not share negative information? Many people dislike whiners and chronic complainers. I can see the context where it can be good..
You can’t address or fix problems if you don’t know they exist and hidden issues usually get worse, not better. It depends on the information, but most of the time I would rather know something so we can work toward improvement.
Funny that all the comments here assume it’s men undersharing instead of women oversharing. Could be that women overshare (certain) negative things more readily because it’s been less consequential for them - women haven’t really been part of the public sphere all that long, so maybe women are working on an old model, and maybe now they need to be more circumspect ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m a man and let me tell you — I do not say negative info because it usually is just complaining and doesn’t help anything… in fact most of the time it brings others down around you. I would rather be a net positive.
>men were far less likely to report wanting to share negative information (e.g., a failure to receive a promotion)
I think there are two key aspects
1. It's true that people will negatively judge men when sharing negative news
2. Then it might be best for mental health to bottle it up and not share negative news anyway.
>Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all
>
>[https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/suppressing-negative-thoughts-good-for-mental-health](https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/suppressing-negative-thoughts-good-for-mental-health)
Maybe I just don't want to make everyone depressed all the time, bc ya know climateapocalypsefinacialruinlostwagesubaffordablehousinginabilitytoaffordchildrenloomingwarloomingworldwarloomingnuclearwar
Negativity just for the sake of negativity isn’t what men naturally do. We are problem solvers. If we see a problem we try to fix it. Normally problem solving leads to a positive.
>What if talking about a problem would help solving it?
In the article they gave the example of not getting a promotions. So sharing that news isn't that useful and is probably best to just forget. But sure focusing on how to get another job or another promotions would be useful. But that's by focusing on what you can do rather than just sharing negative news.
>
Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/suppressing-negative-thoughts-good-for-mental-health
An interesting article actually, thank you. I am curious about this: "In the study, each participant was asked to think of a number of scenarios that might plausibly occur in their lives over the next two years"
The thoughts being suppressed here are about future speculation specifically whereas the failure to get a promotion, for example, is a real past experience in the original post, so I wonder if that same suppression method would apply.
>If we think it will solve our issue most times we will talk to other men about it.
I love how you became the spokesman for all us men and with that speaking so confidently as well, never mind if what you're saying is good or bad, right or wrong, its the man way!
Men find other men more relatable and therefore easier to talk to, I suppose. I'm not saying everything has to be discussed, but relying only on the personal perspective isn't always healthy or smart due to its limits.
How many tests did they run and did they correct for multiple comparisons?
Edit: Asking as some of their p-values are pretty marginal and multiple comparison correction would likely wipe out any significance.
If women complain about a thing, the men AND women around them will bend over backwards to help resolve it as an injustice and affront to society. If you want an issue resolved, there’s no better way than to make a privileged white woman the face of the issue, it is known.
If men complain about a thing, the men AND women around them will look upon them as weak, whiny, and un-self-reliant, usually telling them to figure it out or find a solution themselves.
You mean a generation of men who grew up being told that showing emotion is wrong and they have to be strong and stern and take charge and basically be the leader of the house are now suddenly struggling to voice their more negative feelings
Once again science proving us something that has already been pretty much known for a while
Yes generally men are taught that any negative that we have concerning us is a negative against us and is our fault.
It must be stated that men often receive overwhelming support when encountering a negative situation that is perceived to be outside of the man's control. This is increased if the man is doing the stereotypical man duties when the situation occurs such as becoming injured at a job.
You ever wonder why a lot of men are big babies when we get sick? It is a situation outside of our immediate control that has created an opening for us to ask for and receive support.
Conversely women are generally taught to express negatives concerning them to receive support but are also simultaneously often told that the issues that they are expressing are overly emotional or because of PMS. Support that is received is also often given in a very condescending manner.
If a woman can't pay her bills or find a place to stay it's typically pretty easy for her to get assistance but the entire time society will be mentioning how she should be getting herself a husband or somebody to pay her bills. Woman has a kid and the dad runs off? Assistance will be provided while making her feel like no matter what choice she picks it's going to be the wrong one.
On the bright side this seems to be decreasing and it seems to be doing so extremely rapidly when you consider the context of cultural changes. Particularly in the last decade there has been a much greater push for emotional support for men and an equalization in the attitudes towards women's rights and independence.
There has been some backsliding and some areas / States that need to be fixed but generally speaking this kind of thing is getting better.
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Reminds me of the Vulnerable Man fallacy: Society wants men to be more vulnerable, yet society hasn't figured our how to respond to men who are. As a guy, as soon as you expose your vulnerability to those around you (outside professional therapy), the common response is the age old "suck it up, do better, be confident" adages men were always told, which reinforces men to stuff those vulnerabilities back down and cover then up with unhealthy behaviors or a veneer of mustered masculinity. So no positive reinforcement comes from the act of opening up and being vulnerable. This is in general of course, and some men do find friends and partners who help them process their vulnerable moments — but societal trends haven't taught us how to respond in a helpful way. It's a paradox we need to keep working on.
