(aka Why Men Act Like Cold, Emotionless Robots So Much of the Damn Time)
“He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it …”
– George Orwell
Okay, so in the previous section, I introduced you to the TWO basic psychological drives of being a man:
- Hiding emotions/being seen as ‘tough’,
- Making money.
We’ve just now covered the money aspect (and why it has such a HUGE impact on a man’s desire and ability to fall in love and commit) …
… which means you know that making money is vital to a man, that it’s the foundation of our self-worth, that we NEED to compete with (and win against) other men to make that money. The status and respect we attain from making it is so crucially important to us that it’s not just a desire – it’s more like a DUTY.
Oh – and the PRESSURE of knowing it’s our duty to provide (whether you need it or not) is a burden that weighs HEAVILY on us … and never, ever lets up.
Again, all this might seem super sexist and crass to you – and look, I totally understand if that’s the case. (I don’t exactly love that these things are so important to us guys either, for the record.)
But, I just want to reiterate here that these traits aren’t my ‘opinion’ or just my own personal beliefs … they are primally wired inherent characteristics in the male psyche, and once you start to understand how they factor into a guy’s behavior and decision-making processes, you’ll start to see them EVERYWHERE.
One last quick primer before we get into the EMOTIONAL side of the male mind …
The Primal Provider Drive: what we’ve covered so far …
- Men are shaped by nature and by nurture to seek out respect by proving ourselves against others
- We are primed to seek PRESTIGE and RESPECT (mostly from other men)
- We need the challenge of competition and striving against other men
- We want to WIN more than anything
- Providing financially makes us feel powerful, and forms the backbone of our self-worth as men
- The primal drive to provide is a heavy burden psychologically (even if we don’t let on – or even realize it ourselves)
- We feel emasculated and like failures if we don’t feel like we can provide
- Even when things are going well, we’re constantly stressing about our responsibilities to provide and whether we’re ‘good enough’
- A man who feels emasculated can’t love himself OR you
WARNING WARNING WARNING: What I’m sharing with you right here is PRIVILEGED INFORMATION that should NOT be shared with your man willy-nilly. For the love of all that’s holy, DO NOT go to your guy and say something like, ‘Hey, did you know all men are hyper-competitive and obsessed with money??’ This information is to help YOU understand the male mind, it’s not intended as something to discuss WITH MEN. Trust me on this one.
Alright, so now it’s time to start using what you’ve learned about a man’s Primal Provider Drive to solve the riddle of his emotions and start figuring him out!
After over a decade of tens of thousands of coaching calls, interviews, phone calls and emails with thousands of men, I’ve boiled down the 3 foundational traits that go into EVERY man’s psychological makeup.
Obviously, there is no ‘cookie cutter man’ out there; everybody’s different, and some men will have different ‘ratios’ of these ingredients to others.
But EVERY man has the following 3 traits as the essential backbone of his nature. Read on to find out what they are …
Trait ONE: We hold in our emotions at all costs
By the time a boy is five years old, he’s pretty much been taught that it’s not okay to cry in public. He may still DO it, but the expectation is by the time he’s ten he’s perfected it. And if he’s still doing it at 12, that’s a problem.
The main thing you need to know is that, starting from when we’re tiny little boys, we are strongly discouraged from displaying any kind of emotion or vulnerability.
Getting laughed at, being made fun of at school, getting beaten up by our older brothers, getting beaten up by other guys at school …
… all of these things hurt like hell. The physical pain is bad (speaking personally, I got my first black eye for ‘being a sissy’ in the schoolyard at age five) …
… but the SHAME and the FEAR are even worse: the fear that another guy might see us as weak or unmanly.
That fear runs DEEP. And it follows us all the way through our adult lives.
Below I’ve compiled a list of the most common phrases that small boys start to hear from their friends, teachers, parents, babysitters, grandfathers, siblings etc – usually starting around age four. (Which is freaking heartbreaking.)
- Stop crying, you’re fine
- Quit it with the emotions
- Don’t be a pussy
- Pick yourself up by your bootstraps
- Always keep your mouth shut
- Nobody likes a tattletale
- If you’re hurt, hold it in
- Showing emotion is weak
- Don’t be a mama’s boy
- If you’re gonna be a man, you’d better learn how to control yourself
- If you want respect, act tough
- Don’t let nobody disrespect you
- Always be cool, and kind of a jerk
- Don’t be a sissy
- You little bitch
- Grow some balls
- Act like a man
Imagine if you’d been told any of the following when you were upset and crying as a tiny little child?
Are you starting to understand why it is that most men CLAM UP LIKE CRAZY when it comes to showing emotion (or, as we guys see it, ‘displaying weakness’)??
