Gay cis male

When around my boomer parents: Fuck no

When around my friends: Hell yeah! Some of the straight guys use me as a sounding board for their emotions, since they know I'm not going to judge them.

As a guy who’s half European and half Arabian, no I don’t feel comfortable expressing emotions or feelings. Each time I have done that, I get shit for it back.

“Man up”, “that’s just life” and “I know you’ll push through it”. Is what I hear. They rather have me be aggressive than to be emotional more often than not. While I’m trying to get rid of my anger issues.

So instead of expressing emotions, I just put it all in a diary. Never thought I’d be using one but it truly helps.

I tell my family I love them, I tell my best friends I love them, I hug people I care about, I tell them I miss them, they've seen me cry. It doesn't make me feel any less of a man. If somebody says it does, they aren't somebody I want to close with. Fuck em.

The older I get, the more I realize that opening up makes things worse.

Coming from the Midwest I don’t think I ever felt uncomfortable expressing any emotions. I could kind of rattle off whatever I wanted to say without too much thinking.

But having lived in Los Angeles for roughly 10 years now I’m afraid to be open at all. When I first came here I was accused of hacking people’s credit cards twice because here knowing about computers means you’re a hacker. I learned to keep my mouth shut and become a robot; toxic/fake positivity is everywhere here and if you don’t play along then you’re quickly cast aside.

When people tell men "you can tell me anything" what they mean is "I don't want to feel like you're keeping things from me."

It 100% does NOT mean "you will face no negative consequences for telling me."

Men keep some things to themselves because sharing feelings has resulted in getting burned too many times.

These things aren't necessarily bad. They might just shatter exciting illusions the other person prefered over the ordinary truth.

In personal settings, sure. In professional ones, not really

I'm cis male, and I think I do a better job of it than many, though I think there are some lingering effects of cultural expectations and upbringing that don't always make it easy.

Depends on the person. I am definitely more expressive than your average man, but it's all strategic. I use my openness as a distraction from the feelings I keep hidden. It's sleight of hand but emotions. I've been hurt way, way too many times by being open about the wrong things.

I think I'm emotionally stunted from years of repressing my feelings. I don't feel that strongly about most things. A lot of people will comment about how stoic and quiet I am, but it's not like there's really too much to express. When I am "upset", it's usually because I'm exhausted or hungry.

That being said, in times of catastrophic events (deaths, break ups, etc), I might get upset. But I tend to be very good at expressing myself with words. I take my time and choose them carefully, so much so that sometimes other people will think that im being silent; im not, I'm thinking about all the ways this could play out depending on what I say.

Crying only happens quietly, to myself, maybe once a year, and usually because of some dumb kids movie that gets to me. I think the last one was Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.

I cry all the time, dawg.

African American male. Growing up it was the "Man up" "no one cares" and all of that negative talk.when trying to be open I still express feelings and emotion but I do limit it depending on who I'm around, and those people are very rare for me to want to be around longer than a small talk catch up while passing by

No. I keep pretty much everything to myself. I am convinced that no good can come of me expressing any of my emotions. I need to be a rock. I allow myself a few minutes of crying when a relative dies.

I am comfortable expressing everything except frustration around women because it is misread as anger, even when flatly stated as "It is frustrating that this keeps happening" in a monotone voice.

Actual anger is received fine, because venting is fine. But frustration leads to anger or something. Pretty sure it is just reminding them of someone else who expressed frustration and then blew up in anger. Like the anticipation is worse than the actual thing.

I used to be more reserved about expressing positive feelings towards other men due to social conditioning, but I stopped caring a while back and tell all my buds I love them every once in a while.

I think its a maturity thing for guys. My gym buddies and I were talking about mental health a while back and I said "I was on meds for a while because I had an irrational sense that life wasnt worth living. A year later on the meds I was fat, unmotivated and had erectile dysfunction and I was like 'Great, now I have legitimate reasons to think about killing myself' so I came off the pills."