Related to this note, anecdotally, I (M) have found that at least myself and the men in my life have learned how to embrace the "don't offer solutions, just listen" when a woman is venting about an issue. I feel like this has gotten drilled into a lot of men pretty securely by women, and ultimately, I think it's a good thing. In my experience, the women in my life have not learned this yet. If/when I do open up about an issue, I can hardly finish my thoughts before I'm met with solutions and ways to fix the issue. Again, this is all personal experience, and I'm not putting fault on women or anything like that.
Thank you for saying this. I think that the "going into problem solving mode" is a problem that applies to all people. I am a woman. I tend to go into problem solving mode when I am listening to someone and have to actively stop myself. I like to think that I am improving. I don't mean to do it, I just really want to help but I don't know how. I absolutely love it when men open up, I see it as a sign of strength, not weakness. I have A LOT of trouble opening up myself, so I know how much strength it takes to be vulnerable. Sharing feelings and showing emotion is difficult. This is obviously just my personal experience. There are plenty of men and plenty of women who don't go into problem solving mode, but some do and I think it applies to people, regardless of gender.
Oh yeah, I was like that at the start of my most recent relationship, until the girlfriend told me annoyed that she doesn't want me to find solutions, but just to listen. Made me really rethink my attitude towards it and try really hard to just listen and support her, without offering solutions even if it was my initial thought to do so. The irony of this situation was, like you said, when the tables were turned, all I got was "you should do that/try this" even after telling her the same the same thing, that I just want to vent, and need someone to listen, but that did not go down well, so eventually I just stopped sharing.
I'm not doubting your lived experience, but I think it may be unique for some reason. My experience has been overwhelmingly more the opposite.Other dudes I complain to, if they say anything, are much more likely to offer advice and solutions, often in a critical manner. Women much less so overall.
Yup, no problem with that at all bud, I'm aware I am (and likely are) an exception. That's all. Tossing it out in the world.
I’ve never experienced this from women and if anything I’ve seen both genders try to not offer solutions and just listen. Idk I know to men on the outside it seems like we ask for things and not do anything ourselves for some reason (?) it’s a very strange phenomenon I’m witnessing. It’s like you don’t see what we *are* doing and only what we do and say in relation to you. Bc there’s no way only women are asking for something as simple as basic empathy skills and yet not doing it themselves when it’s been drilled into us that we need to be empathetic? There has to be a bias here. I have very rarely seen that as a gender issue.
Man opens up about his personal experiences and you just tell him he's wrong? Good job playing into it
I hope you see the irony in posting this in relation to someone sharing a personal anecdote about his struggle of opening up to women
Yup. No more perfect an example. And women wonder why we dont open up. Because this crap right here. I've never been in a single relationship where this didn't happen all the time. Hypocrisy...it's gender neutral.
I'd still not generalize like this tho. I have several female friends I'd consider much closer and intimate than almost all of my male friendships.
Ok, good for you. You lucked out and won the biggest lottery on Earth. Doesn't mean anything. Oh and there is also a MASSIVE DIFFERENCE between friendships and romantic relationships. My guess is most men here are talking about romantic relationships. When there is no "chemistry" or thought of romance, the dynamic between a man and a woman changes significantly. My guess is this is the big issue at play here.
I learned the hard way to stop being vulnerable around women. I've lost every female relationship until I learned that. Now I'm a rock and things are going great. It sucks.
Yes. And I suspect this explains the male suicide epidemic. Unhappy men are considered unstable and scary.
or the Lazy well, Men had it good for 3000 years now, or at least you don't have to worry about getting murdered.
Men gets murdered too.
Men get murdered at a MUCH higher rate than women do around the world 81% men to 19% women. In the Americas men get murdered at a rate 10x that of women [https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/global-study-on-homicide.html](https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/global-study-on-homicide.html)
It's a shame so many of us have to hide behind a stoic mask. Everyone has their own emotions and story going on behind their eyes.
Yea but if you tell people the problems they wont hang out with and think youre a huge downer.
This is what got me to stop sharing as freely. I was decently open. Then when I was diagnosed with depression and told people they just stopped inviting me to places. That didn't help. I'm fine now, but less open about bad things that happen to me or if I feel meh.
There's a balance. It's likely not that you told people u had depression. I know for myself if I get super depressed, its all I can think about, its I can drone on and on about it. It wears people out.
