I don’t think men are really prepared to handle grief. Of course, much like having a baby for the first time, I don’t think ANYONE is really prepared for the loss of a loved one. Perhaps we get some experience with it as we lose beloved pets during our childhoood/young adult years, but the loss of a partner or family member (especially a close family member) is devastating on a level that no one can expect.
As I mentioned in the last post, men don’t really feel comfortable opening up to one another, as a general rule. (Of course, specific examples to the contrary do exist.) Sharing our grief with people is another step beyond on the emotional vulnerability scale. I consider myself to have always been pretty open, and I certainly struggled with it. I remember going to my room and sobbing like an infant when my paternal grandmother passed away, and she was a rather domineering woman whom I had plenty of conflicts with as a teenager.
Even when men hear a touching story about something that really matters to them (like a player on their favorite sports team — corny but it’s true), we often pretend to not be crying. We say things like “boy, it sure is dusty in this room!” We just don’t want to admit that something has broken through our hard, stoic outer shell.
Part of that is, no doubt, tied up in the unrealistic expectations many societies have for men. (I’ve grown up and lived exclusively in Western cultures, and only a few of them, so please feel free to comment if you’ve had different experiences. I’d love to hear about them.) In my experience, men are taught to project strength and invulnerability at all times. “Women won’t like you if you’re a SISSY!” “Just another weak and worthless soy-boy!” These kinds of hurtful comments cause us to tighten up like a sphincter.
In my case, the first real loss was my step-father, who succumbed to leukemia when he was about 53, in the early 2000s. That was brutal but a far greater challenge would come in 2005 when first my wife died (of an overdose of methadone due to her oxycontin addiction), and then the following months, my maternal grandfather and maternal grandmother. Over the course of three months, I lost three of the most important people in my world. It absolutely rocked my world.
I became a single father when my emotions were absolutely a wreck. I was fortunate to still have a few family members (including my mother) who could help take care of me, but stability was a LONG way off. I tried to be strong for my son, but I made a ton of terrible mistakes during that time. (Maybe not QUITE as bad as the main character of Shrinking, but close!)
I wish I had known then that asking for help doesn’t mean you are a failure. It doesn’t mean you are weak. In fact, I’ve learned since then that asking for help is one of the hardest, most courageous things you can do sometimes. We would be much better off as a culture if we could recognize that and praise the men who can admit their need for help.
After all, the literal definition of courage is: “the ability to do something that frightens one”. It’s not to be unafraid — it is to be afraid, and to do the difficult or scary thing anyways. Wouldn’t it be great if we could appreciate and laud the people who do the hardest things?
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