A Man’s Guide To Feeling Your Feelings - Connor Beaton - #890

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Why do men have a bad reputation with emotions, do you think?

**Connor Beaton** (0:04)
Oh man. I mean, I think that we, I think that generally we feel emotions pretty intensely. And so when our emotions let loose, sometimes it's, it cannot be pretty. It can be loud, it can be big, it can be intense. And so I think sometimes men have a bad rap because of that. I think that there's been a few generations of men that have been told not to feel that their best emotional tool is suppression, is repression, is just like stuff it down, pour some whiskey over top, light some weed up and just keep soldiering on, right? Stiff upper lip, as I think they say in your country. And so I think we've gone through a few generations of men who used avoidance as their main tool with emotions. And because of that, cut themselves off from some pretty important data and information. And so a lot of men have just, you know, older generations haven't been able to speak the language of emotions, of what they're feeling, of what they're going through. But I think having worked with men for over a decade, you know, tens of thousands of men from around the world, men feel very deeply. Yeah, I think it's not that men don't feel, I think it's that men feel very deeply. And we've in some cultures created a vacuum of being able to teach men what to do with their emotions, how to actually traverse through their emotions. So I think those are parts of it. I'm curious what your thought is on that though as well, because even you talked to a lot of people in this space.

**Chris Williamson** (1:40)
Yeah, I think you're right. We don't exactly have fantastic emotional role models as men.

**Connor Beaton** (1:47)
You mean Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin are the role models of emotional acuity?

**Chris Williamson** (1:53)
Exactly. Who's the guy that used to be like, and then would hit his wife, like pretend to hit his wife on some sitcom? Who is that American guy? I'm not from this country.

**Connor Beaton** (2:02)
I think that's before my time.

**Chris Williamson** (2:04)
It very well may be. It was the 50s. It was a different time. The hands were softer.
I think the role model of the kind of bumbling, unfeeling, largely useless, semi-useless, kind of dedicated but emotionally out of touch man, I think that's got a lot to play into it. I think as well, it doesn't speak to many of the ways that men like to think about being masculine. I think one of the most common contributing factors when you ask somebody, what is a masculine man, would be mastery over their emotions or kind of a reliable and controlled emotional state, some version of that. And feeling feelings seems kind of at odds with that. So it's not particularly well portrayed archetypally in the culture. I don't think it is a particularly proud thing, either internally or rewarded externally by society. For all that the world says, we need men to open up more and talk about their emotions. Because no one has any fucking idea how to deal with a man that's going through a very intense set of emotions because they're either very aggressive or, even worse than that, very soppy. And you go, I have no, most of the time, people have no idea how to deal with that. It's scary. And then if you try to do that and you see as you're unable to regulate somebody else disgusted at your lack of regulation, you think, okay, I'm never doing that again. So, yeah, maybe some more elements there.

**Connor Beaton** (3:46)
Yeah, I mean, I think a good way to put it is, men are not incentivized to open up emotionally for a number of different reasons, right? I think oftentimes, I mean, I get comments on my YouTube videos all the time, stories from men who did open up to a past partner, to a girlfriend, to a wife, and, you know, were left shortly thereafter.
Guys being ridiculed, whether it's in the locker room from the men or being ridiculed by a woman, who then loses attraction or says that she doesn't like the way that he brought it forward. So men just aren't generally incentivized to be emotionally expressive. Men are rewarded for being emotionally intelligent in the sense that they hold their shit together, that you're able to weather through really intense emotional situations. The correct. But the way that most men get there is maybe not the best for their mental and physical well-being.

**Chris Williamson** (4:53)