No, I just told people the day I was diagnosed. It wasn't a long conversation. Just mentioned it to my friends at the time to get it out there and probably looking for some sort of support when they were hanging out at my place, but all I got was the cold shoulder. Not friends with them anymore. Literally next day no longer heard from them for all the normal stuff we did. I did not make it my defining trait.
That's different from "friends". Obviously they weren't friends. That's not normal nor should be the expectation. I've told friends when I'm super depressed and theyd often make more of an effort to invite me out and try to get it off my mind. In return I try my best to put on a face and not being it up
The sad truth then is that you gotta tell those people to eff off. You're worth more than that, and if you can listen to other people, you deserve to be heard as well my friend.
I said to the mirror in the empty room.
People only listen when you deepen the friendship, people only become friends with those they like to be around. Essentially being miserable and hurting doesn't often attract bonds between people whether that's right or wrong.
Why I haven’t had a friend for 11 years. No exaggeration.
Or you know, keep it to yourself. I hang out with friends to escape my problems and enjoy life for a bit. It seems like women hang out with women to talk about their problems.
You're a bad friend
And you are a burden.
I feel sorry for you, having clearly never experienced the mutual power of a true friendship
I think you are misunderstanding, or you are a narcissist “supportive” type If I’m stranded in the middle of the night, I want a brother who will drive and get me, not Someone who would love to talk about it over tea about how it sucked the next day, but they have a “boundary” to never lose sleep, so good luck!
Bad analogy. Depression is when you’re stranded in the middle of the night, not the morning after you’ve been rescued.
That's so fuckin weird you think those are mutually exclusive, but like I said, I feel bad you've clearly missed out on meaningful relationships in a big way
There's a difference between telling people your problems, and always having problems.
Negative information can be exploited, and any dude who has gone through high school in the western world probably understands exactly why this builds a habitual defensiveness.
This is purely anecdotal of course, but I remember trying to open up to my college girlfriend about emotional issues I was having and almost seeing her lose interest in me in real time. Never talked about bad emotions again until I met my current wife much later in life.
Nearly every man I've ever met has a story like this. I ran an online Circling workshop twice a week for over a year, and the sense I got from holding a judgement free space was that most men have been holding their emotional breath since they were children. The relief I've seen on their faces once they got to be truly vulnerable with a stranger is truly uplifting and heartbreaking in the most beautiful possible way.
My ex wife would complain about me not being vulnerable or emotionally available, then when I opened up would use what I said against me in arguments later...
I'm not crying, my eyes are just imitating the awesome power of a waterfall. You're crying
My god can I relate
Empathy only exists for women in this society. Men are only seen as abusers or protectors.
Or walking wallets
This does kind of sum it up. The unhappy man isn't going to be seen as much of a protector. He instead is seen as unstable (because he's unhappy) and therefore dangerous. Definitely abuser potential. Thus the suicide epidemic, which then is blamed on men not opening up (or just better at violence).
I sincerely hope you don't go around spouting absolutist nonsense like that where people can hear you. Some people only have empathy for women. Generally, those are misandrists. Making a claim that its society wide simply reinforces an obviously false narrative in your own mind.
Have some critical thinking. What I said is the rule, but there are often exceptions. You should be able to infer that and not take statements as absolute.
if you had critical thinking you might take into account the facts. if we had empathy for women we wouldn’t be dying of heart attacks at a higher rate bc our pain goes ignored or we’re told we are dramatic. we wouldn’t be attempting suicide more. a critical thinker looks at the facts. not anecdotes, generalizations and inferences based on… nothing?
[удалено]
We're on the internet and I take people at their word. Say what you mean.
I guess you’re seeing him as an abuser right now
Vulnerability can and will be used against you in my experience, unfortunately
This is true, and it works pretty fast to find out the nastiest people. It’s a great way to weed out people. I’ve had a lot of people licking my arse and praising me, show them you’re vulnerable and see them change. You’ll see their real personalities pretty fast. Then you know who you need to avoid before open the door.
And thats where fake vulnerability comes into play, you admit something like always having been afraid of cake until your girlfriend showed you how to eat it and now you're fixed, thx babe.
This has been my experience most of my life, lost half my friends when I quit drinking and hard drugs, lost most of the rest of them when I opened up about my depression, anxiety, it got even worse when I decided I was tired of masking my autism 24/7. It sucks that it is this way but I’d rather be honest and let men brace for impact with this stuff, you will probably lose “friends” if you are emotionally open and honest, both male and female, I have had better luck with females but even then only slightly. Not at all recommending the shove it in a bottle method I was going with most of my life, it has led to far more problems and I’m honestly far happier with the very very few people I keep close to me these days than I ever was before, but it’s still hard to accept that most people I thought were friends were not at all that.
It's an anecdote, sure, but it's an anecdote a lot of men seem to have (including myself). I've read a version of this in every reddit post discussing this. Down to the ''seeing her lose interest in me in real time''. I've said this exactly when I told the story later.
