SHIFTING THE MASCULINE PARADIGM

HOW DO YOU FEEL...

BY AMY BLISS

And Other Terrifying Questions

How many times has this happened to you? You are having an intense moment or conversation with your partner and you ask something along the lines of “how do you feel?” or “how does this make you feel?” He immediately gets a deer in the headlights look, shuts down and answers with either good, fine or okay. None of which are emotions. And none of which cover the topic at hand.

You feel the rage building in your body, like he has both keys to your nuclear detonation button and has no qualms about using them.

What happens next? Often times it’s a fight that starts by you responding with one of the following:

“Why won’t you ever tell me how you feel?”

“Why isn’t this important to you?” Or my favorite, “Fine, don’t tell me!”

And the downward spiral begins…

You both walk away wondering why does this keeps happening? Why can’t you connect? How many times do you have to have the same fight? And is it even worth it?

I totally get it. I do. It feels like none of this matters to him. Everything from the topic that you were discussing before the implosion, to you and the entirety of your relationship. Let me start with this, the vast majority of the time it DOES matter to him. Your relationship matters to him. YOU matter to him. Probably far more than you realize. He wants to please you. To make you happy. He is not doing any of this to upset you.

There is one simple reason he doesn’t answer the question. He doesn’t know.

I know what you are thinking…What? How can that be? It’s a simple question! Yes. And you are not wrong. He doesn’t know how he is feeling because we have not given men language for emotion. Quite the opposite. We have conditioned them from a very young age to not feel - Don’t cry. Suck it up. Don’t be weak. Don’t be a sissy. Man up. All of these messages tell men that emotions are a weakness, not something they are supposed to experience in any meaningful way, with a few exceptions, namely anger, happiness and on a few specific occasions, sadness. (More on this later.) And if they do feel something, they have to shove it down. So even if he does know or have some inkling, experience has told him that he absolutely should not express it.

That deer in the headlights look? That is the outward expression of all of this going through his mind in that moment: How DO I feel? I don’t know! Well maybe there’s this, but I’m not sure that’s right and even if it is, can I tell her? Will she think less of me if it do? Crap, she’s getting upset waiting for me. I know it’s probably going to lead to a fight, but I’ll give her the safest answer I can think of... And then proceeds to say good, fine or okay.

He KNOWS you want something else. He KNOWS where this is going to lead. And in his mind, he is in a no-win situation. He must either tell you something he knows you don’t want to hear and prepare for the impending argument or risk being less than in your eyes. Or if he really doesn’t know how he feels, there isn’t even a choice and yet, he still knows the fight is coming. So he braces for it.

“How many times has this happened to you? You are having an intense moment or conversation with your partner and you ask something along the lines of “how do you feel?” or “how does this make you feel?” ”

Remember anger? One of the few emotions we do allow men to express? In those few moments when he’s weighing his options, he’ll choose the fight over losing any status in your eyes. First, because the latter is something he cannot and will not risk. And second because he can do anger. He KNOWS anger. All those emotions that we have conditioned men not to feel? They don’t simply not exist or just bounce off of him. They get shoved down and eventually have to go somewhere. Unfortunately, it often all comes back up and gets channeled into anger.

At this point you may be thinking, now what?? I’m not going to live in a relationship where we don’t talk about our feelings! While the situation is not hopeless, you do need to understand you are up against a lifetime of conditioning and messages about what a man is “supposed to be.” Some of which you, consciously or unconsciously, also hold. Remember him worrying about being seen as less than in your eyes? That is not an unfounded fear. Somewhere along the line, maybe not with you, he has learned this the hard way.

So what can you do? If he is open to it, suggest a quality men’s group. They can be a safe space to start unpacking all of this, a place where his relationship is not hanging in the balance. If this is not an appealing option to him, or maybe in conjunction, there are plenty of other things that you can do. Keep in mind that men sometimes feel things differently, which is why I am a huge proponent of men’s groups. Though there are certainly things we as women can offer, as emotions are a comfortable place for many of us.

Please, please, please be open and honest about this! Don’t try to change him without his knowledge. Tell him that you understand he has been told his whole life that emotions are a weakness, that you truly do want to know how he feels and it won’t change how you feel about him. Though this last one is something you will have to prove as well. Just saying it is often not enough. He’s got history with that, too. Let him know you are there to support him along the way. Be prepared for some push back as asking for and/or accepting help is also something he has been conditioned not to do.

Start small. Something that is not big and heavy and crucial to the relationship. You can begin by talking intellectually about what you each think is the “appropriate” response to have in specific situations. This starts the process of giving language to emotions. Once he is comfortable with those conversations, you may want to share where you feel things in your body when experiencing emotions in each specific situation. Keeping in mind there is no right or wrong way to feel. He may feel something very different. This starts to bring context so he can begin associating a sensation with a particular emotion.

Understand that this is largely new to him. He’s not going to get it right straight out of the gate. Yes, this is all second nature to you, but put yourself in his shoes. Think about all the levers and buttons in the cockpit of a commercial airline. To a seasoned pilot, it all makes perfect sense. And they can probably hit the right one without even looking. To the rest of us? It’s overwhelming to even think about! So give him grace and have patience. It’s going to take time. You didn’t learn to navigate the entire spectrum of emotion overnight. Don’t expect him to either.

This leads us to our next topic: Happy and Angry…. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Amy Bliss, JD, MBA, is the founder of The Warrior cOre, which offers coaching, workshops, men’s groups and retreats to help men identify and shed the conditioning from family, society, religion, educational systems and culture, of what a man is “supposed to be” and learn to live as the humans they are, independent of these constraints. Please visit our website or schedule a Discovery Call.

NOTE: To all non-binary readers – this and other articles are written from a binary and usually heterosexual perspective, not to be exclusionary, but rather because our conditioning is binary. It starts with the proclamation “It’s a girl!” or “It’s a boy!” Other ways of being generally show up well after these statements and long into the conditioning. The other reason is that non-binary, non-hetero identifying people tend to be much further along in the process of undoing conditioning than those who identify as binary and/or hetero.