The Myth Of Male Vulnerability

All right, men, welcome back to the mantalk Show. I'm Connor Beaton, and today, as I'm moving around my microphone, we're gonna be talking about the myth of male vulnerability. Should you, as a man, be more vulnerable? And this is from my book, Men's Work, which is out on January 23rd. You can pre order it right now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all the. All the major bookstores. But in it, I talk about this notion that there's this sort of conundrum that men are being put in within our modern culture. And this conundrum is that when we look at how men are struggling, and, you know, you see this all the time in the news, men are struggling, men are in decline, men are suffering. Where have all the good men gone? All this kind of stuff, which is true in some regards, right? We can sort of see that men are suffering and struggling. The solution that's being presented to men that I've seen oftentimes from. From women, from the mainstream narratives is often men just need to be more vulnerable, right? Men just need to open up more and express their emotions more. But there's a real challenge and conundrum that comes along with simply opening up and being more vulnerable. And there's a real risk for you as a man to open up and be more vulnerable, which I think we're all aware of. You know, Brene Brown talked about this in her research that we put men in a very interesting bind where we tell them that they need to open up. But. But when men do open up, they are often shamed or rejected or abandoned, or people just don't generally know how to receive a man's emotional vulnerability. And you can see this in a very clear example in somebody like Jordan Peterson, right here is a man who, you know, love him or hate him or whatever your perspective is on him. Here's a man who communicates his thoughts and his ideas in a very open, clear, and an almost vulnerable way, a very raw, emotional way where he's talking about how young men are struggling or suffering, and he gets emotional about it. He actually allows himself, whether maybe he doesn't allow himself, maybe it just comes out, but he emotes what he's actually feeling about that topic, about that subject. And sometimes he's heated and sometimes he's assertive or. Or, you know, more direct, and other times he's more emotional. And he. You can really see that he cares about it when this happens. What's interesting is that the same people that are telling you as a man to Open up. The same people that are telling you as a man to be more vulnerable are the first ones to jump in and shame the crap out of him, right? To say, like, oh, Jordan Peterson crying over insult. Jordan Peterson's crying over this again. And blah, blah, blah. He's so emotionally unstable. And so, you know, I think we as men sit back within our culture, and we can see there's a great risk for us actually sharing our vulnerabilities, actually opening up and talking about our emotions. And I think there's a great example of this. One of my favorite writers and poets, Charles Bukowski, wrote a poem called Bluebird. And in the poem, he's talking about this bluebird that he has caged up inside of himself. And the bluebird sort of represents this pure, emotional, vulnerable, soft part of him that he feels conflicted by, that he wants to let out into the world, that he wants to let free, but he's terrified. So I'm just going to read you a couple lines because I think this is very applicable. He said, there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out, but I'm too tough for him. I say, stay in there. I'm not going to let anybody see you. There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out. But I pour whiskey on him and inhale cigarette smoke. And the. And the bartenders and the grocery store clerks never know that he's in there. So you can kind of hear this conundrum, right? There's this bluebird. It's this emotional part of him. It wants to get out. It wants to be free. But he douses it in whiskey, right? He pushes cigarette smoke onto it. He hides it from the people around him. And if you read the poem and go on to read the rest of it, he actually talks about how there's this deep fear that other people will reject him socially if they were to know that this part exists and that he only lets this part out at night and that he's worried that if he released this part of him, it would screw up his whole life. And I think that as men, this is the challenge that many of us feel. You know, the truth that. That we walk around with is that internally there's a part of us that we are connected to that does feel very vulnerable, that is this beautiful, wonderfully rich, vulnerable part of ourselves that sort of embodies the feminine nature within us as men. And we're terrified to let it out because we know that there's a risk we've seen what happens when other men let that part of them out. And we know what happens when we, in a sort of unbridled way, let that part out in a relationship. I mean, how many men are out there who have been vulnerable, have opened up within their relationships only to be left, you know, only to have their partner break up with them? Only to have their partner say, oh, you're. You're too needy or you're too emotional, or, I can't deal with this, or this isn't what I'm looking for. And so I think we know the risk in being more vulnerable. And so I think the myth of vulnerability to just sort of tie this all back up and wrap this up is that the notion that the solution to all your problems as a man is to simply be more vulnerable. It's false. It's just false. Now, is there merit in you expressing where you're struggling as a man to people in your life that deeply care about you, people in your life that can receive it, who also share their vulnerabilities with you, you know, who let you see the bluebird inside of them? And that you can show that part of you to certain people in your life? That part, I think, is absolutely necessary. You know, and I've seen that in my own life, with the men in my own life, where they bring their struggles and their challenges, whether it's, you know, a health issue that they're battling with, you know, going through cancer, trying to lose 60 pounds, you know, and cut weight, trying to eat healthier and stop bingeing, you know, trying to quit porn, struggles in their marriages, struggles in their finances. Sharing those parts of themselves when they're really struggling has a deep amount of value, because then we can contribute to. To each other's lives. And I can say, oh, I. I now know all of you. I don't just know what you like and what you're good at, but I actually know this part of you that I know is really freaking hard for you to share with me as a man. And I think that that's what builds the foundational core of a relationship between us as men, that we find men that we can expose this part of us to. To them, and they can expose this part of themselves to us. And in doing so, we can act as brothers. We can have one of those back. We can support each other through whatever it is that we're going through in life. And it doesn't mean that you can't bring some of these things to your wife or your partner. It doesn't mean that at all. You know, I think being able to share some of these things, sometimes if you know that you have that type of relationship with your partner and you trust them and you respect them and they trust you and respect you, then that can be deeply meaningful and create a lot of connection. But I think the notion that this should be our way of being is often not the case. Because for some of us, we have this bluebird as the front and center part of our personality, right? There are men out there who have made more most of their identity, this very emotional, very vulnerable part. And so they are trying to connect with everybody in the world from this very emotional, vulnerable place without having any kind of boundaries, structure, or protection around this part. And I think that's the important element is that in order to build a relationship with this vulnerable aspect of ourselves, we have to be willing to protect it, we have to be willing to provide it, but we also have to be willing to share it with other people. Because the truth about something like grief, which all of us will experience at some point in our life, deep, deep grief, is that grief cannot be healed unless it's shared. Grief cannot be healed unless it's shared. And so we have to be willing to have other people witness the grief that we've experienced from the divorce, from the loss of a child, from the loss of a parent, from getting fired from our job, from having our business collapse, struggling with our health, our, you know, our mental health, whatever it is. There's merit in doing that, but it also needs to be tempered. It can't just run rampant in our lives. So let me know what you think. Definitely. Check out the poem by Charles Bukowski, bluebird. And I would love to hear your thoughts on the myth of male vulnerability, where you stand on it, how you see it playing out, and just some other examples where you've maybe seen it play out in your own life. So thank you so much, and don't forget to share this manic ford with somebody in your life that you know would enjoy this conversation. Until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.