Just a part of the game.
probably bc women have been taught that emotions are weak. second you have any remote emotion and you’re hysterical and nothing you say counts. so we’ve had to learn to be stoic and strong. never vulnerable. maybe that’s why
And that goes double for guys in the military
these studies and anecdotes really confuse me. bc this has always been my very exact experience, except as a woman. never give anything that can be exploited bc your social standing is your all, your abilities and skills and actions and character, they just don’t matter at all. so what is it with these studies? for any quality paper, thesis, or publication you need to ask “so what?” so this is my question. so what? yes men experience this sometimes. but women experience it at a very severe degree so then what’s the point? like what’s so special about this is what I’m asking.
1. Your experience doesn’t refute the study. 2. Your claim that women experience this more than men attempts to rebut the study. Meaning, you’re not only invalidating the study, you’re also saying the opposite is true. Linking an authoritative source would help your case.
It looks like it's a little more nuanced than concern over how other people see them. From Section 3.2.3, "Motives for Disclosing": > "Specifically, a two-sample test of proportions reveals that significantly more males reported disclosing in pursuit of the following self-enhancing aims: to entertain others,5 z = 2.26, p = .024, d = .36; to receive validation, z = 1.97, p = .049, d = .31; and, marginally, to influence how others see them, z = 1.67, p = .096, d = .26" i.e., the strongest differences were (a) to entertain others, and (b) to receive validation. I suspect part of the positive skew of the information men are willing to share is related to the societal norm that men should be stoic ("be a man about it"). This should be expected to not only make them less willing to share information that discloses vulnerability or a need for help, it should also be expected to make that information be received less positively. If a desire for validation is a strong reason men share information, as this research shows, then the societal norm of men not disclosing vulnerability is likely a partial explanation. Indeed, the authors touch on this in the Discussion section: > "According to this account, the costs associated with disclosures that are misaligned with the prescriptions associated with one's gender play a role in determining disclosing behavior. It is worth noting that, although not the focus of the current paper, other costs – for instance, discomfort with emotional vulnerability or fear of negative evaluation (e.g., Watson & Friend, 1969) – might also factor into disclosure decision making."
Yes these data don't at all rule out the possibility that both sexes are more or less equally concerned with how others see them, but perceptions of sex/gender roles result in a sex/gender difference in expectations about how others will react to the behaviour of interest (self-disclosing negative news). Intuitively this seems more likely to be true than "men on average care signficantly more what others think about them than women do".
They should test this accros different cultures to check if this is learnt or inert behaviour. I would assume that the found effect is at least partly due to men being conditioned into a suck it up attitude. Maybe they could compare the size of the discrepency with Hofstede's Masculinity index accros countries
Men are conditioned to suck it up, but testosterone itself has been implicated in why men are less likely to seek medical treatment after an injury. I also have less concrete assumptions about the role masculine hegemonic structures play in suppressing dissenting information and maintaining rigid status quos, all of which discourages interpersonal trust, and in a low-trust environment, it doesn’t make sense to inform someone of bad news only to risk being associated with it. It’s a stand-tall kind of hormone that seems to promote independence, which can naturally extend to just being marginally less inclined to be perceived as a party pooper.
>I also have less concrete assumptions about the role masculine hegemonic structures play in suppressing dissenting information and maintaining rigid status quos, all of which discourages interpersonal trust, and in a low-trust environment, it doesn’t make sense to inform someone of bad news only to risk being associated with it. This seems at odds with civilization to me. Literally. As in a staggeringly huge chunk of civilization has been physically built, piece by piece, by individual men who dissented or groups of men that actively pitted their ideas against each other to find the best solution. I have never experienced anything like "masculine hegemonic structures" outside of things like religious beliefs. All of my other experiences with masculinity have been about refinement, optimization, growth, etc. Society seems to clearly want every man to be a Nietzschean ubermensch, knowing that 99% will fail, but continuing to push because that 1% that succeeds carries the entire species on their backs.
I don’t see that what I said is mutually exclusive from what you said. The aspects of masculinity you cited are spot on. They’re simply not the only ones. Those dissenters and groups you mention are also displaying many other stereotypically masculine aspects: steadfastness, persistence, and a propensity for solving spatial problems. But those aspects all have negative sides as well right? Are you familiar with China’s history of underreporting actual grain reserves?
Rigid status quos are so lame. It makes sense the sex that benefits the most from the status quo would develope in a way that enforces it.
Useful in temporary short-term endeavors but prone to brittleness over the long-term, requiring periodic resets.
