Feelings

From Menletter August 2005

By Tim Baehr

Men's feelings - the ultimate oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp and military intelligence? Most of us have heard the metaphors bordering on psychobabble regarding men's feelings:

● He needs to open up.

● He lives inside a shell.

● He keeps his feelings bottled up.

● He doesn't know his own feelings.

● He's in denial.

● He needs to own his anger.

● He's sitting on piles of rage.

● He isn't in touch with his feelings.

● He just won't talk.

These are usually expressed as complaints, and usually from the women in our lives. When a man "opens up," it usually means he's willing to talk, typically to his mate. Then we might hear "He's gotten in touch with his softer (or feminine) side."

I wonder . . .

I wonder why we sometimes allow our emotional lives to be defined according to women's standards, and then feel inadequate when we come up short. And when we do "open up," we're compared (favorably) with women. For some men, this feels like giving up our identity as men, and it feels dangerous. (There's a further danger if we open up too far, especially if we go beyond talking and into acting on our feelings. Then we "cry like a little girl"; or we're perceived by women as soft males, or even wusses and wimps; or our anger or passion is frightening or abusive, our grief overwhelming.)

More often, I suspect, we have feelings, and we know all about them, but we resist talking about them, especially in the feminine arena.

The difference

Having feelings and talking about them are quite different, regardless of gender, as in D.H. Lawrence's poem:

To Women, As Far As I'm Concerned

The feelings I don't have, I don't have.

The feelings I don't have, I won't say I have.

The feelings you say you have, you don't have.

The feelings you would like both of us to have, we neither of us have.

The feelings people ought to have, they never have.

If people say they've got feelings, you may be pretty sure they haven't got them.

So if you want either of us to feel anything at all

you'd better abandon all idea of feelings altogether.

(In The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, ed. by Robert Bly, James Hillman, and Michael Meade. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.)

Talking vs. expressing; containment

Men may not talk about feelings because we don't know how, or because we don't see the point. And expressing feelings nonverbally is something not commonly done in public. Maybe that's why, when men get together, especially in ritual space, the emotions can sometimes tumble out. In the safe setting of a men's retreat, I've seen and heard men raging at an abusive father or mother, weeping for lost marriages, sobbing in joy for an insight or healing, grieving for lost children or the ravaged environment, expressing the deepest tenderness for another man in pain. We have and express the feelings but don't talk about them or process them much.

When our female partner accuses us of never talking about our feelings, we may be following D.H. Lawrence's advice, even if we know how to talk about them. Maybe for many men (I won't speak for women), talking about feelings is just one way of not having them, or of denying their power. The concept, if I had to name it metaphorically, might be called "containment." That's a useful term because it means we don't (to ourselves) deny our feelings. We keep quiet about them, keeping them in a container and looking at them, re-experiencing them at times of our own choosing, and acting on them.

Containment can be a good thing if we take the power and energy of the feelings and emotions and channel them into action or insight. It's not particularly good if the container is so hermetically sealed that the emotions eat us up from the inside or burst out at inappropriate times, or just makes us numb.

The problem (again, for men; I can't speak for women) is that if we talk too much about the stuff in the container - perhaps through talk therapy or by talking with female partners - we can dissipate the feelings and their power and energy. This talking may keep the feelings from eating us up or bursting out. But it can drain the energy, keeping us from action or insight.

Talking man-to-man

Not everyone has easy access to ritual settings: weekend campouts, vision quests, week-long retreats, and the like. Talking with other men may be one way to go if we don't have this access. A weekly or monthly get-together with a group or with a best friend can evolve into a safe place to explore feelings. Rituals can be a part of the group from the start (opening and closing a meeting with prayers, doing a check-in, sharing poetry or a meal). Ritual can also come in the form of the trust that has built up, trust that forms a kind of sacred space enveloping the group.

In settings like these, I think the quality of all-man talk about feelings is different from that among women, or among mixed groups. In my experience, it tends to be shorter, more focused, less repetitive. This kind of talking may be less likely to drain feelings of their power. Advice is rarely given unless asked for; the men listening understand that they are merely holding, in a sacred place, another man's pain, grief, joy, and so on. Things don't get hashed over endlessly. In fact, a man is likely to hear, "OK, we've heard you and we understand you; now what are you going to do about it?"

Here's a final thought. Men who have explored feelings and emotions among men may find themselves better able to express emotion and talk more easily with women about feelings, on their own masculine terms. Several times I've heard women describe men who do ritual men's work as "more genuine, more themselves." At that point, the wry humor of a poem I wrote a couple years ago makes sense:

She said I needed

To discover my

Inner feminine

And I told her

Let me know when

You’ve discovered your

Inner masculine.

Then we can talk.

Man to man.