Why Don’t Men Have More Emotional Support in Friendships?
Is it true that men have a harder time forming meaningful friendships than do women? Research suggests that societal expectations about masculinity can tamper with men’s ability to emotionally bond in their friendships.
From a young age, men and women experience vastly different social norms that govern the way their friendships begin and grow. These norms are primarily rooted in a difference of social acceptance of emotion. While females experience encouragement toward interpersonal relationships with close emotional bonds, males are more swayed towards developing group friendships with more surface-level interactions.
Women Are Taught That It’s Healthy to Express Emotion. Men, Not so Much.
Consider this: Women’s friendships with other women are based heavily on emotional support. If a woman feels she cannot lean on someone during times of hardship, that someone is not her friend. What defines close friendship for women is a connection in which emotions feel heard and problems are listened to.
In contrast, the bonding that is done in men’s friendships is typically through organized group settings with conversations about general subjects, with less emphasis on interpersonal closeness. It is often frowned upon to outwardly display what are perceived as “weak” emotions such as sadness or fear. As a result, men may find it difficult to lean on other men for emotional support or open up about their emotional problems.
Do you notice a common theme? In society’s eyes, women are “allowed” to express their emotions. They are taught that it’s okay to explore emotional connections, cry when they need to, and experience a wide range of emotions without any threat to their femininity. For men, these same actions are instead seen as a threat to their masculinity, regardless of the simple fact that all humans are emotional, and that repressing these emotions is not productive or good for mental or physical health.
These troubling societal differences make for a disparity in how tangible it is for men to seek out the emotional support and interpersonal bonds that every human needs.
How Friendships Without Emotional Support Affect Mental Health
Because men often find themselves in friendships that are transitory or shallow, their social interactions often lack the important component of emotional authenticity. While it’s not bad in and of itself to have a circle of casual friends to interact with on a more superficial level, if this is all you have, feelings of emptiness may manifest.
The Journal of the National Medical Association found that those with insufficient perceived social support were most likely to suffer from mental health disorders like anxiety and depression. The surface level, “risk-free” friendships men tend to find themselves in can lead to isolation. If a person has no one to turn to when going through events such as losing a job or the death of a loved one, it makes coping with these events far more difficult. Humans need emotional support in some capacity to healthily cope with challenging circumstances. Even toughing out the daily challenges of life on a more minimal scale can prove to be troublesome when you feel like you’re on your own.
Where Do Men Turn to for Emotional Support?
A study on gender differences in friendship patterns backs up the claims for emotional differences in friendships between genders. It was found that women preferred few, close, intimate same-sex friends, while men preferred numerous but less intimate same-sex friends. Additionally, men reported seeking therapeutic value in emotional support from their opposite-sex relationships, rather than from their same-sex friendships. This makes sense when we consider that women have not been socialized to fear emotionally intimate connections. Men are aware of this, and therefore, know that they can feel “safer” disclosing emotional problems to their female relationship partners without fear of judgment for behaving in a way that contradicts male social norms.
Men are less likely to feel hesitant or embarrassed to share their emotional needs and vulnerabilities with their female partners. Sometimes, this may be the only opportunity in which men feel comfortable and protected in opening up emotionally, and in a healthy way.
The closest men might get to exposing themselves emotionally to their male friends is when alcohol is involved, allowing them to lower their inhibitions. Displaying their emotions while drunk may take some of the accountability for appropriate social behavior off of men. However, if being under the influence is the only time you can let your true feelings out, this indicates that your emotions are being repressed, and this habit is not healthy nor ideal. In this instance, it’s almost as if emotional support among male friends is conditional and only considered halfway acceptable if done so in an altered state of mind.
How Can Men Improve Their Friendships?
Because this is primarily a societal issue that stems from expectations for masculinity, the solution lies primarily in society’s hands to shift towards better emotional acceptance for men. Experts recommend the following:
1. Acknowledge that this is an issue.
There is a need to collectively focus on undoing harmful belief systems that penalize men for being in touch with their emotions or showing any signs of vulnerability. Thomas Page McBee, author of Man Alive, says “I think we need to really face that and look at it culturally and see the damage it’s doing.”
2. Accept the desire for emotional intimacy and work to normalize it.
Humans are wired to connect, and that means making meaningful connections. No matter how socialized men are to repress emotions, we can’t fight the fact that all humans are emotional beings. Instead, if you’ve grown accustomed to brushing off tough emotions at the first sign of them, stop and think about what you’re experiencing. Try avoiding the mindset that if you can’t solve a problem, it’s not worth thinking about. Accepting and facing your emotions head-on helps you to better understand yourself and in turn, can lead to healthier mechanisms for managing your emotions.
3. Start modeling emotional vulnerability.
You can start with expressing emotions mildly in front of friends, for example, phrases like “I miss my parents,” or “I’m worried about what will happen tomorrow.” If you turn these expressions into something to be normalized, others may follow your lead. Raising children to be accepting of their emotions helps them healthily manage them, too. Research shows that one of the primary things that help children, boys in particular, grow up to have fulfilling friendships is to be close with an adult that was not afraid to express emotions.
Changing emotional acceptance on a societal level starts with changing our views of emotional expression at the individual level. Society needs to move past the stigma surrounding emotional vulnerability being seen as “feminine” or “gay” when in reality, emotions have no bearing on masculinity or femininity. Men are no less deserving of having close people in their lives that they can turn to and confide in. To have such an opportunity is immensely beneficial to our overall health and wellness.