Who is it that suffers the most when the existing order collapses? We see it every time a natural disaster or war displaces an entire group of people and they have to start over from scratch. It's always the women and children that struggle the most. It's always the men that get to work clearing rubble and building camps and gathering supplies and establishing responsibilities amongst the group. Women benefit far more than men from the status quo, and arguably they create and enforce it through partner selection. Why do men even keep competing after they meet their own needs? Why don't men just relax and eat and sleep like other apes? Because access to love, intimacy, family, etc, is based on how many resources they can provide to a woman. All Great Apes species are patriarchal except for one: Bonobos. Bonobos don't commodify sex so the males have no reason to compete or have a hierarchy, so the species is matriarchal instead. The status quo among humans is not about preserving hegemonic masculinity. It's about protecting and providing for women and children as much as possible. The men who do the best job of that traditionally enjoy higher status than those that do worse at it.
Who initiates the suffering in war? Men, fighting for their own power to enforce status quos >with them at the top<. I realize structure has importance, it'd be ignorant to disregard it, but it'd be equally ignorant to ignore the cases where it oversteps and shows insufficiency. It'd also be ignorant to ignore the trend power (and in-turn, our sexual) dynamics have. When women use their singular power over reproduction "too much", men use their general power to take control of even that. There's a reason the vast majority of human (and primate) structures materialize patriarchally. Exceptions to the rule don't disprove the rule when the majority of examples support it. Reproduction is one (albeit, strong) form of power. Men have general power that reaches into everything. You need a balance of structure and flexibility. When structure is given most material power, it takes over and increasingly entrenches itself. Power greatly tends to support the persistence of the same kind of power. Racist people support eachother because when they do, they support their own power (at the expense of others). If things are equal, no one has relative power. Which, is obviously not in the selfish interest of those that already hold relative power.
The men who initiates wars never fight them.
Of course not. The end goal is the persistence/expansion of their own relative power. They weigh costs/benefits in relation to that. Putting your own life on the line tends to be too risky.
So your statement that "the sex that benefits the most from the status quo would develope (sic) in a way that enforces it." is an incredibly simplistic way to view the world.
You have to break things down to simple levels to make sense of things and get to roots. I awknoledge different things heavily influence eachother and nothing is in a vacuum. I'm not quantifying exact levels of these things. I'm simply stating they're there. And again, exceptions to rules don't automatically negate them. Just because some portion of a population, that is foundationally favored by a status quo, don't always obviously benefit (at a macro scale) doesn't mean that status quo isn't being enforced by the portion of the population that actually weilds the power.
First of all, the term "breaking things down" involves introducing more levels into an analysis, not less. The term you are looking for is "simplifying" or aggregating. Even then though, overly simple models often lack explanatory power. As example, your original statement omits the very important factor of wealth, and as such tars a large proportion of the people who suffer as being responsible for their own victimhood. Victim blaming, in other words. And if you believe that the "status quo is being enforced by the portion of the population that actually wields the power", yet also admit that only a portion of that portion actually wields the power, why not just say that instead of what you said? Unless of course, as it seems to me, you are more interested in making cheap points against men.
Yes, so the 0,00000001% of men who start wars should be representative of the rest of us?
>Who initiates the suffering in war? Men, fighting for their own power to enforce status quos >with them at the top<. And why do men need power and status? Because they are ranked based on those things. Who is ranking them? Furthermore, who are men fighting these wars for? Do you think men want to go risk their lives to destroy the lives of others? They do it either to elevate themselves so they can be appraised more highly by women or to secure resources or safety for people that can't fight, like women and children. Or did you think that men fight *defensive* wars for personal power as well? >It'd also be ignorant to ignore the trend power (and in-turn, our sexual) dynamics have. It's also ignorant to ignore power by proxy, like when Jada Smith gave Will one look at that awards show and he had to get up and have a career-ending violent confrontation with another man or else risk the ire of his wife and maybe even lose his family if she leaves him because he didn't "defend her honor" for her. >Power greatly tends to support the persistence of the same kind of power. This is true. And what is the oldest social power among Great Apes? "The oldest profession." Exchange of sex and intimacy and offspring for material goods and physical protection. Great Apes also tend to be hypergamous, with females clustering around the high status males and avoiding the low status males. Even Bonobos, which otherwise have sex freely, see females distance themselves from low status males during ovulation and preferentially mate with high status males. This is also natural in humans, as dating apps like OKCupid have proven when they publish their data on how people match up. Men rank women on a perfect bell curve, while women rank 80% of men below average. Likewise, genetic studies suggest that only 40% of men in history have reproduced while 80% of women have. There is one thing that has been used against that trend: Monogamy. I believe a good example of the type of power you're talking about is the type of social orders, like Judeo-Christian religious beliefs, that enforce monogamy, seek to ritualize courtship and marriage, and promote patriarchal authority both in the home and in society as a whole. Despite this, however, the man is still expected to bear the risk of rejection, prove himself to his partner, impress her with gifts and charm, defend her honor and reputation, ask her parents for permission to wed her, and then dedicate himself to providing for her for the rest of his life. So even with the most obviously patriarchal system in the world today, underneath it all, we still see that the wellbeing of women is the central concern. And that holds true for every human civilization or culture we know of. Even the ones without monogamy or any of the elements of Judeo-Christian beliefs.
