How does patriarchy impact men’s relationships?
Photo by Jonathon Reed, youth program manager at NGM. Mahad, one of our youth program participants, is showing off his completed work! The boys were contrasting the messages they receive about what kind of men they “should” be (the muscly dude in the image) with messages about who they actually are. Mahad chose to focus on how boys and men do have emotions, and in fact, have vulnerable hearts.
This is part 2 of a two-part blog series on patriarchy’s impact on men’s happiness — check out part 1 here.
When I asked my friend Jon whether or not the messages he’d received about how to “be a man” had impacted the amount of happiness and joy he had felt throughout his life, his simple answer was “yes”. Throughout our conversation, two major themes emerged: 1) the feeling of “never being good enough” and 2) struggles in relationships.
And boy, oh boy. We could write a lot about how patriarchal masculinity impacts men’s chances at healthy, loving, close, relationships with their friends, families, and partners.
Let’s get into it.
How do the messages we receive about how to “be a man” impact our ability to connect?
Deep, meaningful relationships are an important source of happiness for many people. This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone! Relationships (whether romantic, platonic, or familial) are ideally where we feel understood, comforted, supported, and challenged to grow.
When you ask any parent about their greatest source of joy, you will likely hear “my children.”
Similarly, when you ask people about their greatest regrets, many will say they regret not spending enough time with their loved ones.
Relationships are so central in our lives for a reason: humans are wired for connection.
All relationships — with partners, friends, or family members — are defined by connection.
Connection requires:
Vulnerability: the courageous willingness & ability to share our true selves with others.
Empathy: the act of curiously listening to understand someone else and reflecting that back to them.
Care: the concern we have for the welfare of another and the actions that accompany it.
Unfortunately, boys and men are often raised to cut out vulnerability.
What was okay to do as a young child — to reach for a hug, to ask for comfort and reassurance, to state what you need or feel — becomes taboo as a teenager. Even stating what we enjoy or feel passionate about starts to be frowned upon as boys start building and enforcing social hierarchies at school.
For many of us, this pattern of disconnection carries on into adulthood.
We are repeatedly taught to fear vulnerability because if others knew how we felt or what we cared about, they could use it against us. We are taught to put up a wall to protect ourselves without being told it’s also a barrier that disconnects us.
We are also taught that we shouldn’t need others anyway: we should be strong, independent, a “lone wolf.”
As a result, we may lose touch with our own needs and emotions, losing the ability to recognize how we feel and explain it to others. We’re busy working so hard to push our emotions, desires, and needs out of our consciousness, we stop listening to ourselves. We stop caring for ourselves. We lose that ability to be vulnerable and share our emotions with others because we can’t even listen to them ourselves. This creates the first barrier to connection.
The second barrier to connection is a lack of empathy.
If we can’t identify or explain what we need and feel, how can we do this for others? How can we connect with what they need and feel?
It makes sense that if boys and men spend so much time learning to ignore and repress their own emotions — because they have learned that perhaps expressing emotion is a sign of weakness — how equipped will they be to handle the emotions of others with empathy and care
Empathy is also a set of skills that requires role modeling and practice — it’s not just something we can all naturally do. Empathy involves actively listening, paraphrasing, confirming, confronting our own judgments, and identifying and communicating the needs of others. Despite these skills being essential for connecting with others, are not often prioritized as abilities that boys and men must learn.
The final barrier to connection is lack of care.
How can we care for anyone — including ourselves — if we do not understand the feelings and needs of ourselves or others? Can we meet needs that we cannot even name?
Maybe, we do care about others, maybe we care about them so deeply it hurts. But if we project invulnerability — never explaining how much we care — can we be surprised when it looks like indifference to others?
All of this cultural conditioning — these messages we’ve received about how to “be a man” that disconnect us from our emotions and the emotions of others — sets the stage for difficulty in relationships.
Whether it’s our families, partners, or friends — struggling to explain our emotions or needs, or asking others about their emotions or needs, is lacking some basic relationship-building skills.
The good news is that these skills can be learned.
We’re in the midst of a series of workshops on Emotional Literacy — join us! Or send this article to a man whose happiness you care about and encourage him to join the workshop. We’re here to support him!
This piece is adapted from a blog we originally wrote for MEN&.
Further reading:
How does Patriarchy Impact Men’s Happiness?
Why Relationship is the Key to Boys Succeeding at School