The 20 somethings all looked super fucking uncomfortable, the thirty somethings nodded and made sympathetic faces and the other 40+ guy said "How are you doing with it these days?" Of course I immediately deflected and said "Oh its hard as a rock" which got the laugh and broke the tension. But the only guy who didnt duck the conversation was the guy of a similar age who had a rough divorce years before I knew him...

It's.....complicated. On its face I don't have a problem discussing my feelings. I'm a living breathing human being and life hits all kinds of different ways.

I have learned that I can't just tell any old person what I'm feeling or going through. And that the things I tell people.can and will be used against me. And no. Not just by women. Any person with a sufficient amount of cleverness and a busted moral compass can use what you say against you.

I'm transfem, which has had some interesting effects on how emotionally open I am. I feel I've been more able to be open since I transitioned, but that might also just be the effect of being around LGBT+ people - my family still gets annoyed when I'm less controlled around them

As a person of the male genre I prefer to express my emotions through body hair

I struggle on two fronts with this - I don't want to "burden" others with how I feel, and fairly often I don't know what I feel.

Grew up in the American Midwest as a preacher's kid. My parents are awesome people, but Dad's job meant our family had to seem close to perfect for small town political reasons - we had their support for any kind of crisis, but we had to keep it inside the house so our single limited income wasn't threatened.

Between that and a family full of neurospiciness, it felt like we were always on the edge of catastrophe. I was generally able to get by day to day, so I just kept quiet so we all had room to deal with whatever else needs handled.

So, I think I got in the habit of bottling things until I couldn't even tell what I was feeling, and also developed an aversion to sharing what I could tell was bothering me. I'm open to the idea of sharing things, I just can't often tell what needs shared until it pops out unexpectedly.

I don't usually talk about my feelings (I am a woman) but people of all genders seem to feel comfortable confiding in me.

So maybe it's not so much that men don't express emotions, more that people in general don't express them to men?

Or even more likely we are all different and it's not so much a gender thing. As a stereotype I've heard it plenty but in practice it hasn't seemed so. If I was being sexist I'd say men complain more about physical pain and women complain more openly about unhappiness, but I can't say it's a big difference IME.

Female here. I like to keep my feelings private. If something is wrong, you won't know until after the nervous breakdown.

Men and women lie when they say they want you to express yourself more. Whether they intend to or not, they get angry or sad about you burdening them with knowledge of your own experiences. Many will atore away anything you confide with them, so they can use it against you further down the line.

On question one, absolutely.

On question two, I don’t think so. Trying to get women to express their feelings is maddening..

What’s Wong?

Nothing…..

BULLSHIT! You have given monosyllabic answers and have been moping around all day, WTF is up your ass?

I'm an autistic male and for me expressing myself in general is a bit awkward. During tough times I really liked expressing it to my friends and siblings since it's a decent way to process the feelings.

I was raised in a very matriarchal family, and was encouraged to share my feelings. I'm very comfortable with communicating how I'm feeling.

I say whatever the fuck because I'm comfortable with myself.

Despite being pretty darn comfortable as a who I am, a man who doesn't always present as masculine all the time, I can say with certainty that I absolutely suck at sharing my emotions.

Yeah I'll vent and talk about some things with my mother, but otherwise I tend to mostly keep my emotions to myself if possible. I'm positive that it's a combination of my autism and that I feel as though others shouldn't get involved with them because they're my emotions and others shouldn't have to deal with them with/for me.

Edit:

It also doesn't help that I'm more of an introvert, too. Also makes it harder for me to open up in general, IRL.

No. It’s not acceptable at all to have feelings. No one will care in a positive way if you do as a man.

There is no acceptable outlets for emotion as a man.

This is way weird political shit gets so much traction as it is considered to be acceptable to be angry at idea you don’t agree with,hate an opponent or other and you are allowed to be happy at the pain you bring them.

