| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/20/2007 4:12:10 AM | | Usually if someone isn't expressing emotions to you, they've had bad experiences in the past due to expressing them, or, you haven't proven receptive maybe. Many boys get picked on for being emotional when young. This teaches us to stuff it. By the time we succeed at not being emotional and therefore picked on, is when we get picked on for not being emotional..... If I was emotional I would cry about it. | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/20/2007 4:22:52 AM | | woman do not like wimps, ……like a dude saying "you hurt my feeling" would make him hot? or "ya know, I am feeling sensitive today can we cuddle" ya , um NOPE!...no need to say it when you should be feeling it. The way I see it is body language says more than "discussing". A touch, a look, a gesture something….talking is over rated at times. | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/20/2007 6:21:00 AM |
I know that there have been threads related to this, but its so jumbled... so I decided to post again
I don't care what the cynics say about redundant threads! Their remarks are redundant! There is no prize for the first to point out redundancy!
I have read this entire thread and have learned so much from it. Thank you VampGoddess for daring to start something new and fresh, and a huge thank you to all who have posted here, and for your valuable insight. You DO make a difference.
Scarlett | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/20/2007 7:49:56 PM | cant speek for someone elce but here goes.
we feal vulnrable exposing all that soft underbelly stuff. if you know too much, it makes you dangerus to us. most guys have armor, and its because experience has told us we need it.
 | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/21/2007 5:21:06 AM | | ^^^^^ I can agree to a point on this one^^^^^ I have sisters, older at that...enough said...haha | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/21/2007 11:17:51 PM | A lot of good posts.
Myself, I tend to stay shut up, and when asked, say nothing. That being said, I reckon I am single for a reason. I was raised in a way that emotions did not normally come up, on any sort of basis, and as such, they get put on the back burner. Yes I drink, liston to music, video games, physical activities, drink.
I don't enjoy being asked about my emotions, I don't like talking about them. It is ackward. I don't even like the "L" word. I agree with the people who say they have tried and failed, or who were raised a certain way. It is the way a lot of boys/men are raised. | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/22/2007 2:21:14 AM |
Myself, I tend to stay shut up, and when asked, say nothing.
Forgot about that lol. He's also meaning that we learn to stay shut up for a reason.
If we retort and argue back it just makes us even more angry because women are determined to have the last word most of the time, even if it's resorting to childish name calling. So we learn.. "shut up and it wont be as bad as it could be". It just makes life a little easier for us to manage.
hopefully Uriel1984 agrees with me. If he meant something different i apologise lol | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/22/2007 2:37:19 AM | | Yes. Many of us have learned that any time we hear "We need to talk" from our girlfriends or wives that actually means, we need to shut up and listen. So we do. But then we hear "we need to talk" again, only then it's about how we don't open up. Damned if we do, damned if we don't. | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/22/2007 5:36:38 AM | One. Discussing emotions shows weakness and it's kind of ingrained in us not to show weakness as the weaker in the male kingdom don't get the woman.
Two. Men don’t need to discuss things or get there feeling out to solve them or understand them as women do.. we tend to focus on the problem in our minds and solve them internally. We will ask advice at times.
three. women talk and we don't want everyone else to know our emotions
four. you will bring it up in the next fight and hold it against us. LOL! | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/22/2007 7:24:15 PM | | If we open up to our buddies they see us as weak...If we open up to women they see us as insecure....Furthermore as men we are looking for solutions not sympathy....When I am struggling with something I generally either become very quiet and withdrawn till i figure out what i need to do or I act silly to lose track about what was bothering me. | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/22/2007 8:26:00 PM |
If you are the type to lock your emotions up and not talk about them why do you do this? Why do SOME men do this in general?
Because SOME women take any show of emotion as a sign of weakness and dump the man the second he shows any. | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/24/2007 11:34:40 AM | It has been my experience that when women say they want a man to show his emotions, what they really mean is, “Show me ‘good’ emotions.” Emotions cannot be categorized as good and bad. Also women refuse to tell a man what they consider ‘good’ emotions. Dangerous predicament.
Discover the real value of emotions and you will discover the question is not valid. | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/24/2007 12:54:57 PM | Ever hear the sayings "boys don't cry", "Men don't cry", "A man shouldn't show how he feels cause that makes him weak", "that guy over there must be gay because he is too emotional", or how about, "Dude get so mushy with your g/f in public like that, the other guys will think your hen picked."
Negative remarks stick with kids throught out their years.
Men aren't lead by their emotions like women. They are the hardened ones in the relationship. Men are the shoulder women lay thier heds on, not the other way around.
Mothers do this to their sons, Fathers do this to their sons, Friends to this to their friends. Its an old tradition started years ago to get men to harden themselves against a world of disappointments.