Look, it’s not that we WANT to act like robots.
It’s just that, when you’ve been mocked, ridiculed, punched in the eye, slapped, and laughed out of the classroom for showing ANY KIND OF EMOTION WHATSOEVER since early childhood, that kind of conditioning is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to break.
What you need to remember: Men are taught from a VERY early age that showing emotion is WEAK and that no boy who wants to be a ‘real man’ can EVER cry, complain, be sad, or show any kind of ‘hurt’ whatsoever. Those are some seriously high stakes. So, we become masters at holding the hurt inside and never telling anyone how we really feel.
Trait TWO: Anger is our go-to ‘master male emotion’
… and we use it to cover a MULTITUDE of other feelings.
From the beginning as boys, we’re taught to lock down our emotions.
We can’t talk about being afraid. We can’t talk about being hurt.
We can talk about being pissed off. We can talk about being angry.
We sure as shit can’t ever talk about being sad.
Psychologists typically like to reduce the human emotional spectrum to four basic emotions:
- Mad
- Sad
- Glad
- Scared
| You might be surprised at just how many men are perfectly capable of talking about their emotions … so long as those emotions are, well, anger. |
Of these four, MAD is the emotion men are most comfortable with: feeling it, expressing it, even (gasp!) talking about it (yep, you might be surprised at just how many men are perfectly capable of talking about their emotions … so long as those emotions are, well, anger.)
But WHY are men so comfortable with anger?
Basically, there are FOUR main reasons why ANGER is the master male emotion:
- We bottle up most of our emotions, cuz (as you now know) men aren’t “meant” to show vulnerability or emotion. And guess what? Suppressing strong emotion is HARD and takes a massive energetic toll … which then leads to short fuses and fraying tempers. Cue yelling, wall-punching, and laundry-hamper stomping, all because we can’t find our keys in the morning. (Sorry, sorry.)
- Anger is a ‘safe’ emotion for men: we can fully express it, without being (or feeling) vulnerable or ‘unmanly’ in any way.
- We ALSO use it as a ‘safety valve’ for other emotions: all that bottled-up stress and fear and sadness has to come out SOMEWHERE. For instance, we’ll get mad because we’re actually sad deep down inside, and we need to release the pressure
- But MOST of all, we get angry because anger is just FEAR with a mask on … and to a GUY, admitting we’re scared goes against EVERYTHING we know about ‘being a man’.
So, if men hide their fear (and most other emotions too) beneath a protective mask of anger …
… how do you get him to pry the mask OFF and actually express the trembling vulnerability beneath?
Well, as it turns out, YOU already have that power within you right now.
Because…
Trait THREE: We NEED Your Feminine Softness to Make Everything Okay
You might not realize this, but as men, we honestly YEARN for that magical female softness that only YOU can provide.
Lemme tell you a quick story to prove my point:
Here’s how my wife got ME to stop being an Angry Man
I’m not proud of this, but the truth is, I used to be a VERY angry man on the inside.
In fact … I GLORIED in it. I literally LOVED confrontation.
Now, my wife and I live right next door to a busy pizza restaurant, which means the traffic turnover in our street is extremely high.
And because we are LITERALLY right next door to the pizza place, about fifteen times a day, we get some eejit parking their car right in front of our driveway – ‘just for five minutes!!’ – while they ran into the store and collected their cheesy slabs of salami-laden goodness.
Now this might not seem like a big deal to most people. Sure, it’s annoying – but only mildly (and honestly, most of the time all these people blocking our driveway didn’t really affect either of us too much anyway.)
But that didn’t make any difference to ME.
To ME, every single time I saw someone blocking our driveway, I would feel this bolt of angry JOY go stabbing through my heart. Yessss! Here’s my chance to really get in someone’s face!! I’m CLEARLY in the RIGHT and THEY’RE clearly in the WRONG!
My heart would instantly start banging right through my chest, and with glee bubbling in my chest I’d go running out of the house – eager to confront whichever poor fool was about to get a faceful of Mike Fiore’s Anger front and center.
And I loooooved it. At least a couple times a week, I’d manage to catch somebody red-handed; and then we’d have a big, satisfying, ten-minute screaming contest right in the street.
(I’m not proud of this. But it’s the truth.)
Eventually, my wife got tired of all this.
But!! Instead of sitting me down and having a big weird uncomfortable ‘state of the nation’ TALK about my behavior …
… she was super smart and took ACTION instead.
Here’s What She Did:
- When I got mad, she would refuse to get mad also. (“I’m not going to let your state affect my own,” she’d say. Now that’s a strong woman.)
