A man can go decades with almost no language for what's happening inside him. Hungry, tired, pissed off, fine. Past that it gets murky.

Most talk about men's emotional health treats this as reluctance. Men won't talk, won't get help, won't admit anything is wrong. That puts the problem inside the man, like a part missing from the factory. Reluctance is a behavior, though, and behaviors come from somewhere. Most men absorbed a specific set of rules before they were old enough to question them, and those rules have been running quietly ever since.

The rules nobody wrote down

Nobody handed them over in a document. They came through small corrections, a smirk, a nickname that stuck, and watching what happened to the boys who broke them. When River and Flood interviewed men who had attempted suicide, the men described learning as boys that expressing sadness lowered their standing as men, while anger, even violent anger, could raise it.

Sadness costs you. Anger is at least legible. A lot of men will recognize the rest of the set:

  • Sadness gets converted into something else, usually irritation.
  • Needing help means you've already lost.
  • Handle it alone, mention it later, if ever.
  • "Fine" is the answer to "how are you."

The man who goes quiet in a hard conversation, or can only get to his feelings through anger, is following instructions that made sense when he was twelve.

Men who grew up in high-control religion, evangelical, Mormon, Catholic or anything else built on shame and hierarchy, got a second rulebook on top. Sadness was weak and maybe sinful. Needing someone meant your faith wasn't strong enough. Two suppression systems stacked, and most men raised that way don't realize they're carrying both. More on that in men and vulnerability.

What it costs

The body goes first: chronic tension, a baseline flatness, being functional without being present. Then the relationship, where a partner says it feels like talking at you instead of with you. Then the one that tends to land last: you stop knowing, with any precision, what you want. You've gone so long without checking that when you finally do, nothing comes back.

It builds quietly. A review of 47 studies found traditional masculinity norms significantly deter men from seeking mental health support, so the cost tends to pile up for years before anyone sees it.

Lonely with people all around you

A lot of what gets written about male loneliness counts friends. The loneliness a lot of men have looks different from the outside: a man has a partner, coworkers, a group chat, guys to watch the game with, and nobody who knows what's going on with him. He can't tell them because he can't tell himself.

You can't be known in a language you don't speak. If your words stop at fine, stressed and pissed off, every conversation stays on the surface, whoever it's with. In one study of men's social lives, some men had connections and still had trouble drawing support from them. The same study found men's social lives vary a lot, which to me is the useful part: the capacity is there. What blocks it was learned, and learned things can be unlearned.

Why "just open up" doesn't work

The standard advice is to open up, talk more, be vulnerable. It skips a step. Naming what's going on inside you with any precision is a practiced skill, and most men never got the practice. You can't decide to be fluent in a language nobody taught you.

What moves things is slower: naming the rules and building the vocabulary at the same time. A man who can say "I learned sadness made me look weak, and I've been turning it into irritability ever since" is already somewhere different from a man who just knows he gets irritable and feels vaguely bad about it.

Where to start

  • Translate the anger. Next time you're irritated, ask what it would be if anger weren't allowed: disappointed, embarrassed, scared, hurt. Guess. Being wrong is fine.
  • Go one word past fine. When someone asks how you are, answer honestly in your own head, even if "fine" is still what comes out of your mouth.
  • Start in the body. Jaw, shoulders, gut. Tension is easier to notice than a feeling and usually gets there first, so when you catch it, put a guess at the feeling next to it.
  • Catch one rule. Pick one from the list and notice yourself following it once this week. Only notice. Changing it comes later.

Working with me

I'm Johann, a coach in Asheville, NC, not a therapist. Masculinity coaching is where this work lives: finding the specific rules you absorbed and building the words that make them optional instead of automatic. It's one part of what I do. I coach people of all genders, mostly around leaving high-control religion, coming out at any age, relationships that are changing shape, and starting over. In person in Asheville or online. Sessions are $125 and the intro call is free.

If you're in crisis or thinking about ending your life, call or text 988 first.