Imagine that you are a child, and you are born into a family that does not make jokes. No humor allowed; if you hint at it, you are gawked at, punished, or belittled. Adults and peers alike push this idea, with bullies finding you weird or weak if they find you laughing. So you learn to bury your sense of humor. You do all that you can to not find humor in the little things or the big things; sometimes, when you’re confident you’re all alone, you let yourself laugh a little. Maybe you watch comedies on TV and wonder what it would be like to laugh like they did, but you quickly burrow those thoughts away and move on.
But then you graduate from school and enter the adult world, and suddenly your adult friends are sharing jokes with you. You meet a romantic partner and all they want to do with you is laugh. You have a child, and you’re dying to just fall to the ground in giggles with them. But you’re reminded, yet again, that laughter is weak. So you don’t. You put up your walls, you refuse to engage with anyone that is laughing, because you don’t know how and you’re scared of what would happen if you did. Even as all those around you beg and beg for you to feel safe to laugh with them, you just can’t allow yourself to. And it hurts so deeply.
It’s hard to imagine a life without laughter.
This is what many men in our society deal with everyday with accessing their emotions. From the first day we can talk, we’re told “big boys don’t cry!”, “man up!”, “don’t be a little girl!”. And we’re not allowed to access those soft, tender emotions that make us human.
As a man, I know that pain very well. And I also know the relief that comes from finally accessing those feelings and feeling human again. It’s precisely the reason I chose the field of Couple and Family Therapy; not only to allow our boys and our men to feel safe in their core human emotions, but you help them be good friends, good partners, and good fathers. As often as I see the weight lifted off of my male clients throughout our work, I also see the life that is breathed into the relationships they have, and the joy that everyone in their life feels as they are finally able to connect with the men that they love so dearly.
If you are reading this with a male loved one in mind, be patient and kind with them. Discuss what therapy would mean to them; not because there is something “wrong” with them, but because you want to grow with them. And if you are a man reading this, I want you to know that change is possible, and therapists like myself are here to help lift that weight off your shoulders, just like it was lifted off of mine.