- She used EMPATHY to melt away my anger. Angie, my wife, is a MASSIVELY empathetic person, and she USED that superpower really really well. Instead of getting pissed off, offended, or angry herself, she tapped into her empathy for the pain she knew I was feeling (underneath the yelling, posturing, loud-mouthed dickhead I was being on the surface).
That means, instead of getting in my face, guilt-tripping me, telling me to ‘calm down’, or making me ‘wrong’, she COMPLETELY turned things upside down! Instead of doing what most women would do when confronted with a seriously angry, LOUDLY YELLING man, my wife chose instead to use her EMPATHY and her CURIOSITY to change my state and soften my emotions.
She addressed me the way she would a crying puppy, or a sobbing little boy: she made her voice soft and sweet, she made her movements very slow and soothing, she offered hugs and gentle touches on the shoulder, she kept her eyes soft, and she asked me QUESTIONS that allowed me to express what was really going on for me …
… without judging me, without getting angry herself, and without making it about HER.
- She was calm and curious instead of judgmental or upset. The tremendous amount of SPACE I felt when she talked to me in this way – the freedom I felt to truly express myself, the curiosity in her eyes instead of condemnation, the soft, caring love in her voice – did a really weird thing to me:
It shrank my anger smaller and smaller, until – like a pinhead dropped in an empty ballroom – it basically disappeared.
Seriously. POOF! … vanished. (I’m sure it’s still there somewhere, but I haven’t seen my anger in months. And I really, really like it that way.)
The lesson: EMPATHY is the magic ingredient that allows us to open our hearts to you.
As you now know, as guys, we’re more messed up than Jocelyn Wildenstein’s face when it comes to actually expressing our real emotions. Men feel TREMENDOUS pressure to never express (or even feel) any vulnerable emotions at all: sadness, grief, fear, fright, worry, stress … you name it, we’re not supposed to show it (or else we won’t be ‘real men’.)
And since anger is the ONE emotion that we, as guys, are actually safe to express without emasculating ourselves …
| We typically use anger as a safety-hatch to release ALL our hidden emotions |
That means, when your guy is stressed, angry, or has retreated emotionally, it might be tempting to lose your own temper and yell right back at him. But it’s all about technique: think ‘coaxing’, rather than ‘dragging’ him, to a place where he can share his truth with you.
In plain English, what he ACTUALLY needs is your understanding, your empathy, your non-judgmental curiosity, and your love.
Do This, Not That
Don’t… Get mad yourself
Do… Develop a curious and empathetic state of mind
Because… We need your help to speak the language of emotions – and we’ll learn faster if we
feel accepted and safe.
Don’t… Say things like ‘What are you feeling?’ or ‘let’s sit down and talk about it’ or
(shudder) ‘Why can’t you just talk to me??!’
Do… Say things like, ‘What are your thoughts on that?’ and ‘what do you think?’
Because… We’re guys. Asking us to talk about our feelings will shut us down faster than a phone call from mom mid-blowjob. But asking us what we think? Completely different.
Don’t… Comment on, or shame us for, showing the emotions we DO feel (or how we’re showing them.)
Do… Demonstrate what it means to be empathetic, curious, and non-judgmentally
accepting.
Because… You speak this language waaaay better than we do, and if you want us to learn, we
need to feel like it’s okay to make mistakes.
Don’t… Say things like, ‘Why is this so hard for you?’ or ‘I just want to know how you feel!’
Do… Learn to get comfortable displaying your own feelings.
Because… The more comfortable you are being vulnerable with us, the more we’ll catch on
that hey, so THIS is how you do this ‘feelings’ stuff.
Alright, time for a quick recap …
Here’s What You Now Know About Men
We hold in our emotions at all costs. Not cuz we WANT to, but because we’ve been so savagely conditioned to hide all vulnerability that it takes some serious de-conditioning to help us take off the mask.
Anger is our version of crying. Men can be ANGRY and still ‘be a real man’; but we sure as hell can’t CRY and still be manly. So, we yell, or retreat emotionally, or act like a stone-hearted robot to hide the pain … even when on the inside we’re sobbing our guts out.
We need YOUR help to make it okay to be vulnerable. When confronted with a seemingly-angry guy, most women will become judgemental, upset, and angry themselves. But now you know different, so you can do different. When you want to help your guy peel off the iron mask and show you how he really feels, that’s your cue to use your feminine softness – aka empathy – to draw out the poison and reassure him that yes, he really can open his heart to you.
When in doubt, treat us like we’re a crying puppy. (Yup, especially when we’re mad.) This can be hard to remember in the moment – a big angry guy seems a lot more like a snarling Rottweiler (Yikes! Run!!) than a yelping puppy … but that’s when we need you the MOST. To get us to drop our weapons, we need you to show us how.
