Men and Women and Emotional Support in Relationships

[Vive]

I've noticed something lately, along with a couple of my friends:

Imagine something has happened and it opens op an emotional wound or creates a new one: perhaps you have relationship troubles, maybe you're young and there are often problems at home, you got into a bad fight with your friend which leads to you losing touch with them, your heart is broken, you name it.

Now picture what this would entail in the average close friendship between girls/women. If she is a hugger perhaps she will receive a couple of hugs from her friend, her friend will talk it out with her. They discuss what happens, what was experienced. Or it might look different and you might shit talk the other party to help your friend feel better. Whatever it is, in general, your friends make feelings openly discussable, and validate your feelings. No matter if you feel small, disgusted, frustrated, sad or weak, the message is that these feelings are okay to have and it is okay to share them, no matter what type of feeling it is.

Let's now look at close friendships between boys/men. If something obviously seriously bad happens, your friends will probably supportive and understanding of your frustrations and sadness. They will let you deal with whatever it is you need to deal with, but generally from a distance, perhaps with occasional advice and reassurances, but that's mostly it. Showing Anger is definitely accepted and perhaps your friends share in your anger and reflect that back to you, perhaps it might make you work through it. If you're sad though, or feel weak, depressed, jealous and want to discuss that with your friends or vent to your friends, you might have a tough time, because they likely don't want to, or they might wish to just offer you direct solutions for problems. When you get truly vulnerable, emotionally, your friends freeze up and don't really know what do with that. So it might not be discussed any further.

(These are just examples, but I hope you get the gist I'm trying to get at)
-----------------
Now I am definitely not saying all male-male friendships are like this. In fact I do experience a sense of emotional support with a male friend of mine, whom I consider to be my best friend. I do have to say that in my experience this is quite rare. Even though it is there I can see it is difficult for my friend to share his emotions, mostly also because of his pride. It just makes me sad that there's so little emotional support between men. I mean we are all human, we all need to vent and we all need some emotional support from time to time.

So, my questions are:

What do you think of this, do you disagree/agree with me that there is little emotional support in friendships between men?

What is your experience with this?

Do you think this emotional support is necessary?
And if so, why ?

[ledyanoy]

Vive

[ledyanoy]

[Animal]

What do you think of this, do you disagree/agree with me that there is little emotional support in friendships between men?

I completely agree with what you say here. Of course, it falls within a bell curve. There are some men who are super emotionally supportive with each other, and some women that are hardasses. But overall yeah.

The type of guys I'm friends with do open up to their guy friends, though. I'll get into that in a moment.

What is your experience with this?

I have three close male friends who were never lovers, though all are heterosexual. We became close, respectively, around age 11, 15, and 20. I'm 39 now (but ageless!) .. and the friendships have lasted through all these years. What gives it depth for me is that we work on things together, but also emotionally support each other in the meantime.

One was my art muse who I worked with on music, arts, ideas and videos - he influenced the complex and lovable antagonist in my trilogy. One is the coauthor who writes languages for that world and we worked together on the world building for 18 years now. The one I met at 11 is my soul-brother, a life coach who explores spirituality, something that has shaped my life tremendously. When we're together, we delve deep into this. In all three cases, we can trust each other with any emotions that come up, but it isn't the pinnacle of the conversation. We don't get together merely "to talk" (unless an incident is SUPER pertinent like you describe with men); the emotional support comes up incidentally while we focus on interests. My husband Daeva is supremely supportive, but we also prefer talking about concepts that we are always working on. He has influenced me deeply in shaping my books and together we delve into archetypes, a major interest that has become important in my creative work, too.

Another close male friend of mine who I've known since age 21 is on this forum. He also focuses on both emotions and concepts, and is very into processing emotions through archetypes. He definitely has more emotions than I do but it's fun to wade through them because we both speak the language of archetypes. I didn't include him in the first list because we dated long ago. But now our friendship is just as solid and he's the only one that has taken the dive into these projects with me and my current crew.

