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I am definitely an emotional male. While I don't cry at every emotional encounter in my life, I certainly find myself getting choked up whenever I observe something heart wrenching or sweet.
I also feel like I'm relatively in touch with my emotions. If something is bothering me, I have no qualms talking about it with my close friends or family.
As for my father, who is in his early 60s, I don't think I've ever seen him shed a tear, even at funerals. I don't think he's cold, calloused, or closed off. I simply think that showing your emotions was not something that was generally condoned for males in his generation.
Having lived in two countries and married to a man from another country, I can tell you that how genders within each culture show their emotions are sometimes subtly different and sometimes VERY different.
Exactly. Men don't define anger as an emotion, that's why. It's that simple. But men are by far the more emotional of the two main genders. Though there are plenty of steady, stable men who aren't angry, and are supportive and nurturing; let's not overlook those.
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Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth
There are men who never grow up in that respect, though, and go through life pitching tantrums. But oh, no, they're not "emotional".
Yup. I always think about the Ex. His emotional outbursts were over the top. And when he wasn't throwing angry conniptions, he was moaning and whining about his feelings (I call it that because we are talking monologues that could go on for 4-12 hours straight easily, not letting anyone get a word in edgewise, about his emotional stuff.) Seriously, you wanna act like men are not emotional, go hang out in the Relationships forum a while and look how many guys are expressing their feelings about being alone. I'm not calling that good or bad, it just is.
Everyone has emotions.
I think the person I was raised to be and the people I enjoy being around, learned at some point how to put a buffer of self control between a feeling and/or thought process, and their words & actions. Rather than just reacting to everything they feel or think, without considering any possible consequences to themselves or others. Being a human and having feelings, doesn't entitle one to just explode them messily all over the place willy nilly. But I have known just as many men who do that, as women.
And the guys, that OTHER GUYS think, are super logical and unemotional, might show a whole different person to the women in their lives. Men will often display emotion around women when they won't around men. The cause of this is obvious, as many Americans are raised where Mom will give love and nurturing to a crying child, but Dad will tell him to man up and stop crying.
I have almost always been less emotionally demonstrative than men that I was with. As a rule. My present boyfriend is not an angry man, or a thrower of tantrums, but he gets choked up by movies all the time. I wish I could remember the last one we were watching where that happened. It was so inappropriate that it would even get that reaction from him, it was a pretty stupid movie. I actually looked at him and said, "Really?" He knows though that in general I find this very endearing about him. I was just giving him a hard time because it was a dumb movie. The one that really gets him going is "How To Train Your Dragon." Sobbing, by the end, every time. For real. Frankly I adore him for sharing this kind of feeling with me.
It is SO much preferable to angry outbursts. So. So. Much.
Also to the person who said a man will get a conflict over with and move on and forget it, while a woman will drag it out and remember forever? Wrong. My ex still brings stuff up from 1997. And some men are just as gossipy.
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Originally Posted by silibran
I’ve been around a lot of men and boys in my life, and I’ve got to say they are no more logical than I, or less emotional.
Now they are emotional about different things than I am. And I am more logical about different things than they.
In other words, we have different gradations of thoughts and feelings about different things.
Think about the pure emotional joy a man has when his hometown team wins first place. Think about the disappointment he feels after his new car is scratched. Think about the anger he feels when someone hurts his child. These are all strong feelings.
Think about the precision a woman brings to baking a pie. Think about the mental steps she takes to bring Christmas in at budget. Think about how she manages carpools, playdates and after school activities. These activities require logic and cause and effect thinking.
I think the reason people have stereotypical ideas about men and women’s “characteristics” is because we default to a flawed male view of women that regards us as “the other.”
I want to point out the bold. I was actually thinking, that part of the illusion that men are less emotional, is that they justify their feelings, rather than owning responsibility for them. So if they explode in violent anger and punch the wife, well, what did SHE do to provoke him? Everything can get bounced back to someone else's fault. Women are not allowed to do that, not so much. It just comes off as making excuses if we do.
So as a woman, I'll speak to the hormones thing. Yes, hormones absolutely can and do affect mood. And temperament, personality, libido. Lots of things. They are powerful juju! But the biggest effect of that in my lifetime, had to do with birth control products. Depo Provera turned me into a cold-hearted b-word. My pregnancy hormones made me fall insanely in love with my unborn child, when before I had said adamantly that I never ever wanted children. It's a thing.
However. As a grown-arse adult, I have to be responsible for my behavior. Just because I'm feeling some feels, does not mean that I get to act them out all over the place. Most women can control ourselves. I actually don't get PMS, but I do get moody for a couple of days after a period for some reason. But I am well aware of it, and can stop myself from saying or doing inappropriate things. (It is the time when so many emails and posts get deleted, rather than sent.)
I most certainly do not need or want any sort of a special menstrual hut, or any kind of seclusion from society during that time. It isn't just a matter of me being perfectly capable of being just as productive during that time, as at any time (which I am) it is also that I WANT to be productive. I'm not only productive for other people, believe it or not. I have no desire to put my life on hold for about 1/5 of my time, I already have to sleep and that is bad enough, thank you very much.
In my experience, it's men who are way more moody and emotional. They might not cry during commercials (but how many women do you really know who do that?), but they're the ones who punch walls, pout when things don't go their way, etc.
YES! What about school shootings, road rage and domestic abuse? I think that is the "elephant in the room" so to speak. Society might be better if we could admit men are the more emotional.
Saying women are more emotional is a way for men to feel better about themselves because they can feel manly in comparison because they have trained themselves to stop crying by the time they are 8 or 12 years old and they don't get moody. Yes, let's Get real.
YES! What about school shootings, road rage and domestic abuse? I think that is the "elephant in the room" so to speak. Society might be better if we could admit men are the more emotional.
Saying women are more emotional is a way for men to feel better about themselves because they can feel manly in comparison because they have trained themselves to stop crying by the time they are 8 or 12 years old and they don't get moody. Yes, let's Get real.
I think men are at least as emotional as women.
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Yes, let's Get real.
