But more often than not, it results in a weighty expectation to “be strong”, despite the growing narrative in mental health spaces that it’s okay for men to cry.
“Sometimes women put pressure on us to be emotional. They want to see us cry, to be vulnerable … but how can I do these things that you say I should do?” said Toh, articulating a common internal monologue among men.
“I don’t have the chance to. I don’t have the permission to. If I stop, if I give up, if I take a break, everything crashes around me.”
TheBrotherBu’s Tan has had similar conversations with “100 per cent” of his clients so far. For years, many would go out of their way to schedule countless work meetings in a week, while reserving the whole weekend for their family. But what they consistently left out was time for themselves.
The result is a build-up of “unnecessarily aggressive” self-talk and a deeply ingrained habit of emotional suppression, especially within relationships. And when those bottled-up feelings finally surface, the process is rarely smooth.
“A guy might think: I want to talk but I don’t know what to say. I have to connect the feelings to the words. It’s very difficult. Then you have your partner who’s so ready to talk and you feel overwhelmed,” said Tan.
“Or, your partner, because they’ve also been waiting to connect, they have frustrations. So they open up. Then you open up the floodgates. You get overwhelmed. It sometimes feels like being slammed down.”
But it’s not as though men don’t know the importance of sharing their feelings. They have simply been taught to “just not deal with it, be strong about it, brush it off, not cry”, Tan added.
“So what’s a typical thing that a guy would do? I’ll hold it until I just cannot take it. Then when I see (my wife) and something small happens, I have a blowup or a meltdown or something.
“And then now, for the first time in a decade of being with this person, she sees her husband cry.”
A “UNIQUE NEED” FOR MEN TO SUPPORT MEN
As such, male spaces serve as a practice ground of sorts for men to hone their listening and communication skills, helping them build their own “psychologically safe environment” beyond these groups.
“To practise with your female friends or female partner, many times it feels like they might not understand, or they might try to tell me how to do it and guide me through,” said Tan.