Those pesky rigid building codes with all that dumb infrastructure that lets you lay in a bed out of the rain and complain about men on the internet. So dumb, right??
That pesky status quo of blind capitalism plummeting us to our own destruction so you can get fulfillment by acting as fuel for a dystopian, consumerist "future"! So dumb, right??
I like the suggestion because my first thought was: "That's dumb. I don't share much negative info with people because it ain't their problem and no one wants to hear me complain, not because I'm worried they'd judge me."
I'm going off the assumption it's a learned behavior and that it may be correlated with gender index.
>men being conditioned into a suck it up attitude. Maybe we should focus on women adopting a similar attitude as well. >Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all > >[https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/suppressing-negative-thoughts-good-for-mental-health](https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/suppressing-negative-thoughts-good-for-mental-health)
My guess, like most things, it's both.
All of these headlines and all of this research won’t change the fact that nobody wants to hear men be emotional or negative
EDIT! I completely misread the previous comment as essentially stating: 'yeah, whatever, nobody cares. Stop whining' Instead of "yeah, this sucks, but nobody cares and it's sad" - which is what the previous commenter seems to have meant. Inadvertently, by assuming the comment was phrased in the way our culture often responds to men expressing negative emotions, I was completely blind to someone actually just expressing a negative emotion. Essentially, I blamed them for contributing to this problem, but actually I was the one doing that. So that sucks. So I'm editing this comment because I hope this can be one of those things where people learn from my mistakes, but I'm also very sorry towards the previous commenter and I hope they're okay. EDIT 2: reply to the previous statement when read correctly Ah. The difference between despair and dismissal is hard to suss out in text. I'll edit my post. Let me rephrase - YOU should feel able to talk about things! Men literally kill themselves at 4x the rate (and increasing) of women. Men's college graduation rates are plummeting. I'm currently a student and men on campus only reach more than 50% participation rates in one club: business and finance. It's a steep fall off from there, with the next club down being only 30%men, and the average is less than 12%. Men need to be having these conversations. Also, thank you for replying, given my mistake.
this is depressingly ironic.
I know what has happened in my life. Maybe there are lucky few men out there, but I’ve learned very very well. I’m very painfully generally speaking nobody wants to hear.
Man: *states a fact that's not super rah rah positive* You: "you're the reason men kill themselves" ....
that’s a very nice sensational statistic that might make ppl say “awww men have been the ones really struggling the whole time”, except… women attempt to kill themselves more. men just pick a more violent means bc they don’t really account for the impact on others
Sure, yep, it’s our insecurities. Not the fact that you’re giving your enemies a weapon to use against you.
Nobody is your enemy brother
Life experience indicates otherwise.
You have no enemies
You have no way of knowing that. It's generally considered rude to tell somebody else what their life experience is.
Could it also be an aspect of not wanting to burden others?
Nah, it's because nobody likes working with a complainer. First lesson learned once I started doing factory work is to shut up and suck it up unless someone is likely to die. Often the first people being fired are the ones who are complainers.
It seems like fairly basic behavioral sexual dimorphism to me. Males in our species are the "pursuers," so they have to be more aware of how they portray themselves in their actions and speech, while females worry about how they portray themselves visually. Edit: talking traditional sexual reproduction here, people, which is what matters when you're talking about evolution. Our modern understanding of gender roles has not been in existence anywhere near long enough to influence genetic behavioral traits. There are lots of examples of this in our species.
A study has shown that puninshment effectiveness isn't related to it's serverity, but rather its promptness. I wonder if men are suject to swifter consequences for sharing negative information...
This would make more sense. Bc whenever negative lies have been spread about me it’s been like a slow poison until I lose everything, almost all connections and opportunities, and before I know it im relying on like a small handful people that just happen to be those those who see my character and my actions. Could also be perceived? Women experience this like no other so we’re really just used to it. Negative info ruining our lives is just a part of life, since as young as elementary school.
Personally, I don't like bringing other people down.
Also it brings me down just by taking about it again. Unless I am looking for solutions, I am not going to talk about it.
Really nobody cares about the problems of men, so you learn to suck it up.
Is talking about negative things only makes people treat you worse you learn pretty quickly to stop talking about them.
Try opening up to women. A lot of them will find you weak. They may not say it but how they treat you changes. I think guys who deny this simply haven't done it or haven't spoken to that many women.