Then men meet woman and it gets worse. A man finally gets ready to open up and put aside all the bad teachings he was taught only to be slapped in the Pride by the woman. Do you know how hard it is to be on bended knees before a woman crying cause she is about to leave you. Only to later learn the reason she pulled the stunt was because she had been sleeping with other men and wanted to leave you so she wouldn't have to face the guilt of her own wrong doing. Yet she never once told the truth as to why she was leaving. Instead she turned it around and blamed it on you.
So now your more bottled up due to giving your love to the wrong women. And each year this gets worse as more and more relationships are torn apart due to adults not being able to be faithful.
Yet the woman is taught to show their emotions. They learn early on that they can hurt men by expression certain emotions so use it as a weapon to do just that. An attempt of deceiption to get what they want from the man. Its a kind of lie. Men start learning these things and once more they fear sharing emotions.
So when you find a man that has this problem. You should ask yourself what you are doing to make his problem worse. Or what can you do to help him open up and release that which he has bottled up inside.
This is why some men lock up their emotions. Bad relationships hurt them, they parents and peers gave them bad information, or other bad experiences.
Take it from a man who used to be totally defensive about sharing his emotions. I went thru all the knocks. In my eyes most women don't deserve to share what I feel.
Good luck | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/24/2007 1:11:08 PM | I have to ask the OP, what kind of emotions are you wanting men to show? Most of us are happy all the time, sometimes we laugh and think things are funny. If we love you we will probably tell you and make love, have sex with you. Most of us will buy you things to show it. So my question to the OP is, if any other emotions need to be expressed, my guess is that she wants to see negative emotions, why would you want to see that? It has been my experiance that women want men to show negative emotions to confirm the postive ones, and for most of us, it doesn't work that way.
In other words women like to see drama, men do not. We have a tendancy towards holding on to negative aspects while women can swing back and forth like apes in trees. If you force a guy to show negative emotions chances are you have started something you will wish you hadn't.
My advice, keep your man happy and don't cause drama. Don't worry, Be happy!! | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/24/2007 1:25:36 PM | | Personally I like discussing my emotions with a lady,not all the time but communication is very important,as it being a rule of thumb all guys are diffrent.One reason I broke up with my ex girlfriend of 3 yrs is no matter how I tried she wouldnt express a lot of the times when I could tell she was upset,then I caught her cheating so o h well live and learn. | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/24/2007 1:39:28 PM | | tattoo_lurch - I think you nailed it on the head. Clarified it a bit, and yeah. I think they got their answer by now, great posts all around. | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/26/2007 5:16:19 PM | Vampy, I think you have gotten a lot of excellently honest answers here on one level but I want to answer this question another way and maybe bounce your understanding to to the next level of the inner male psyche.
But why is it a "rule of thumb" what is about men that doesn't let them talk about their emotions????
I will say we do "talk about our emotions" only it is not in the way that you girls/women recognize it. We do it backwards and sort of through backwards macho-looking hints and basic comraderie type stuff. Other guys generally know our meaning just like other women generally know another woman's meaning when she says stuff us guys would usually be clueless about.
Often we heavily insult the fellow male who is our closest friend, that in a very backwards way lets him know how we 'feel' through this male encoded way of communication. Women hate it. They do not see the inherent value in it. The value is that the male still gets an emotional point across without opening up to seeming like what society deems as a weak male who talks about his emotions. Get it? Am I making myself clear enough that you can imagine examples and see what I mean?
It's nothing more than another form of two brothers giving each other headlocks only it has progressed to words.
We do communicate, usually pretty well, too, its just not what YOU think of as worthwhile communication. It IS encoded in there. In fact the insults and attacks are often the highest of praise. The more disrespectful the more respect we actually mean/intend.
If you think I am kidding I should post you the start of my PM to the male forum poster here I respect and like the most. I had to be a little clever to bypass the first time mail swear word filter and this Private Message if I sent it to you, well, it would probably leave you feeling like dirt! But we IMed today and traded email addresses. Typical guy stuff and he knew that despite living in another part of the country.
We developed this genius code just to keep you women out. In fact I don't even know why I am helping you. Maybe I am not at all. ;-)
If you think I am lying then why does one fellow black guy always calling another fellow black guy by that white unmentionable word? Think about it! | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/26/2007 5:22:50 PM | A guy has a lot to live up to. Personally, I love disclosing my feelings and communicating my ideas. However, as a man I have a reputation to live up to. I have to be a 'man,' I have to be 'secure' and I have to also be 'sensitive.' This can be quite confusing. Also, sometimes there are just things you shouldn't be talking to people about. For example, 2 people out on a first date: the girl, "my X this, my X that, and I just feel so XYZ" at that moment the guy is thinking, "shut the F up about your X! I don't want to hear about it, I'm here with you now! "
But if the man discloses his emotions he is seen as insensitive and a jerk. So either way, he is out of luck.
