George
01-18-2008, 12:43 PM
A friend asked me to help her understand what her husband is going through. This was my reply.
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How Men Grieve
From the time we are born, men are told not to cry. I remember being terrified of getting a vaccination when I was a toddler because a previous one was excruciating. The doctor tried to shame me into submission by saying I should be wearing a dress. This was a medical professional to a scared 3-year-old boy.
In school, other guys razzed us if we cried or expressed compassion. Even if it was a sports injury, someone would mock us and question our gender if we didn’t manage to hold back the tears.
We’re told that women don’t respect weak men. We interpret that to mean women don’t respect men who cry, and we know women don’t love men they don’t respect. Trash talk, sarcasm, anger, suppression, and aggression are acceptable. Drinking alcohol is cool.
This cultural conditioning handicaps us when it comes to expressing our emotions. Since we don’t have the words, skills, or experience to express them, we fall back to the outlets we were allowed—jokes, sarcasm, anger, and suppression. Alcohol is emotional novacaine and talking to the guys about a problem after a few drinks is acceptable.
Talking to a woman, especially our wives, about our emotions is unacceptable. Not only is it unfamiliar territory, we’re afraid they will they will lose respect for us.
If we dare venture into sharing our emotions with our wives, it often feels like we’re trying to drink from a fire hose. We’re bombarded with questions we don’t know how to answer. We have to deal with emotions we’ve suppressed all our lives. We lack the vocabulary skills to choose words for nuances, which is an area where women excel.
Women don’t know how inept we are discussing emotional issues and become confused, insulted, and angry when we don’t know the answers, can’t express our feelings, or use the wrong words. Then we become angry and shut down because that’s what we’re good at. The lesson is reinforced: emotions are bad. A drink while we vent to the guys that women just don’t understand helps us cope, at least temporarily.
Thrust us into a horrific situation like the loss of a child and our greatest fear is realized: we failed to protect our family. We failed as fathers, husbands, and men. In our eyes, we’ve become the worst thing a man can be: a failure. A loser. We loathe ourselves.
Men’s minds are like TV sets, we can only tune to one channel at a time. Sometimes we use work or activities to temporarily block the pain. We may detest having to work, but we suppress the pain and drag ourselves to our jobs anyway because we can’t pay the bills or buy groceries with a death certificate.
We willingly and selflessly sacrifice ourselves on the job alter to ensure our family’s survival and so our wife can stay home and grieve. We herculean effort, we plod to work while dying a little each day. And the death is literal since stress in one of the major reasons why husbands die around 10 years younger than their wives.
While we’re heroically and silently dying, our wives want to know why we’re not grieving. “Don’t you love your child?” she asks. And we die a little again.
Even if we are confident the woman we love would still respect us if we shared our pain, the dam may break and humpty dumpty may never be put back together again. We can’t take that chance since our family’s survival depends on our ability to suppress pain.
Society accepts women crying. They can grieve and becomes a basket cases. If she’s fortunate, she doesn’t have to deal with work related stress while grieving for her child. Her support network is vastly superior to that of her husband’s, even if it is inadequate when dealing with a child’s death.
Women want to share emotions and be validated. That’s how they cope and bond. Women don’t want their problem to be solved; they want empathy and understanding, and they crave it from the men they love.
I don’t know if it’s genetics, conditioning, or both, but men are problem solvers. If someone they love hurts, they want to fix it. Our advice on fixing things reflects what we’ve been taught all our lives—confront it or ignore it.
It’s amazing the two sexes ever get together in the first place. Women are emotional creatures that long to share, be validated, and be understood. Men are conditioned to suppress emotions to survive. Women want to talk about the death of her child. A man can’t if he’s to ensure the survival of this family. Women consider men as distant and aloof. Men feel their heroic sacrifice is unnoticed and unappreciated.
But our marriages can survive if we realize that as individuals, we are only parts of a whole. Men and women compliment each other. One is not right and the other wrong; we’re just different. Each strength is appropriate at the right time and place. And each strength is a weakness at the wrong time and place.
An ancient myth says that the gods were jealous of humans so Zeus used thunderbolts to split us in two. Ever since, we’ve wandered the earth looking for our other half. When we finally find each other, reintegration is often painful. However, we’re much stronger together than we ever were apart.