Everything else is shut up you don’t know how good you have it or shut up you don’t know how much worse it is for someone else.

Depends entirely on the person I'm talking to.

Afab. Never been good expressing deep emotions. Or liked feeling vulnerable. Sometimes stuff slips out if I'm drunk and in company of a trusted person, but I always get a "moral hangover" if it happens, so to speak.

As I've gotten older and have been going to therapy, I've gotten way more open about my feelings. I grew up in a super stoic family, but I have no problem telling anyone that will listen how I feel. I highly encourage everyone to let people know how you feel.

Broadly and selectively, yes, I feel comfortable expressing my feelings. I'm usually more honest than the social norm, and probably more open than is common.

I am an enby who presents primarily masculinely but I have a lot of feminine traits and habits too.

Which is to say I am a bearded, muscular reserve sergeant who wears a lot of flannels and wooly clothes, but I have a beautiful, glimmering head of hair that goes to my lower back which I love to braid and the routine to keep it and my face in good shape is very long every day, and in my routines am generally considered very feminine. I do makeup, I cook and bake, I sing all the time, dance freely while doing household stuff, and most crucially, I am very good at listening to others talk about feelings and such, but am also myself very much a sharer in terms of my feelings and just general thoughts too, however fragile or even embarrassing, or just cute, whatever.

I also have adhd which kind of makes me just be myself whether I wanted it or not, I mostly do and think only after. Same goes for things I say or talk about. Couldn’t hold things in if I wanted to…

Which, in turn, is all to say that I’ve always just shared my feelings and intimate thoughts and all without restrictions, mostly because that just happens, but I also like it about me and it keeps me kind of grounded and well conscious of myself, but importantly, it encourages others to share too, and I feel very much more connected to everyone around me, since we tend to talk about everything, even the difficult things.

But I was born a biological male, I present visually mostly masculinely, am very traditionally masculine looking dude, got upbringing as though I was a man, so I think my pov might be relevant still, even though I learnt, as a young adult, who I really am, what I feel, what I see, what I indentify as and how.

I did talk quite freely back when I was young teenager too, when I was still confused and tried to fit the male bill, so I think it’s something more fundamental than what I consciously understand myself to be.

Either way, it’s always been super helpful and really helped me connect deeply with people. Help them, and also get help in turn. It’s a precious thing. To share. To dare to share.

I hope it gets easier for you too.

I have always expressed my emotions, to some extent, but I think I've gotten more comfortable with it as I've gotten older. It goes along with a general trend of worrying less about being disapproved of by others. I take negative feedback seriously, but I feel that negative judgments say more about the people making them than they do about me.

MtF genderfluid here

The more feminine I have become, the more acceptable it is for me to show emotional vulnerability. The more people genuinely listen to me and not treat me like a disgusting animal they are hesitantly entertaining until they can get away.

When I lived as a cis man not even my friends wanted to hear it, and they are good people.

When a man cries in front of his partner for the first time, usually a switch will flip, and that partner will never look at you the same way again. Being vulnerable with even your closest relationships often feels like a mistake.

Men don't talk about their feelings because almost nobody in society has empathy for others, especially if you are more masculine, especially if you "look scary".

The experience being a man is isolating and dehumanizing by default.

I feel comfortable expressing them, but I see others get uncomfortable when I'm expressing them.

Yes, and it feels like it would be easier if I was feminine. However, it is so broad of a topic and depends on how it is met. Many people meet and respect and even appreciate it, but the difference would be that for women it is more normalised and focus becomes on the actual feeling, not on the circumstances and therefore it may feel more accepted and validated to be that way then. I don't think it's a big effect, and it would also vary extremely much depending on culture.

Yes. But I’m a therapist, so….

Male here. By now I can and do express my feelings. It took a while. It is an odd power move at times, when you at will articulate and/or show your emotions. Some people can't deal with it.

