Guest Post: A Word on Men and Emotions

MAX-LOGIC

In the ongoing battle of the sexes, there is one area where women (mistakenly) believe we have men beat – feelings. We have more of them and we are champions at talking about them and letting them dictate our every action. Score one for Team Woman.

But as a traitor to my gender rational woman, I can’t help but wonder whether this is, in fact a victory. We ladies take pride in the fact that we have feelings and men don’t – except about food, sex, and sports – but I think we may be a little off the mark. See it’s not that men don’t have feelings, or even that they have less feelings than we do. It’s simply that men have a different way of dealing with their feelings. While women believe their feelings should occupy a place of prominence in their lives, with men it seems dealing with feelings comes down to three things – compartmentalization, aggregation, and complete shut-down.

Women believe that it’s healthy to express and examine our every emotion. If we’re feeling something, we have a biological imperative to allow it to course over us, regardless of the detrimental or embarrassing effect these unleashed feelings may have on our lives. Men, not so much. They tend to believe there is a time and a place for their feelings – later and in the back of their minds. This is why you never see sane men crying on the subway or in the bathroom at work.

While women understand and can articulate the difference between bliss, contentment, and elation and are known to say things like “I’m not mad, I’m irked/outraged/furious”, with men pretty much every feeling they have is aggregated up to happy or angry. This is why a man will have the same reaction when the Raptors win the NBA Championship (I’m dreaming here) as they do when they witness the birth of their first child. Perhaps on some level they understand that these are very different circumstances that should warrant different reactions, but men pretty much only run on two tracks. If they’re not happy or mad, they’re neutral. Or completely shut down.

Complete shut-down is what happens when a man is worried that admitting to what he’s feeling will make him less of a man. Whereas compartmentalization is basically “I’m pissed but I can’t deal with this right now”, shut-down is more like ”I will never, even under pain of death or castration, admit to being affected by your actions”. While compartmentalization tends to come out after an argument, complete shut-down rears its head at breakup time. Or “I slept with your best friend” time. This is both a coping mechanism and a serious player tactic because it has the added benefit of making the woman work extra-hard to get a reaction out of him.

So what does this mean for the gals out there that are stupid enough to be in relationships? Well, a couple things. First – lose the idea that you are the only one that has feelings or that your insistence on letting said feelings spill all over everything makes you a superior human being. While compartmentalization may seem like an abhorrent way of life to you, there is something to be said for having the ability to put our feelings in a bubble and think coherently. As for aggregation, well that’s just weird. It doesn’t make much sense that men act like they’re angry when they’re really sad or hurt. But this is where your powers of detection can be useful – you can get all Deputy Dog on him and try to sniff out what exactly is bothering him. As for complete shut-down, my advice to you is to leave that alone. The more you push him to talk to you, the more he’ll dig his heels in. So just flit around on your merry way like you haven’t a care in the world.

At the end of the day I have to say I think we women could stand to learn something from how men deal with their feelings. Just as men could probably take a page out of our books – that shut-down thing is so not hot. But I guess it wouldn’t be much of a battle of the sexes if we were all using the same weapons, would it?

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