Before I found the typology internet world, I rarely had female friends that could focus like this, without making everything about people, family and feelings. There have been a few who are fluent in the language of archetypes or are focused on projects and concepts, and I cherish the hell out of them. Meanwhile, over the years, other friends fell through the cracks. One thing I can't fucking stand is "talking about the relationship," "who called who when," "who invited who where," "who cares more about who," "how much do we need each other..." Yawn. I don't want to argue about how much I do or don't care - it makes me stop caring. I am fine with being a sounding board for emotions that don't involve me, but I have zero tolerance for people who insist that their constant onslaught of problems should be more important to me than my work. Even the smartest of women, who once did projects with me, ultimately fell into this trap - with rare exceptions.

Granted, it's likely that I did something to invite this - it's never just one person's fault. But I have been working on it, and learning to pinpoint what doesn't work for me right away before it goes too far - which is why I've found better friends. (Note: some of my old friends who are women are equally awesome, but I mean, the friends I've made now are much better for me than the ones who didn't work out, which includes some that I considered very, very close.)

My current female friends are absolutely tops. We became close through working together on archetypes and the ongoing project of writing better material for enneagram and linking it to cognition and other archetype systems. Now some are mods here. Just as with my male friends, emotional confrontations can come up and we can talk about personal matters openly, but the bulk of the focus is on our shared interests. This is an absolute requirement for me in a friendship. I don't have much to say about other people or children, nor do I want to talk about finances, specific health problems every day, or what we ate for dinner. So people who want that have plenty of other potential friends to choose from.

Do you think this emotional support is necessary?
And if so, why ?

Absolutely. As ledyanoy mentioned, there are different kinds of support, but the "help me with stuff" support is something I avoided as much as possible. I had major autonomy issues - as in, I was TOO autonomous.

I used to kick lovers out after the fun was over so I could sleep soundly and wake up in the morning, fresh and ready for my projects, and unburdened by the need to explain my health routine to anyone. (I thought I was doing them a favor by sparing them from that, too.) I also have this serious chronic illness and although I am always completely honest about its effects on me emotionally and physically in the grand scheme, I often hid the daily details from lovers and boyfriends because it's none of their biz and they can't do anything about it anyway. I trust Daeva to take me to the hospital and I collapse shaking in fear in his arms, and he comforts me. This is something I never thought would happen as long as I live.

As for emotional support, I've had a healthier relationship with that. I am pretty sure my friends are satisfied that I'm adequately supportive, and I feel I can open up to them about emotional stuff, but I really get turned off when a relationship is nothing but support - with no shared vision, exploration or art. That said, it would be hard to focus on a project with someone I'm close to if I had something else on my mind. It's nice to be able to vent (both of us) and get that crap out of the way, so we can focus more completely.

[Animal]

Also I want to add, I probably sound a lot colder than I am, in that post. I don't have a great quantity of friends and never did, but my friendships are quality. The ones that didn't work out broke my heart and there's one in particular I will always love and miss. I always try, and try, and try - for YEARS - doing anything in my power to save a friendship when the friendship was REAL. I mean really.. I let a lot of stuff go and talk things out repeatedly and anything else they want. The problem is I get too dedicated and then I get into my "lines to 2" (coming from 8 and 4) which make me feel like this is my responsibility or this person really needs me. My 5 fix doesnt help since I also feel detached and like I can examine their problems from a distance and not get emotionally involved. This actually works well when the problems don't involve me directly. Like... I can be there for a really close friend whose partner just died, without being brought down myself; provided they respect my time and that sometimes I'm sick or busy. And I can support them for years under such conditions. A real tragedy actually moves me; I dance with the shadows in myself, too, and I love to share that with others.

But then I end up with these very dependent and jealous friends who want to possess all my time, to be the number one closest, to hiss at my other friends, to claim me as their own, to accuse me of not calling back or not being there or not showing up - I have a fucking chronic illness, sorry if I didn't call you back at 3 fucking AM. But this is what they do, they get vampiric. It was only after I gave my all and then some, in these cases, and then finally decided this won't work. I was very up front in each situation about why this won't work, but it wasn't up for debate. In those cases we had already had this debate and what wasnt working for me for a long time and they knew perfectly well that they were ignoring my stated needs. But again, it's not that I need to feel JUSTIFIED in leaving, it's that I DON'T WANT TO leave my close friends. I want to keep them in my life and I value my investments in them for years, and theirs in me, and the shared experience, the love, the shared vocabulary etc. So its' really heartbreaking for me when I finally end it, even though I'm the one to do it. It hurts much more than leaving most of my exes, because in those cases we can often evolve into a friendship after some time to heal apart from each other.