I was a bit better at it when I was younger, but time has beaten me enough that’s it’s really hard now, even with my wife and kid.

I have always been a very reserved person about my emotions to the point that people i have dated often say i am difficult to figure out. Personally i do feel society in general frowns upon men showing their emotions to the point it puts you in a disadvantage; If you show too much vulnerability it is often taken as weakness and if you show anger you might get labeled as an "angry man." In this sense my strategy has always been of diffusing situations and disengagement. I also feel that it is my nature to be reserved. Ever since i was a kid i preferred to listen before talking, and i have never been a particularly explosive or extroverted person.

I feel comfortable expressing my emotions, but I’m less expressive than I might have been due to my upbringing. It usually takes me a little more time to really ‘lean into’ what I’m feeling as well.

I’ve been working on shifting my perspective a bit from my default feeling not being ‘nothing’ but ‘openness’ and I feel this has been having a positive shift for me to embrace what I’m feeling and even what others are feeling.

I'm more emotionally open than anyone I know in my age group. I don't think my father quite understood it, and some past girlfriends were uncomfortable with it. My wife, on the other hand, thinks it's just fine. But even so, I've learned that it's in my best interest to keep things to myself with certain people and in certain situations.

It is important to talk about what feelings you mean. For example, perhaps you are happy to say something was fun or exciting. That would be you talking about your emotions. Pretty safe even for stereotypical patriarchal men.

What about being angry? Sad? Feeling down? Powerless? Do you ever use those words? How do you use them?

I have to get very comfortable with the person to express my feelings. With most of my friends I'm already very comfortable so I usually feel okay talking to them about personal things. With romantic partners... Well if I don't get comfortable enough then I think it was never meant to be.

Of course online, pseudonymously, I have no problem talking about it all. Mostly because I'll never meet any of you, or if I do, I won't know it's you.

It's definitely something I've tried to get into the habit of doing since I think it's healthy to be able to, but it is definitely challenging at times.

Cis male. Often yes, but there's always room for improvement. I lean on metaphor a little hard sometimes.

I had a relationship where the other person was very Guess Culture (as opposed to Ask) and that didn't work very well at all.

I'll say it's hard to open up and i'm probably better at it than most men. I'm a very emotional person.

I don’t feel comfortable interacting with people irl. So to answer your question no.

I look at "expressing my feelings" like this:

My feelings are mine. They're mine to have, and mine to be responsible for. I don't need to explain them to anyone for them to be valid.

But I should explain them to certain people, so that those people don't mistake my tone or body language or whatever for something it's not. That explanation isn't for me, it's for them.

Depends on to who, there is the ocassional woman who will call you sassy, first sign is them getting upset about you explaining things and calling it mansplaining. Anyone who uses the terms mansplaining/spreading is to be avoided, they spend too much time online and just like complaining.

AFAB. It got easier after I figured myself out more and treated underlying anxiety issues. I don't think it had to do with gender but I don't know. Some of those anxieties are exasperated or influenced by cultural factors and social roles of course. So, I suppose it depends on where those feelings and stopgaps are on an individual level to some degree. That being said, I find trans people's experiences particularly enlightening on these topics as many have seen both sides of the coin and then some. I hope some of you guys can chime in here.

There's very few people i feel I can actually open up to, maybe just one now that I think about it. Most times I've opened up with someone, whether male or female, I've regretted it lol I'm very emotional so my life's been fun

I never had a problem expressing my feelings because I am secure in myself. Men who fear showing their emotions tend to be young and insecure. Young men get fed so much bullshit about how they should live their lives and carry themselves from all angles.

You have the "progressive" and feminist types try to shame you for being a man and they try to pretend that it's some sort of defect to overcome. The "macho" and misogynist types try to convince you that your gender is a point of pride and that you should double down on the stereotypes they approve of. You have the "traditional" types that try to instill the idea that being a man is a like a job with specific roles that you have to fulfill to qualify. There's many more types, but the point is that you're getting constantly bombarded by all these nonsensical, contradictory, and misinformed ideas about how you must live your life. It's not wonder young men are having an identity crises.

