Emotional disconnection in boys (and men)

A New York Times article that dropped in mid-August (“Boy Crisis of 2025, Meet the ‘Boy Problem’ of the 1900s”)  found me nodding vigorously at my phone.

Which might be considered weird, as I am a white woman who has never been a boy. I have no idea what it is like to be a boy.

But I have long been sympathetic to the cause. 

In graduate school, I recall one of my professors asking an entire class of all women if we identified as feminist. I said no, although I certainly do think that women deserve equal pay, don’t deserve to be assaulted or harassed, and that women are capable of running big companies. I also believe firmly that being emotional (a trait often attributed to women) or being a mother are not deal-breakers for career success.

I also get that many men can walk down a street at night without fear of getting jumped, or walk down a street without fear of getting harassed. I get that there are some inherent privileges that can come with being male.

However, that day we talked about feminism in graduate school, I was squarely focused on the downsides. I think I said that I felt bad for boys and men. I recall my female classmates looking at me kinda like I’d grown another head, or that I was betraying all female-kind.

But I’m an emotion researcher, and you know who really gets screwed over in the emotional realm? Men (and boys).

Men tend to have fewer close friends that they feel comfortable sharing their feelings with. When heterosexual men get divorced, they struggle a lot more than women in large part because men put all their emotional eggs in their wife’s basket (note: likely to the detriment of both parties).

Based on the norms of Western modern society, men are “allowed” to express and feel anger, but that’s problematic because we normalize violence and aggression—which is actually not normative at all. Men who cry or show anxiety are called “pussies” or “wimps.” Men are told, often implicitly, that they must be “strong” which is code for stoic, unemotional, and rock-like.

(Rock-like, not The Rock (Dwayne Johnson), who actually talks openly about the importance of men showing emotions and his own experiences with depression.)

I feel empathy for men. Men who have feelings but don’t know who to share them with. Straight men’s friendships tend to revolve around sports or maybe talking about women, neither of which lead to deep emotional conversations. Men are not taught how to identify or describe their own emotions. The inability to recognize or describe emotions is called alexithymia, and some people think that it’s entirely normal for men to be alexithymic.

Basically they are saying that it is NORMAL FOR MEN TO NOT KNOW HOW TO PROCESS THEIR FEELINGS. That shouldn’t be normal!!!!

So I feel empathy for men.

In fact, my firstborn kid is male, and I burst into tears when I was pregnant and I found out he had XY chromosomes. I feared he would grow up to be a rapist, or an unemotional douchebag fratboy (note: no offense to people in frats who are not rapists, unemotional, or douchebags. I clearly have some stereotypes to work through).

I spent most of my pregnancy trying to deal with the fact that I had to co-raise a boy. I was also scared that I would inadvertently play into the stereotypes. That I would teach my kid that he shouldn’t cry or show feelings, that he’d grow up alexithymic and struggle with empathy. That he’d be lonely.

My kid is only 11, so it’s still an open question whether or not he’ll grow up to be a douchebag, or whether he’ll grow up to be lonely. (I am quite certain that he won’t grow up to be unemotional, as he has big feelings he has long been encouraged to share. And I promise I adore him and have worked through my own shit.)

My empathy for men has persisted.

I have worked with several straight male clients who have not had anyone to talk to about their feelings besides—at least in some cases—their partners. But when there are conflicts in the relationship then they are left with…..no one. They come to therapy to process their feelings, their stressors, their insecurities, because they were not taught how to share those with their friends, and the normative expectation of “dealing with stuff on your own” doesn’t work without actual tips for how to deal with stuff on your own.

The solutions described in the New York Times article are big societal-level solutions or programs, which I’m all for. Bring on the mentoring. Bring on the social service programs. Bring on the structure that helps men find connection.

But also….let’s encourage boys and men to read more fiction, where they have to see the world through someone else’s eyes. Or interestingly, have boys practice reading facial expressions from the eyes alone—which men are worse at than women. Let’s start asking men how they are doing and actually listen to the answers instead of calling them “pussies” if they show some vulnerability.

There has been movement in allowing more emotional bandwidth for men.

Male celebrities are more open about therapy and their own emotional insecurities than ever before. There are dozens of articles (many of which I’ve linked to here) talking about how important it is for men to learn to access, process, experience, and express their feelings.

But there is still a long way to go.

In the meantime, I’ve still got a lot of empathy for men.