Men Aren't Taught to Feel. We're Taught to Be Useful.

Society has, over time, convinced men that we're only valuable when we're useful.

If he's broke, he's worthless.

If he cries, he's weak.

If he needs reassurance, he's insecure.

If he sets a boundary, he's controlling.

If he struggles mentally, he's told to man up.

If we dig into that list a little deeper, we can discover that it's one rule written five different ways. He's allowed to exist as long as he doesn't cost anybody anything. Produce. Cope. Don't ask. Don't flinch. Don't need. And for God's sake, don't feel.

As we've moved from the binary to the nuanced, these standards have become more problematic and increasingly dangerous, for men of a certain age (hi).

Here's a version based on my interpretation of modern-masculinity; a masculinity built on strength of character, owned vulnerability, self awareness, kindness and self-trust ;

He's broke? He was trying to provide.

He cries? He was feeling something deeply.

He needs reassurance? He was trusting you with it.

He sets a boundary? He was protecting something worth keeping.

He struggles mentally? He was telling the truth.

So five good instincts then. Five character references, all of them turned into evidence against him.

We made being useful the price of being liked.

What we actually ask for

This usually turns into an argument about whose fault it is. Let's not have that.

It isn't a conspiracy. It isn't women. It isn't blokes being soft. It's a set of expectations nobody has updated for decades, and everybody still enforces. We men enforce it hardest. We do it to each other and call it banter.

Look at the brief.

Provide, in an economy that stopped cooperating. The instruction is sprayed on every wall, despite the push for equality. The conditions for following it, long vanished. A man can do everything right and still come up short. He'll read that as a character failure. It's 2 + 2 = 5.

Be strong. Sounds like a virtue but means fuck all. Strong, in practice, means not needing. Not help. Not a good word. Not a night off. Not anyone. Then we wonder why he won't say what the problem is.

Be the rock.  A rock doesn't have a bad day. You can't have a conversation with a rock. "I wish you'd open up more..."

Want things, but only the right things. Ambition is fine. Greed isn't. Wanting sex is fine. Needing a cuddle, embarrassing. Wanting a different life is fine, unless the people around him liked the one that was already working.

Hold everything, control nothing. He's responsible for the mood of the house, the money, the safety, and the opinion everybody holds of him. The one thing he can't say is that he's struggling under the weight of it all. Make it make sense.

Add it up and you get an impossible brief. Be vulnerable, don't be a burden. Be ambitious, don't be absent. Be open, don't make it a thing.

And please don't fuck this up man... there's a male loneliness epidemic out there don't you know...

My 'fine'

I can’t write about men as a category and leave myself out of it.

I had routine panic attacks for more than a decade, most of it while I was on national television. From the outside, I was doing brilliantly. I told absolutely nobody.

I wasn’t ashamed. That would have required some self-awareness. It was the expectation.

Now, I’m not the finest actor. Far from it. But when I tell you the character I played for my long-suffering wife, my colleagues, my family and my friends was BAFTA-worthy, I mean it. Fully rounded. Deep, complicated backstory. I even nailed the physicality.

“How do you remember all those lines, darling?”

I played a character on telly who cried for a living. I couldn’t cry in my own kitchen. The irony was not lost on me.

Then one day I was sat in the car outside my own house, engine off, for an hour. Trying to remember how to perform the version of me my wife had come to expect, and the wheels fell off (me, not the car).

What it costs

We stop knowing what we want. Ask a man what he'd like and he'll stumble towards the answer that keeps everyone else feeling comfortable. Ask what he actually wants and you're more likely to get static. Performing having your shit together for any period of time, comes at a cost. That cost is clarity of thought, and ambition. Four years ago I couldn't have told you what I wanted, because it had been so long since I'd allowed myself to consider my own future, I genuinely had no idea.

We get brilliant at looking fine. We just quote a status. "Yeah, not bad." I know men who are loved by a full room, but privately struggling.

We get blamed for the thing we were trained to do. Then, after years of this, everyone complains that he never opens up. He's closed off. He's emotionally unavailable. Of course he is. We taught him to be that way.

Before anyone reaches for the usual argument; yes, men have held the pen for most of history. And yes, a lot of it was truly ugly. We can't rewrite that. Both things can be true. Men have had it easy for a long time. And plenty of men are struggling right now. Expecting him to just crack on, because others had it worse is the exact instruction we're trying to get him out of.

Where this ends

You can’t win this one by playing by the 'rules'. Nobody can.

A man shouldn’t have to earn his worth. He was worth loving before he was worth anything to anyone. Before the job. Before the mortgage. Before fatherhood. Before anyone needed anything from him.

We were never told.

So tell him. Or tell yourself, if nobody else will. Or I'll tell you. Find one or two mates who’ll say it back to you. And keep saying it until it sticks.

He was never worthless because he was broke.
He was never weak because he cried.
He was never insecure for needing a good word, or controlling for holding a line, or a nuisance for falling apart.

He was just a man having a hard time.

Protocol

• Say the sentence. "I'm not doing great." Out loud. To one man you'd call a friend. Not a therapist. Not a comment section. Not a partner who'll only worry. One man. It'll lighten your load and give him permission to do the same.
• Ask better questions. "What do you do?" is the whole rule in five words. It's also the first thing out of our mouths in every room. Ask what he's building. What he's passionate about right now. Ask what's on this week he's dreading. Anything that isn't a valuation.
• Let the banter lose once. When a mate shows you something real and the room laughs, the room learns what's allowed. No speech needed. Don't add your laugh. Go to him afterwards.
• Keep one promise small enough to survive your worst day. Not a morning routine. Not a cold plunge. One thing, kept on a day you didn't fancy it. That's how a man gets his own word back.

Take care

-James x