George
********************
How Men Grieve
From the time we are born, men are told not to cry. I remember being terrified of getting a vaccination when I was a toddler because a previous one was excruciating. The doctor tried to shame me into submission by saying I should be wearing a dress. This was a medical professional to a scared 3-year-old boy.
In school, other guys razzed us if we cried or expressed compassion. Even if it was a sports injury, someone would mock us and question our gender if we didn’t manage to hold back the tears.
We’re told that women don’t respect weak men. We interpret that to mean women don’t respect men who cry, and we know women don’t love men they don’t respect. Trash talk, sarcasm, anger, suppression, and aggression are acceptable. Drinking alcohol is cool.
This cultural conditioning handicaps us when it comes to expressing our emotions. Since we don’t have the words, skills, or experience to express them, we fall back to the outlets we were allowed—jokes, sarcasm, anger, and suppression. Alcohol is emotional novacaine and talking to the guys about a problem after a few drinks is acceptable.
Talking to a woman, especially our wives, about our emotions is unacceptable. Not only is it unfamiliar territory, we’re afraid they will they will lose respect for us.
If we dare venture into sharing our emotions with our wives, it often feels like we’re trying to drink from a fire hose. We’re bombarded with questions we don’t know how to answer. We have to deal with emotions we’ve suppressed all our lives. We lack the vocabulary skills to choose words for nuances, which is an area where women excel.
Women don’t know how inept we are discussing emotional issues and become confused, insulted, and angry when we don’t know the answers, can’t express our feelings, or use the wrong words. Then we become angry and shut down because that’s what we’re good at. The lesson is reinforced: emotions are bad. A drink while we vent to the guys that women just don’t understand helps us cope, at least temporarily.
Thrust us into a horrific situation like the loss of a child and our greatest fear is realized: we failed to protect our family. We failed as fathers, husbands, and men. In our eyes, we’ve become the worst thing a man can be: a failure. A loser. We loathe ourselves.
Men’s minds are like TV sets, we can only tune to one channel at a time. Sometimes we use work or activities to temporarily block the pain. We may detest having to work, but we suppress the pain and drag ourselves to our jobs anyway because we can’t pay the bills or buy groceries with a death certificate.
We willingly and selflessly sacrifice ourselves on the job alter to ensure our family’s survival and so our wife can stay home and grieve. We herculean effort, we plod to work while dying a little each day. And the death is literal since stress in one of the major reasons why husbands die around 10 years younger than their wives.
While we’re heroically and silently dying, our wives want to know why we’re not grieving. “Don’t you love your child?” she asks. And we die a little again.
Even if we are confident the woman we love would still respect us if we shared our pain, the dam may break and humpty dumpty may never be put back together again. We can’t take that chance since our family’s survival depends on our ability to suppress pain.
Society accepts women crying. They can grieve and becomes a basket cases. If she’s fortunate, she doesn’t have to deal with work related stress while grieving for her child. Her support network is vastly superior to that of her husband’s, even if it is inadequate when dealing with a child’s death.
Women want to share emotions and be validated. That’s how they cope and bond. Women don’t want their problem to be solved; they want empathy and understanding, and they crave it from the men they love.
I don’t know if it’s genetics, conditioning, or both, but men are problem solvers. If someone they love hurts, they want to fix it. Our advice on fixing things reflects what we’ve been taught all our lives—confront it or ignore it.
It’s amazing the two sexes ever get together in the first place. Women are emotional creatures that long to share, be validated, and be understood. Men are conditioned to suppress emotions to survive. Women want to talk about the death of her child. A man can’t if he’s to ensure the survival of this family. Women consider men as distant and aloof. Men feel their heroic sacrifice is unnoticed and unappreciated.
But our marriages can survive if we realize that as individuals, we are only parts of a whole. Men and women compliment each other. One is not right and the other wrong; we’re just different. Each strength is appropriate at the right time and place. And each strength is a weakness at the wrong time and place.
An ancient myth says that the gods were jealous of humans so Zeus used thunderbolts to split us in two. Ever since, we’ve wandered the earth looking for our other half. When we finally find each other, reintegration is often painful. However, we’re much stronger together than we ever were apart.
George