Wednesday whispers; What really lies behind a successful man? A woman or a bunch of expectations

Wednesday whispers will be a segment where we can all talk on subjects society views as touchy on today's episode 

What we have always heard is “Behind every successful man is a woman” this quote is written by Eleanor Roosevelt I can imagine the men smirking at this statement because the masculine does not believe so much in this sentence rather they have come to rephrase the sentence to suit the situation “behind a successful man is a bunch of expectations and responsibilities”.

                                    

When we talk about men we are talking about a socially constructed and ever changing gender identity, masculinity refers to behavior and culture associated with being a man and the several ways of being a man, boys learn early on in their life what the society expects from their gender  for example society mocks and ridicules a boy when he cries from being flogged “boys don’t cry” but it’s okay for girls to cry because maybe they are allowed to express their pain, these boys that don’t cry grow into hard and cold  hearted men who will see girls that cry as being overly dramatic and see the few men that cry as being weak and cowardly  because they unfortunately have lost touch with their feelings.

Our society contributes largely to this differentiated opinion the saying that “boys will be boys” is detrimental to the quality of men produced in this generation, we need to start recognizing that men are also human who want to feel, and express what they feel but somehow our society has succeeded in silencing our men, you will not believe how many times a man sits in his car, on his bed, in the bathroom, in the living room and holds in his tears because he is so stressed , lost, confused, hurt, or ready to give up, but when he shows his face again he looks perfectly fine and unbothered yet he still manages to smile and go about his business like nothing happened, men are some of the most resilient, overlooked, and in the mind under-appreciated to go through so much, it is this same men that juggle activities as a single father but on mother’s day you don’t see posts that say “happy mother’s day to my dad blah blah” they don’t take as much credit as they deserve, so many songs composed to appreciate mothers yet a few are credited to fathers.

We should let men speak on their mental health, let’s ask how they really feel, be interested in how they are doing some difficulties influence the mental health and the thought of not being able to share their fear and weaknesses with someone forces them to put on huge walls act all toughened up like they can really handle it since traditionally traits like strength, stoicism, dominance and control are perceived as masculine traits, along the line all this burden gets so heavy that they cannot bear to get by another day then perhaps they commit suicide and everyone will still wonder how he could commit suicide because in their words he looked fine just a day before. For men to behave and be forced to conform with these societal expectations is like caging them when they behave in a way that conforms to these expectations of self-reliance, power and being in control is associated with increased distress and poorer mental health, also men who feel in one way or the other that they are unable to openly speak about emotions may be less able to recognize symptoms of mental health problems in themselves reducing the possibility of reaching out for support.

I have a friend who is a Mental health therapist so i am speaking based on facts and statistics when I say the population of men who seek psychological therapies can be described as a ratio 2:8. When men discover they cannot reach out for help concerning their mental health they carry the bitterness, guilt, grieve, disappointment everywhere they go hence they tend to display them negatively for example drinking excessively, violence, womanizing, rape, crime and ultimately suicide.

When we advocate for equality between the feminine and masculine gender then we might as well consider giving them a chance to express themselves without stigmatizing their mental illness or gender let men express themselves without making them feel like failures or like they have committed a grave crime to their gender, like Micheal Bolton sang "sometimes in our lives we all have pains we all have sorrows, lean on me when you're not strong I'll be your friend I'll help you carry on" there's a limit to the burden a person is allowed to bear.  Don't comman kee yourself 

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