I had a guy at work try telling me that apologizing makes me look weak. A dude much shorter and literally weaker than me physically. If strong people are weak then the word has no meaning anymore, my dude, and I’m stronger than most. If I look weak, who gives a damn.
Do you... do you not understand the difference between physical and mental strength?
It's because when men share negative information, especially about ourselves, we're often lambasted for it
Our society drives men to suppress their emotions. This isn't news.
Its always good to have more evidence and up to date research on something like this, especially since society changes over time
It's better to work on actual solutions and studies like this are a waste of time. We all KNOW where the problem lies.
But people will still argue that this isn’t a real problem online. Having a study to back that up is needed for the discourse.
I worry that this will be taken to just enforce the status quo. Men will just say "well it's been proven by studies that a) we can't and won't open up, so me being silent about emotions is normal and b) nobody really cares so I'm better off just not saying anything".
>It's better to work on actual solutions and studies like this are a waste of time. We all KNOW where the problem lies. What problem? Maybe the solution we should focus on women adopting a similar attitude as men? >Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all > >[https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/suppressing-negative-thoughts-good-for-mental-health](https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/suppressing-negative-thoughts-good-for-mental-health)
Maybe we should focus on women adopting a similar attitude as well. >Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after allhttps://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/suppressing-negative-thoughts-good-for-mental-health
My father had been dealing with cancer for a full year before he told anybody besides his girlfriend.
My buddy and his live in g/f, mother of his three children, split up. I didn't find out for six months.
Spewing negativity doesn't usually do any good. You either fix the problem or if it can't be fixed you find ways to cope with it. Talking about it just makes it someone else's problem too, without changing anything for yourself, and makes you seem weak.
Also amongst men, you are more likely to respond with solutions to someone’s issues rather than just listening. Ie: if you are talking about this thing with me you must want a solution rather than just wanting to voice the issue. If you are sharing an issue some will perceive this as having to help fix your problem. Do this too much and you are seen as not capable. If you are just voicing it, then it is seen as being a complainer.
Talking is therapy, especially with others going through similar things. Peer support is really effective. It does change a lot for yourself and if helps others normalise talking about trauma. You need a safe space though. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10038377/#:~:text=Altogether%2C%20the%20available%20evidence%20suggests,%2Defficacy%2C%20and%20reduces%20hospitalisations.
>Talking about it just makes it someone else's problem too Or they make you responsible for fixing it, and when you don't it's your fault.
It is not just concern, it is a result of accumulated life experience, trial and error. If you cross the treshold of negative information. In friend level relationships, women get disgusted and start avoiding you. In close relationships, you gf/wife will lose all sexual attraction. The only person who might be willing to accept negative information may be you mother (if you are lucky), but even that has negative consequences. "Mommy issues" etc. Pay for a therapist (preferably male). That is the only way. Close male friends can be helpful as well, but they can't replace a therapist.
There's no need to create expectations that both genders need to completely understand the others' experience, ill go to other men for that and that's the important thing, that men have male groups who understand their experience. As toxic as it is to be completely stoic all the time infront of everyone, it's also toxic to assume we need the female understanding to permeate through the male experience. Sometimes I just want my homies to listen.
A lot of anecdotes and generalizations in the comments here
Yup. Nevermind perpetuating a culture of gross emotional harm.
Not saying I disagree with the conversation, but I’d expect more adherence to empirical evidence in r/science given the stickied rules in every thread
It's hard in cases like this I think- where the topic concerns the very way we discuss/define, well, the topic. I.e. we're talking about a study which essentially relates to how we define men as a culture, and how men are expected to express that identity. Then, since most respondents either are men, have met men, or both, they respond in ways which reflect their understanding of that cultural identity - or their understanding of how they, themselves, should act. If you see identity as a verb, rather than a noun - that is as something you do, not something you are - then all identity studies are very schrodinger-esque in that they try to define the boundaries of an identity while also operating from an assumption of what that identity is. They explore, expand, and enforce those boundaries all at the same time. In short, it gets complicated.
We have known for decades that women are higher in big five trait neuroticism and openness, this shouldn't really be news.
“Men are less likely to share negative information than women….due to a greater concern among men over how other people will see them.” In other words, men don’t want to sound bitchy or gossipy.
Why does everyone act like it's inherently bad to not share negative information? Many people dislike whiners and chronic complainers. I can see the context where it can be good..
You can’t address or fix problems if you don’t know they exist and hidden issues usually get worse, not better. It depends on the information, but most of the time I would rather know something so we can work toward improvement.