I don't think it's the men that have to work on their ability to deal with emotions, I think it is the women who have to deal with their emotions. | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/26/2007 6:24:43 PM | It's not necessarily that I don;t like to share my emotions, it's just I am far less emotional than the average woman. It's really annoying too when you're fine, just tired or bored or whatever and the woman keeps saying "what's wrong? why wont you tell me? You bottle everything thing up" etc. then When I get testy it just makes her think even more that somethings wrong when in reality I'm just tired of hearing the same questions over and over.
I think men generally let things roll off their backs more than women and don't get as emotional, but if something is truly bothering me or w.e I'd share it with my SO. | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/26/2007 9:42:46 PM | | I believe a lot of men would be more open to discussing their feelings if women didn't do one of two things: 1) require him to KEEP discussing and analyzing an issue long after he's spoken his peace or 2) require him to talk about his feelings too often. It's tempting for us women to want to get into lengthy discussions about emotions because that's how we process what we are feeling. We talk at length to our girlfriends and we naturally believe men should do the same with us. But men are different, and even a fraction of what we thrive on is overkill for them. | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/27/2007 12:01:37 AM | I will gladly listen to a woman talk about her emotions, but if it is something that takes more than a few months to resolve your better off with a therapist. For several reasons:
1) I may not be there in a month, I do not want to have unfinished business, I finish my 'projects'
2) I do not want to "Talk" Emotions. I am an engineer, I will fix it, if I can't I will send it to someone who can.
3) I am not a professional, I would rather spend thousands on therapy, than have the woman I love upset for years
I care but I am practical, I treat people how I want to be treated so, I'll complain if I want help brainstorming how to fix something. If it is my problem, it is mine and I will carry it alone. Luckily all my baggage is carry on (lightweight, not I carry all my baggage). | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/27/2007 6:30:14 AM |
But men are different, and even a fraction of what we thrive on is overkill for them.
I think that's an important point to note. While I don't think general statements apply very well to individuals, there is an overall sexual difference that occurs - for various reasons (cultural, upbringing, biochemistry....etc)
I've given this example a few times here, and I'll repeat it again because it applies to this thread.
Take a man and a woman who have the exact same job, and who have had a bad day at the office. They come back home, and their significant other notices something seems wrong and asks " How was your day ? "
The man might reply (typically) "Oh ....terrible, ....I got into a fight with that %$$^ boss of mine. " Most times, except for perhaps some minor details, that's the extent of the discussion.
Now ask the same question to the woman (again, doesn't apply to ALL women)....
"Oh...I got up this morning really early, had a coffee, sent off some e-mails.......
About ten minutes later, they get to the " I got into a fight with that $%$%$% boss of mine" part. That's just the start, and you may typically get a lot of associated details that a man might never even imagine including. That's simply because of the way both sexes view the world.
The man is focusing on the argument, and how much of an $%$$^$ his boss really is. The woman is placing it into a context of "How her day went...."
The man, typically, will just want to leave it at that, and resolve it on his own.
Same thing with a man and a woman who have just gotten divorced. The way they interact with their friends will be totally different .
The man's friends will say " Great ! Should have dropped her a long time ago. Hey, LOOK at that waitress !!!! See the game last night ? "
The women will console their friend, and share experiences they have had, and ask questions. The entire focus will be on sharing the emotional pain and externalizing it.
For most men, that's like being waterboarded ....  | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/27/2007 6:51:22 AM | I agree with the concept men have of discussing emotional stuff. If all is well, then there's nothing to talk about. The only reason there should be any type of emotional discussion is if there's a problem, and it needs to be discussed at the right time and fixed productively and quickly without a lot of drama. Then it needn't be discussed again.
You can have emotions and acknowledge them internally without endlessly discussing them...and not talking about every emotion you have every minute you have them isn't a bad thing. | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/27/2007 6:55:38 AM | its the tv stereotypes from the past giving this impression aswell though.
i mean..did you ever hear john wayne saying :
" i just cant cope with these native americans right now...i need some time alone" | |
|
| Men and emotions... curious
Posted: 3/27/2007 8:57:14 AM | I think a lot of men have what I would call the "quarterback complex." You can't let your team know that you're worried or scared or sad or whatever, you have to be as dependable and solid as a rock. People can develop confidence in you through your actions, but showing emotional stability also gives people confidence not only in you, but it helps them maintain as well. I don't discuss my emotions a whole lot, but every now and then I'll let out to my girlfriend because I am a very emotional person. I just know that showing that emotion is not always the best idea, it's not always productive, and sometimes it's the worst idea and counterproductive. Whining, crying, moping, etc. doesn't get anything done quicker and may bring down those around you thus accomplishing a task slower.
So perhaps that's the idea of keeping emotions "bottled up." When you start to crack under the pressure, your emotion starts to pour out of the cracks. Subsequently people lose faith in you, and you explode. Literally. | |
|
Home
login 
