Men Need to Express Their Feelings

Printed July 11, 1985. A friend of mine once asked me to speak to a group of men on marriage. He said to choose the most fitting topic I could think of to help them in their marriages.

After much thought, and because it was a Christian group, I decided to talk on “It’s Tough to Be Tender.” I quoted the Bible, which states that as disciples of Jesus Christ, men are to become known as a loving people. I then read Paul’s famous commentary on love and noted that love, among other things, means we should be patient, kind, unselfish, and not easily provoked.

One of the men in the group stated that it sounded like a pretty passive person. Someone else even suggested such a person may be perceived as a weakling. Others agreed. But I anticipated such a response. Men who become religious are going to struggle with some issues of masculinity in our contemporary society.

A few years ago I was conducting another marriage seminar for a group of married couples. We were discussing love, and I observed it was difficult for many men to tell their wives they love them. I asked those attending if it was true, and if so, why.

Almost everyone agreed that men do not tell their wives enough that they are loved. As to why, some suggested it was unmanly or not masculine. One wife suggested, “Men are jut not that way.” Still another man joked that he didn’t have to say it; his wife already knew.

There was a pause and a moment of silence. Then one young husband commented, “The reason I don’t tell my wife I love her very often is because then she will know I have feelings.”

I thought to myself, “And how tragic it would be, if, indeed, you did have feelings and never let her know how you felt.”

Many husbands, I believe, have mistakenly come to believe that it is not manly to be tender and caring. To be a contemporary male, according to Madison Avenue, a man must ride horses in a snowstorm and smoke a certain type of cigarette, spend every possible weekend in the mountains drinking beer with his buddies on a campout, and knock down opponents in competitive sports, all to prove he is a man.

While speaking to the group of husbands I wrote the following on the chalkboard: “TLC rather than RT.”

They asked me what it meant and I said, “Tender love and care, rather than rough treatment.”

When most American males were in high school, we had the mistaken notion that young women responded to toughness, abrasiveness, and even cruelty. Supposedly, “Every girl wanted a caveman.” Many of us thought the worse you treated a girl, the more she would like you. And after we married, some of us took that philosophy into the relationship.

Most men do not realize today that women respond to strength, not weakness, and women define tenderness, love and caring as a strength. There are few other things a husband can do to draw his wife near to him, physically and emotionally, than to be kind and caring to her and their children.