Sorry if I'm being too brazen but the simple answer is, if we men are more communicative, we get less sex. Being more communicative and still appear attractive takes explicit training in social skills that most men simply lack.
Also, we men are discouraged from acting on our feelings and instead encouraged to "do what needs to be done regardless of feelings". So are we tired? Then we should blow off steam in a way that's socially acceptable and then move on. Are we angry? Are we sad? Are we frustrated? Then we should put our feelings aside and do something about it; because talking about it is going to take us nowhere.
Again, I'm not advocating this. I'm just stating a prevalent practice which possibly explains why men don't talk. If we do, we lose sex. Our potential partners are no longer attracted to us and our existing partners would rather sleep that night.
Absolutely - men should be trained from childhood on to not suppress their emotions. If nothing else, we may have less warfare and more nurturing from both sexes. At the height of it, it develops intimacy in relationships, something I think men sorely lack.
I do talk about my feelings. What I find is that I have few feelings and many emotions. Feelings to me are judgments - I feel dishonesty is bad is a judgment. Emotions are sadness, guilt etc which are also categorized as feelings but for me they are not judgments.
I find that I express my emotions far less than women and roughly on par with my male friends. This could be because I have been trained to be stoic, to treat emotions as ephemeral and not worth talking about except the large ones, to tough it out, to be a man, to not be a wimp, - the list goes on. I know my father never validated my feelings or even listened to them. Neither did my friends in high school, undergrad, grad school or my married friends. To me that explains it all.
I assume some women are turned on by men who wear their emotions on their sleeve and others not so much.
Perhaps, then the real differentiator is whether one has a intimate partner who can listen to one’s emotions and not try to solve them. That develops intimacy, and is not correlated with sex.
I believe this intimacy is lacking in a lot of relationships because people just do not have the skills to listen and also do not have the skills to differentiate as to when they want to be listened to, when they want advice from a peer, when they want to be mentored and when they want to be coached.
On my end, while I have developed the skills of listening, I am yet to learn validation although I have started. The main stumbling block with validation for me is that I am still unable to validate a feeling(emotion) that I believe is misplaced.
So, why don’t men talk - well it’s largely due to upbringing. But it’s also personality - I am an secondary extraverted thinker (Myers Briggs) and I would rather solve my emotion than talk about it so it fits well with my male gender. My friend is a dominant extraverted feeler and he can talk about his emotions freely or freer than me but is perceived as less male by himself. Either way he gets quite a lot of sex and I not so much - go figure.
So for a woman to be a thinker and for a man to be a feeler can subvert gender roles but it works just as well.
"I believe this intimacy is lacking in a lot of relationships because people just do not have the skills to listen and also do not have the skills to differentiate as to when they want to be listened to, when they want advice from a peer, when they want to be mentored and when they want to be coached." - so true.
Sorry if I'm being too brazen but the simple answer is, if we men are more communicative, we get less sex. Being more communicative and still appear attractive takes explicit training in social skills that most men simply lack.
Also, we men are discouraged from acting on our feelings and instead encouraged to "do what needs to be done regardless of feelings". So are we tired? Then we should blow off steam in a way that's socially acceptable and then move on. Are we angry? Are we sad? Are we frustrated? Then we should put our feelings aside and do something about it; because talking about it is going to take us nowhere.
Again, I'm not advocating this. I'm just stating a prevalent practice which possibly explains why men don't talk. If we do, we lose sex. Our potential partners are no longer attracted to us and our existing partners would rather sleep that night.
TL;DR: The reason is patriarchy
Being more communicative and still appear attractive takes explicit training in social skills that most men simply lack. - should men be trained then?
Absolutely - men should be trained from childhood on to not suppress their emotions. If nothing else, we may have less warfare and more nurturing from both sexes. At the height of it, it develops intimacy in relationships, something I think men sorely lack.
I do talk about my feelings. What I find is that I have few feelings and many emotions. Feelings to me are judgments - I feel dishonesty is bad is a judgment. Emotions are sadness, guilt etc which are also categorized as feelings but for me they are not judgments.
I find that I express my emotions far less than women and roughly on par with my male friends. This could be because I have been trained to be stoic, to treat emotions as ephemeral and not worth talking about except the large ones, to tough it out, to be a man, to not be a wimp, - the list goes on. I know my father never validated my feelings or even listened to them. Neither did my friends in high school, undergrad, grad school or my married friends. To me that explains it all.
I assume some women are turned on by men who wear their emotions on their sleeve and others not so much.
Perhaps, then the real differentiator is whether one has a intimate partner who can listen to one’s emotions and not try to solve them. That develops intimacy, and is not correlated with sex.
I believe this intimacy is lacking in a lot of relationships because people just do not have the skills to listen and also do not have the skills to differentiate as to when they want to be listened to, when they want advice from a peer, when they want to be mentored and when they want to be coached.
On my end, while I have developed the skills of listening, I am yet to learn validation although I have started. The main stumbling block with validation for me is that I am still unable to validate a feeling(emotion) that I believe is misplaced.
So, why don’t men talk - well it’s largely due to upbringing. But it’s also personality - I am an secondary extraverted thinker (Myers Briggs) and I would rather solve my emotion than talk about it so it fits well with my male gender. My friend is a dominant extraverted feeler and he can talk about his emotions freely or freer than me but is perceived as less male by himself. Either way he gets quite a lot of sex and I not so much - go figure.
So for a woman to be a thinker and for a man to be a feeler can subvert gender roles but it works just as well.
"I believe this intimacy is lacking in a lot of relationships because people just do not have the skills to listen and also do not have the skills to differentiate as to when they want to be listened to, when they want advice from a peer, when they want to be mentored and when they want to be coached." - so true.