Ken Solin

There is a widespread belief among men that speaking about their feelings is unmanly and, therefore, should be avoided. This belief isolates men from each other and prevents them from giving and getting what they need from each other as well as from women.

From the time we were young boys, when we were either physically or emotionally injured, we were told to “act like a man”—a euphemism for stuffing our feelings. In addition, the movie heroes we looked up to were macho he-men who never looked an emotion directly in the eye. So as we got older, we simply continued stuffing our feelings instead of acknowledging and working through them.

A typical example of the problems that arise when men don’t communicate their feelings with women is sexual conflict. A man tells his partner he doesn’t think they are having sex often enough. The woman says she doesn’t feel the necessary emotional connection. The man then strongly insists that she doesn’t understand his needs for sex. The woman counters that he doesn’t understand her needs for emotional intimacy. This circular argument goes nowhere because think and feel are two very different concepts.

The way to resolve this conflict is not for a man to say whatever he thinks his partner wants to hear just so he can have sex. This might work once or twice, but will only create a lack of trust and more problems in the long run. Instead, if a man can get in touch with his feelings for his partner and express them, he might realize that what he actually misses is not just the sex itself, but the warmth and closeness he feels for her during and afterward. If he shares these feelings with her, she would likely feel some of the emotional intimacy she misses and would be more amenable to sex.

Because this way of communicating doesn’t come naturally to most men, they have to learn it. The process is like learning to speak another language. It isn’t necessarily easy and does take concerted effort, and it’s often easier for men to learn to speak from their hearts with other men first. Men know that women have a significant advantage in the emotional arena and therefore men feel safer and more equally matched in talking about their feelings with other men in the beginning. In the men’s group I began 18 years ago, men have learned to access and communicate their feelings and deal with the unresolved emotional issues that hamper their lives and stifle their potential.

With many men, what you see isn’t always what you get. They may seem like feeling human beings, but they’ve been cut off from their hearts and hidden behind a mask designed to keep the world at an emotional distance. Looking at them is like looking into a two-way mirror—lonely and even a little scary.

I know because I’ve been working with men for over eighteen years now. When I meet new guys, they typically greet me with a lot of backslapping and bravado meant to feign camaraderie. The banter is light and pointless and never really engages either of us. When we say good-bye, I immediately forget running into them. If that’s the template for their interactions with the women in their lives, it’s no wonder that half of all marriages end in divorce and increasing numbers of women choose to remain single. In fact, most women over twenty have already learned that men can’t hold up their end of a dialogue about feelings, and their frustration grows as men fail to grow up emotionally.

So what would men gain if they made the effort to lose their masks and open up emotionally with their partners? For starters, the groundwork for a healthy, intimate relationship. Women would appreciate that they were sharing from their hearts and not just from their heads and would express their emotions freely in return. And men would get their needs met without having to jump through hoops or rage in frustration.

Making themselves vulnerable isn’t easy for anyone, though—and especially for men. Before taking that risk, men have to be sure they’re safe and that what they say won’t be used against them. I’ve learned that the safest place for men to learn to speak from their hearts is in small men’s group where confidentiality and mutual desire to grow emotionally are sacrosanct.

While it might feel threatening for men to open themselves so completely to a woman, a group of men can offer each other a safety net that encourages them to take the plunge and expand their emotional vocabularies. Men DO have emotional legs and they CAN learn to walk the walk.

All they may need is a little nudge. So how about it?