Ernest Hemingway said, 

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self." 

Welcome to The Soul Podcast. I’m Stacey Wheeler.

Today I’m going to talk about the little recognized truth of being a man. There will be details you ladies will also find useful. Much of what we’re going to talk about comes from experiments done by women; experiments that gave them a new way of seeing the male experience.  

The male reality in our world is a competitive one. Though we may not think of it that way, us men are conditioned from a young age to prove our value, to be stronger and faster and better. We’re conditioned to stand out in a way that allows us to be seen and (preferably) admired. We compete all the time. Sometimes silently and sometimes boisterously. Maybe it’s in a game of darts, or pool, or maybe in business. Now there are places you can drink beer and throw axes. There seems to always be new ways to compete. Society has conditioned us to try and prove we’re the better man.

But what does it mean to be a man? Do men even realize we’re constantly competing? And do any of us understand the massive downside to all this conditioning? 

The author of the best-selling book, Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert dressed as a man for a week as an experiment. She wanted to see how men are treated differently by society. She didn’t explicitly say –but I think she was trying to show how men have it better than women. The results surprised her. To prep for her experiment, Gilbert had a male friend help her get dressed and prep her to act like and look like a man. When she was dressed and disguised her male friend told her she looked the part but she needed to pull herself back six inches from her eyes, if she wanted to look right. This wasn’t something she had anticipated. She understood that men were more reserved but she’d never considered the depth of it. Men reside further back inside themselves than women, who reside further forward. So, she had to learn to be reserved -even in her eyes. She’d never thought of this and it was a realization point for her. Men also don’t think of this. They simply do it. Men don’t choose to be emotionally withdrawn, it’s expected and they are conditioned to be this way. 

Gilbert’s experiment was to spent a week presenting as a man. In that time, she learned a lot about privilege and expectation. She learned about conditioned gender roles. Much of what she observed didn’t surprise her. One thing that did was that, though being a man afforded her a different flavor of respect in the world, it was not enjoyable. She told a friend that when she pulled herself back from her eyes it was as though her ‘soul went dim’. She said doing her best to be like a man led to ‘the loneliest, saddest week’ she’s ever spent. 

This experience for Gilbert was a classic case of not knowing what it's like to be another person until you walk a mile in their shoes. For her, it gave her a deeper understanding of the emotional life of men –compared to the emotional life of women. And it made her sad. 

Gilbert’s experiment also provides an important reminder to men. You see, we spend all our time in male bodies and in a male reality. It’s challenging to see the limitations of our experience because we only see it from the internal perspective. But being stoic is a conditioned way of being. It’s less by choice than by a life of training. The result of this training and conditioning is that we are emotionally distant in a way – even though we may not think of it that way. 

The Author, Norah Vincent spent a year and a half  dressed as (and presenting as) a man. She describes the experience in her book, Self-Made Man: One Woman's Year Disguised as a Man. (I’ll share a link to the book). 

Vincent described experiencing intense loneliness and isolation as a man. She recognized something she hadn’t as a woman. By immersing herself in male culture, she saw that men often struggle with deep emotional repression and that they don’t have the same level of intimacy in close relationships. She found this profoundly sad. She observed that men are under constant pressure to conform to societal expectations of masculinity. She saw how this leads them to suppress their emotions -and how doing this can result in feelings of isolation and disconnection. She felt this was especially evident in how men often find it difficult to express vulnerability or seek emotional support.

Vincent also experienced the aggressive and competitive dynamics that men regularly navigate. She said,

"It’s as if men are always on guard, always ready for a challenge, as if their very identity is at stake with every interaction." 

She found keeping up this level of intensity exhausting and demoralizing. The lack of close, emotionally supportive relationships was one of the most challenging and depressing aspects of her experiment.

She said,

"What I’d experienced as a man…was not the soul-deadening callousness I’d imagined but the exact opposite: a suffocating solitude." 

A Suffocating solitude. Men may not notice that reality. But it’s there. 

In her reflections, Vincent noted that while men may benefit from certain societal privileges, they also suffer under the weight of these expectations, leading to significant emotional and mental health challenges​. 

And the statistics show that the emotional and mental health challenges she recognized are real. 

According to the World Health Organization, global suicide rates are about 3 times higher in men than in women. For example, in the United States, men accounted for nearly 80% of all suicide deaths in 2020.

The American Psychological Association says men are less likely than women to use mental health services. They linked this reluctance to societal norms that discourage men from expressing vulnerability. These societal norms make men less likely to seek help when they are emotionally suffering.