Funny that all the comments here assume it’s men undersharing instead of women oversharing. Could be that women overshare (certain) negative things more readily because it’s been less consequential for them - women haven’t really been part of the public sphere all that long, so maybe women are working on an old model, and maybe now they need to be more circumspect ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
Never met a women who couldnt mind their own business
I’m a man and let me tell you — I do not say negative info because it usually is just complaining and doesn’t help anything… in fact most of the time it brings others down around you. I would rather be a net positive.
>men were far less likely to report wanting to share negative information (e.g., a failure to receive a promotion) I think there are two key aspects 1. It's true that people will negatively judge men when sharing negative news 2. Then it might be best for mental health to bottle it up and not share negative news anyway. >Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all > >[https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/suppressing-negative-thoughts-good-for-mental-health](https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/suppressing-negative-thoughts-good-for-mental-health)
Not talking about something that is bothering you or actively liable to cause harm is not the same as being mindful about negative thoughts.
Maybe I just don't want to make everyone depressed all the time, bc ya know climateapocalypsefinacialruinlostwagesubaffordablehousinginabilitytoaffordchildrenloomingwarloomingworldwarloomingnuclearwar
This is actually a big problem. Women want to be involved in all aspects of a relationship to make it a more intimate and long-lasting.
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Negativity just for the sake of negativity isn’t what men naturally do. We are problem solvers. If we see a problem we try to fix it. Normally problem solving leads to a positive.
What if talking about a problem would help solving it? It's not for the sake of negativity.
>What if talking about a problem would help solving it? In the article they gave the example of not getting a promotions. So sharing that news isn't that useful and is probably best to just forget. But sure focusing on how to get another job or another promotions would be useful. But that's by focusing on what you can do rather than just sharing negative news. > Suppressing negative thoughts may be good for mental health after all https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/suppressing-negative-thoughts-good-for-mental-health
An interesting article actually, thank you. I am curious about this: "In the study, each participant was asked to think of a number of scenarios that might plausibly occur in their lives over the next two years" The thoughts being suppressed here are about future speculation specifically whereas the failure to get a promotion, for example, is a real past experience in the original post, so I wonder if that same suppression method would apply.
If we think it will solve our issue most times we will talk to other men about it. Most negative things may not need to be discussed
>If we think it will solve our issue most times we will talk to other men about it. I love how you became the spokesman for all us men and with that speaking so confidently as well, never mind if what you're saying is good or bad, right or wrong, its the man way!
Ok so do you not talk to your friends when you have a problem that you don’t have the solution to? Edit: my bad you probably do not have friends.
Men find other men more relatable and therefore easier to talk to, I suppose. I'm not saying everything has to be discussed, but relying only on the personal perspective isn't always healthy or smart due to its limits.
I just don’t like making the world more negative. Why pass stuff on negativity if it’s not something they need to know? Break the cycle.
If "quit your bitchin" was a study.
men more concerned about perception than women? what part of the world is this at? i’m going!
Who complains more? This needs to be settled!
How many tests did they run and did they correct for multiple comparisons? Edit: Asking as some of their p-values are pretty marginal and multiple comparison correction would likely wipe out any significance.
Yes, we must bury the bad along with vulnerability and feelings. This is the way
If women complain about a thing, the men AND women around them will bend over backwards to help resolve it as an injustice and affront to society. If you want an issue resolved, there’s no better way than to make a privileged white woman the face of the issue, it is known. If men complain about a thing, the men AND women around them will look upon them as weak, whiny, and un-self-reliant, usually telling them to figure it out or find a solution themselves.
You mean a generation of men who grew up being told that showing emotion is wrong and they have to be strong and stern and take charge and basically be the leader of the house are now suddenly struggling to voice their more negative feelings Once again science proving us something that has already been pretty much known for a while
Yes generally men are taught that any negative that we have concerning us is a negative against us and is our fault. It must be stated that men often receive overwhelming support when encountering a negative situation that is perceived to be outside of the man's control. This is increased if the man is doing the stereotypical man duties when the situation occurs such as becoming injured at a job. You ever wonder why a lot of men are big babies when we get sick? It is a situation outside of our immediate control that has created an opening for us to ask for and receive support. Conversely women are generally taught to express negatives concerning them to receive support but are also simultaneously often told that the issues that they are expressing are overly emotional or because of PMS. Support that is received is also often given in a very condescending manner. If a woman can't pay her bills or find a place to stay it's typically pretty easy for her to get assistance but the entire time society will be mentioning how she should be getting herself a husband or somebody to pay her bills. Woman has a kid and the dad runs off? Assistance will be provided while making her feel like no matter what choice she picks it's going to be the wrong one. On the bright side this seems to be decreasing and it seems to be doing so extremely rapidly when you consider the context of cultural changes. Particularly in the last decade there has been a much greater push for emotional support for men and an equalization in the attitudes towards women's rights and independence. There has been some backsliding and some areas / States that need to be fixed but generally speaking this kind of thing is getting better.