In reality, all these people are full of shit. Masculinity is not a role and it's not a stereotype, it's a state of being. You're masculine because you are a man. Everything that you do is masculine because that's what masculinity is, it's the behavior of men. You being yourself is masculine. There's no need to live to some misguided ideal or rigid standard set upon you by others. You're masculine whether others approve of it or not.

As it happens to be, men are humans, and humans have emotions. It is perfectly natural and healthy for men to express their emotions as they fit. If you're sad cry, if you're upset be mad, if you're filled with joy then be happy, if you're anxious then be afraid. There's no shame in expressing yourself or being vulnerable. These are things that make people interesting and deep. If someone takes issue with that then they're the ones with the problem, not you. If someone can't handle you for you then they're not even worth your time. At least that's how I see things.

I'm feel comfortable expressing myself or being vulnerable around people close to me but i really dont enjoy it. It causes people around me so much extra stress and worry that I'd feel its better for myself to deal with it.

Most of the time i am happy or at least content so when im sad I dont feel the need to mention it or talk about it, its just a feeling to me. If I tell people I'm sad that day they will mine for more information and its just annoying.

Yeah, kind of. Only with close friends, obviously. Mostly over text as well, that helps. In person, I mostly just act happy, a bit of mild annoyance, and slightly incredulous when something really stupid or weird happens. Mostly the same over text, except I also tell people about my more depressing thoughts. I never truly get angry, even when I probably should. I've never broken anything or lost any measure of control. My emotions have never been anyone else's problem, and they never will be. Cis guy btw, if that helps. Oh yeah, all of the friends are women, one of them is trans.

So as someone who identifies as male, I don’t have these stupid hang ups about expressing emotions. I’m perfectly fine, letting people know how I feel. I try to respect, social decorum and to be polite, but I don’t hold back my emotions because of my gender expression.

FWIW, I’ve met plenty of women who are ice cold, and hold back their emotions, seeing them as some kind of weakness. I think that’s absurd.

Emotional repression is one of the quickest roads to emotional dysfunction.

Yes and no. Over the years I've become an open book, willing to talk about how I feel about most things and pretty open about when I'm not doing well for one reason or another. On the other hand one of my buddies tells me he loves me and when I'm not drunk I still feel that tinge of discomfort returning it.

Dude, and nope. I feel like I'm expected to be a robot and I fulfill those expectations.

Dude I’m so repressed I’m not even sure I have emotions

I'm very easy to turn into an emotional wreck thanks in part to my massive anxiety issues. It's one of the many things my therapist is helping me with get under control.

Yes. I use irony and strategically disarming frankness to avoid talking about my feelings.

Yep, and I dare someone to do something about it.

I feel very comfortable displaying and discussing my emotions.

Mainly the negative ones im comfortable with. Stuff that annoys me or confuses me. Some happy things like good luck on a bet, or my kids doing well in school or something.

The softer emotions im not comfortable with sharing

Woman between 30-40 here, I am extremely private and it has taken me years of therapy to start to open up even a little.

Male. Yes. Why the question?

Toxic masculinity prevents both masculine and feminine people from expressing necessary emotions, while allowing or outright promoting very specific ones in a way that's often unhealthy.

Masculine people are demonized for showing vulnerability, sadness, depression, fatigue and issues with confidence. However, men who are cocky, overly confident, aggressive, hostile, egomaniacal and angry are generally accepted and often promoted in very harmful ways.

Feminine people, however, are demonized for showing self determination, assertiveness, confidence, independence, aptitude, creativity, sexuality, happiness and passion. On the other hand, submissiveness, modesty, motherlyness, etc are all promoted.

This is because these things are what the ruling class in almost every society believes their wage slaves should do to maximize their power and profit. It's all directed by the manipulators at the top.