And a 2021 survey by the American Enterprise Institute found that men reported feeling lonely and socially isolated at a higher rate than women. Many say they lack close friends or confidants. Close social bonds are critical for emotional well-being. So, this isolation can make mental health struggles worse. We are -in a sense- trapped by the expectations of society. Vincent recognized this…

"Men are, in fact, imprisoned by their roles as well, just as women are.” She wrote. “They are held captive by their need to perform, to be the provider, the protector, the strong one, to keep all emotions in check."

It sounds grim, doesn’t it? But what can we do with this knowledge? 

For women, it’s helpful to understand why men are reflexively the way we are. It helps women have empathy for the male journey. It helps them to know they can -and should- draw their male friends out. Men can be made to feel safe expressing emotions to women sometimes more easily than men, when encouraged to. And when a man is acting in ways you don’t understand, you may relate it back to this and then it will make more sense. 

There is a precious gift in this research for us men, as well. This is because we don’t often think of why we are the way we are. We simply are. Our reality has always been our reality. From our first day, we were wrapped in a blue blanket and the conditioning to be a boy began. From a young age we were to be a “good boy” and told to “be tough,” “don’t be a cry baby” –and to “put on our big boy pants.”  And these messages increase in intensity as we grow. 

The messages are all around us in the culture. And the men we’ve looked up to for generations underline this thinking. They remind us what we have already been told. 

Bruce Lee said,

"A man’s success is measured by what he is willing to sacrifice to achieve it."

There is a great deal of truth in that statement. And we are biologically inclined to be masculine. Testosterone is a big driver but it is not the whole picture. We’ve all known men who learned to lean into their softer side while maintaining their masculine side. We respect and appreciate men who can find a balance between the masculine and softer side. We respect vulnerability from a man we know is strong. 

But Bruce Lee’s statement rings true to us on a surface level as well. We may not fully embody the idea of sacrifice but we seem to know it’s expected of us. 

In his excellent book The Way of the Superior man, David Deida recognized our internal struggle as well. He noted,

"A man’s greatest fear is that he is not good enough. His greatest fear is that he will be found out to be a failure, and everything he has built will come crumbling down." 

At a deep level, most men carry a fear of not being good enough. I do and have wrestled with this my whole life. Though most of my life I didn’t know it was there. Like so many other things, our insecurities are such a part of us that it’s easy to not recognize them. Our insecurities have been stuffed over years of development. They are unseen and unacknowledged. Culture has made us this way. From birth we’ve evolved to hide our emotions… even from ourselves.

Sadly, society encourages us to do this -in subtle ways.  

Think about it for a moment. Men showing their emotions is used as something to laugh at in our culture. Think of the times a guy shows emotion to another man in the movies, TV shows or commercials. It’s usually used as a way to get a laugh. When a drunk guy says “I love you man.” to his friend in a film or commercial, we laugh about it because we all know a guy like that… one that only feels safe expressing his softer feelings when he’s drinking. And we know that’s how most men are. But we laugh. It’s beautiful to be soft and loving… yet we use it as a punchline. 

Another example is the term “man flu.”? This is something women occasionally say when a guy gets sick and allows himself to express his discomfort. Instead of allowing him his moment, he is mocked with the tag, “man flu.” This may be the same man who cuts his hand working on something, wraps it in duct tape and finishes the job before cleaning the wound. 

When a woman complains of discomfort, to mock her in this moment would be considered insensitive. Yet mocking men’s weakness is acceptable in our culture for some reason. Men are indirectly told they’re being weak. So, perhaps they think twice the next time they’re sick –and don’t make a fuss about it. But we can see from the research, men are most in need of expressing themselves. 

As men, we’re expected to constantly compete to be better than the next guy. But no one can always win. There will always be someone stronger. So, competition is the wrong attitude.

As Hemmingway observed,

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self."

Being better than our former self is the way we truly improve. And it’s much more fulfilling than to be constantly in competition with others. To be constantly in completion with others is to be constantly failing. To be in competition with our former selves –on the other hand – leaves us feeling better and stronger as we slowly defeat the less impressive parts of ourselves. One of the greatest ways we become superior to our former self is to become genuine. For most of us that means being vulnerable. And for men, vulnerability is an unwelcome (and often frightening) space. 

The research done by these two women offers a mirror for men and a window of understanding for women. It reminds us men are not born stoic in our way of being. And that the male existence is sometimes a lonely one. It reminds us men don’t have to stay in the loneliness and solitude we sometimes reside in… and most of us have become familiar with. 

We’re living in a cage we’ve been conditioned to construct for ourselves. But in recognizing it, we’re invited to grant ourselves empathy for the challenges of this male journey. We’re invited to tear down the walls of the cage. 

Men, consider today the ways you can start to bravely step out of the cage. It’s good for your mental health, good for society and great for all your personal relationships. 

I love you, man! 

And I love you ladies for caring.