Reactions and Compensations

How do men react when their wives encourage—or require—them to share their feelings?

“She knows—or ought to know—how I feel. I really don’t need to tell her, do I?”

“I’m just not sure how she will handle what I say. Yes, she likes to listen to the nice, positive, loving things. But when we discuss controversial subjects, she either gets upset, defensive, wants to know why I feel that way, talks about it forever or all of the above.”

“I don’t like responding to her question, ‘Is that what you really mean?’ or her comment, ‘That doesn’t make sense to me.’”

“If I don’t say I love her or that I have missed her or that she looks pretty in the right way, she gets upset. When I do express these feelings, she responds with, ‘Really?’ or ‘Do you mean it?’ I just hate that. She seems to be questioning my sincerity. Why can’t she accept my words at face value!”

“That’s just me. That’s the way I am. She may not like it, but that’s me. I’m quiet. I think (she hates to hear that word) most men are, and I wish women would accept this fact. Just because I don’t share a lot with her doesn’t mean I don’t love her. I do love her. I just don’t want to get into unending discussions.”

Men have learned clever techniques for withholding their feelings. The message they send to the world is that emotional expression and survival don’t mix—and they believe it!

Resistance and Defenses

Resistance can wear many disguises.

Nonengagement is a form of resistance. The passive-aggressive approach works well for some men: “I don’t know exactly what you want. Now, what is it that you want me to feel?”

Some men learn to express pseudo-feelings to fool others and to get what they want. They will say what other people want them to say so they can manipulate them.

A common defense is the use of intellect to guard against emotional expression. Intellect is used to filter emotional expression by creating flat responses devoid of feeling.

Some men share emotions in mixed messages. They prefer to let their emotions ooze out in nonverbal expressions.

Other men are very cynical about emotions. They say, “Feelings can’t be trusted. They come and go; they’re insincere. You can’t trust them, so why bother?”

Unfortunately, too many men live (and die) by this creed. The results are described well by Dr. Gary Oliver in his insightful book Real Men Have Feelings, Too.

By acting as if emotions and masculinity are incompatible, we have limited who God created us to be and become. The most devastating loss we have suffered by accepting these distortions is the loss of our hearts—the loss of our ability to feel, the ability to be tender as well as tough. We have lost the ability to be whole people.

These myths have produced a generation of men who are significantly out of touch with what it means to have been created in the image of an infinite yet personal God. The myths have also produced a generation of men who have little idea of how to take care of themselves. Because men don’t understand and know how to express their emotions, they don’t know how to deal with emotional pain. Therefore, when we do have pain we don’t understand it and don’t know what to do with it, so our only option is to anesthetize it. If we don’t feel, then we won’t feel pain or fear or grief or loss.

The anesthetic works for a while, but over time we need more and more. This leads to all kinds of destructive habits.9

Fortunately, there is hope. Not on the horizon, but now. Many men have a willingness to experience all of the manhood God has given to them. There is risk. There is confusion. There is gender misunderstanding on both sides. But the locks on the doors of the inner lives of many men are being unlocked—not by women, but by men themselves.

David Mains, a former pastor and host of radio’s “Chapel of the Air,” writes with refreshing candor about the big padlock on his emotions:

For a large part of my life I was tuned out emotionally. I wasn’t aware of where others were coming from, and I didn’t even understand my own feelings. I was probably extreme in that regard. I didn’t know when I was tired. I seldom paid attention to whether I was hot or cold. I wasn’t in touch with what I liked or didn’t like. If someone would ask me what was wrong, instead of saying, “I feel trapped with no way out of this situation,” I’d reply, “I’m OK, why do you ask?” Most of the time if someone accused me of expressing a negative emotion like anger or pride or frustration, I denied it. Was I stomping mad? No. Did I swear? Had my words stopped making sense because of my intense emotion? Never. What do you mean I was angry? You’re accusing me of not acting the way a Christian should!

“You were emoting,” my wife would tell me the next day. “It was as if you were sending out waves and waves of high voltage electricity. I don’t understand how everybody can sense that except you.”

Well, I wasn’t in tune with my anger, my pain, my loneliness, my defensiveness, my fears, delights, moods, embarrassment, jealousies, whatever. I functioned relatively well in the objective world of ideas, facts, and words. But the more subjective realm of feeling was atrophying, shriveling up within me. Thank God that in recent years the Lord has been doing a major healing in me for which I’m extremely grateful. One of the signs of health is that my feelings are coming back into play.10

Where do we go from here? Into the private inner worlds of men to discover what they think and feel. Then to discover what both men and women can do to bring these private worlds out into daylight in positive ways so there will be new awareness, growth and blossoming of healthy relationships.

Reflecting on This Chapter

1. As a man, can you identify with the reasons for being reluctant to share feelings that are expressed in the quotation at the beginning of this chapter?

2. What is your age? Has your ability or willingness to share your inner life changed? For the better or worse? What brought about the change?

3. Define the following terms, and evaluate them in the light of their effect on relationships: (a) solitude, (b) privacy, (c) isolation, (d) remoteness, (e) quietness.

4. As a man, how do you relate to what Larry Crabb described as the feeling that there is an “empty place inside” or a “missing part”?

5. Do you agree with this chapter’s analysis that many men fear the loss of control or power?

6. As a man, have you experienced a “turnaround” from reluctance to willingness to share your feelings? If so, describe the difference the change has made in your life.

Notes
1. H. Norman Wright, Understanding the Man in Your Life (Dallas: Word, Inc., 1987), p. 160.
2. Patrick Morley, The Seven Seasons of a Man’s Life (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1995), p. 33.
3. Larry Crabb, The Silence of Adam (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995), pp. 11, 12.
4. Max Lucado, Six Hours One Friday (Dallas: Word, Inc., 1989), pp. 37, 38.
5. Verne Becker, The Real Man Inside (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House., 1992), p. 15.
6. Crabb, op. cit., p. 176.
7. Cited in Bill McCartney’s, What Makes a Man (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1992), p. 137.
8. Herb Goldberg, Ph.D., What Men Really Want (New York: Signet Books, 1991), pp. 61-62, adapted.
9. Gary J. Oliver, Real Men Have Feelings, Too (Chicago: Moody Press, 1993), p. 37.
10. David Mains, Healing the Dysfunctional Church Family (Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books, 1992), p. 123.

H. Norman Wright is a licensed Marriage, Family and Child Therapist. He was formerly Director of the Graduate Department of Marriage, Family and Child Counseling at Biola University as well as an Associate Professor of Psychology. He has taught graduate school for over twenty-five years at Talbot School of Theology and the Graduate Department of Marriage and Family Counseling at Biola University  Dr. Wright is the founder and director of Christian Marriage Enrichment, a national organization designed to train ministers and lay leaders in counseling and enrichment.

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