“Did your dad teach you how to be a man?”
“Did he talk to you about the errors he made?”
I’ve long been struggling with depression. For me, an episode lasts for a few days and I’m whole for months before the next episode strikes. Late one evening, I’m stumbling into an episode barely 24hrs before I get out of the first. I’m stuck, losing hope and the will to live. I’ve met a few young men who feel the same way I feel at the moment and I wonder why we turn out like this when we often try to be “the man”.
I did a little poll, asked a few young men, men who weren’t my friends because of course I’d be ridiculed by them. The response I got was “learning how to change a light bulb” or “how to start a car with a dead battery.” For me they didn’t really understand the question I was asking, I was really asking “Did your dad teach you emotional intimacy?”
“Did he tell you how to be with a woman?”
“How to choose your friends”
“Did he tell you if he was ever vulnerable?”
“Did you tell you about porn, sex and masturbation?”
Of course, your dad didn’t talk about those things. That would be the resounding answer for the majority of young men. It’s intriguing that in Christian literature there’s an entire book of the Bible dedicated to teaching a son about these issues — the book of Proverbs.
Then where did we learn to become men?
I had to dwell on the past for a long while so I could answer these questions. With no one teaching young men emotional intelligence or responsibility, we tend to follow the lead of an alpha male we see at high school or watch on TV shows. These alpha male imitate a problematic behavior that’s been demonstrated by a dumb dad at home and many boys consider this cool because there’s no positive male representation around him. He stumbles on porn and shows it to his friends, so they learn to objectify women. His dad talks about sport all the time, so friends of the alpha son get into sports to avoid getting rebuked for not having in-depth knowledge. The alpha son is told that real men don’t cry. Real men act tough. Real men have ego and should get angry when insulted. Real men don’t show their emotions.
I’m being told to tamp down my feelings, but also told to not be too masculine because that’s wrong.
It’s a lonely world when you don’t have male friends you can have deep conversations with because you’d be labeled a pussy when you express your angst and pain. But I did find someone I could have deep conversations with — A girl, one that I loved. So my heart would shatter into diminutive pieces which would then be blown into the waters if she doesn’t want to have these conversations anymore. While men desperately crave emotional intimacy with other men, some of us have built up callouses so tough that even the notion of deep connection is considered effeminate. When you don’t know how to manage your emotions, you won’t know how to handle rejection, dating, fear, loneliness, or even depression.
As a child I jumped from sofa to sofa with knives in-between my knuckles trying to mimic Wolverine, keep a spider collection in an attempt to become Spiderman. Every stick as longs my leg was a sword for me and every stick as short as my palm was a gun. I carried out fight scenes in my head with my snacks.
And I also drew and loved art. I sang in a choir. I played with Barbies. I wrote stories.
But there were attacks on me as a young boy that playing with stick swords, throwing cheeseballs like they were grenades would eventually make me become a psychopath in future. That playing with Barbies, having sensitivity and visible displays of emotions are signs of weakness.
I’m being told to tamp down my feelings, but also told to not be too masculine because that’s wrong. That the emotional warrior gets crushed, and the poet is branded a sissy.
I’m not sure what the answer to all these is and only Jesus can fix me, but I know I won’t let my man-child become what I’ve become it’ll begin with strong fathering, It’ll require men who want to change the culture from inside and not the noisemakers and that scream from social media soapboxes.
It’ll take fathers mentoring their sons who are pupils lost and floating in today’s culture.
