From a young age our parents didn’t encourage us to be emotional, and therefore in general, we may mock or belittle emotions. To men, we are taught that all that matters is the physical, because that’s what is encouraged. Phrases like “boys don’t cry” and “you must man up” come up when you show a slight glimpse of vulnerability. You grow up thinking emotions are not for you therefore you master your ability to suppress your emotions. You will believe this as you get told that it’s ok to think this way.

You grow up understanding that the only thing that matters is being ‘physical’, and that the emotional part should be saved for your wife or someone significant in your life. Even with that, no one teaches you how to approach that aspect of your life. You are not encouraged to be the ‘open’ father, you are instead expected to be less emotionally inclined and more financially focused on putting food on the table. So even if you had a father at home, he was somewhat expected to be ‘cold’, therefore your idea of a ‘good’ father is probably a cold, ‘unemotional’ one because that is all that you know. This perception is formed through a lack of knowledge which I believe is setting us back as men, especially in comparison to whoever we may choose to build a family with. Mind you, this woman that we will one day marry is lights ahead of us emotionally, yet we are expected to build a solid family with her. In a nutshell, we are not equipped to build with her emotionally, she actually has to come down to our emotional level for that relationship to work.

As men, we express ourselves physically, that’s how we were brought up. From playing soccer, to being competitive with regard to our bodies; who could run faster, who has the bigger penis, who is stronger, because all those things add up to ‘being picked’ by the opposite sex. All those things add up to why we are brought into this world; to protect and provide. Even the image of the perfect man is never a short, light-skinned, fat guy – it’s always a tall, dark-skinned, well-built man.

When it comes to sex and relationships, things become interesting. When we are in a relationship and we are fighting, frustration sets in because we are both trying to get our points across. Men and women communicate differently, for men if you keep on cutting me off while I am trying to explain myself it means that you are not interested in my story, therefore you don’t value my opinion which leads me to believe that you don’t value me. Let’s say we have been fighting for a couple of days, and maybe we don’t see each other for a couple of days, when we do finally sort things out, the first thing we want to do is to have sex. It’s affirmation that we are good. Even when we are not good, men usually want to have sex. To men, sex during a fight means that I am aware that we are fighting but we are going to be ok, you won’t leave me because of this ‘misunderstanding’, assuming that misunderstanding is not infidelity or impregnating someone outside this relationship. Women on the other hand may not be so keen because we are fighting, she may think ‘why would I want to have sex with you while we are fighting?’, she might not feel like opening herself up to you at that stage.

Eventually when the sex happens, we will bring all the frustrations out onto the bed or the car or the kitchen counter. We express our frustrations through sex, we will throw you around, we will have sex everywhere, we may even go on for longer than the usual, and most-likely give better sex than our usual routine because of this frustration. And when all is said and done, everyone is satisfied, only then do I as a man know that the issue is ‘resolved’. When you bring the same issue up again, we get surprised, because in our world this issue was resolved – we even had sex to confirm this.