So this is why, for ME it was important to figure out ahead of time who will work and who won't. Instead of jumping in heart first and being drawn to people like a magnet, I had to learn to be more discerning. I am very very picky and discerning, don't get me wrong, but the standards were not perfect - for instance I was drawn to intelligent and interesting people, but now I realize they also need to have a certain type of mindset for it to work. I don't think any of these women are bad people, or that I'm a bad person, per se, though I'm always working on myself. But I don't judge them. I just see that a lot of women believe other women are there to 'support' them, and there's nothing wrong with it - but relationships solely focused on support is just not what I'm looking for.

[Vive]

This is a good point. Support can definitely look different. I think it also really depends on the person, not even on gender per se, although I think gender does have some influence on it at least, by virtue of society's ideas on what support should look like per gender. Some friends don't appreciate hugs, or emotional venting and some just want to work things alone. It's good to hear your husband found so much support in a tough time.

Perhaps the problems start appearing when your preferences of the sort of support you want/need does not match up at all with what people of your gender are willing to give in general. I do think that everyone can learn a little from experiencing and learning to appreciate different ways of showing and receiving emotional support.

Before I found the typology internet world, I rarely had female friends that could focus like this, without making everything about people, family and feelings. There have been a few who are fluent in the language of archetypes or are focused on projects and concepts, and I cherish the hell out of them. Meanwhile, over the years, other friends fell through the cracks. One thing I can't fucking stand is "talking about the relationship," "who called who when," "who invited who where," "who cares more about who," "how much do we need each other..." Yawn. I don't want to argue about how much I do or don't care - it makes me stop caring. I am fine with being a sounding board for emotions that don't involve me, but I have zero tolerance for people who insist that their constant onslaught of problems should be more important to me than my work. Even the smartest of women, who once did projects with me, ultimately fell into this trap - with rare exceptions.

Granted, it's likely that I did something to invite this - it's never just one person's fault. But I have been working on it, and learning to pinpoint what doesn't work for me right away before it goes too far - which is why I've found better friends.
Now some are mods here. Just as with my male friends, emotional confrontations can come up and we can talk about personal matters openly, but the bulk of the focus is on our shared interests. This is an absolute requirement for me in a friendship. I don't have much to say about other people or children, nor do I want to talk about finances, specific health problems every day, or what we ate for dinner. So people who want that have plenty of other potential friends to choose from.

I used to kick lovers out after the fun was over so I could sleep soundly and wake up in the morning, fresh and ready for my projects, and unburdened by the need to explain my health routine to anyone. (I thought I was doing them a favor by sparing them from that, too.) I also have this serious chronic illness and although I am always completely honest about its effects on me emotionally and physically in the grand scheme, I often hid the daily details from lovers and boyfriends because it's none of their biz and they can't do anything about it anyway. I trust Daeva to take me to the hospital and I collapse shaking in fear in his arms, and he comforts me. This is something I never thought would happen as long as I live.

As for emotional support, I've had a healthier relationship with that. I am pretty sure my friends are satisfied that I'm adequately supportive, and I feel I can open up to them about emotional stuff, but I really get turned off when a relationship is nothing but support - with no shared vision, exploration or art. That said, it would be hard to focus on a project with someone I'm close to if I had something else on my mind. It's nice to be able to vent (both of us) and get that crap out of the way, so we can focus more completely.

Edit: I just saw your new post, what I wrote above was aimed at your first post. What is next does focus on your second post:

@Volcana
I did not think you were being cold, just honest about where you are at. It sucks when people claim all of your time and attention without taking into account your needs. And it sucks even more when you are invested and these people are good friends and you know you have to break away from them when they are toxic. I had some friends who asked for my advice and help, but they kept doing that and their problems kept resurfacing, without paying any attention to my needs even if I made the clear. Granted, I was taking on more problems than I could handle, thinking I could easily solve whatever problems they were dealing with. That was my error of judgement, but I just learned that people who absolutely cannot respect your needs, even after repeated warnings, just need to be cut out of your life.

[Animal]

Exactly! You said it perfectly a trade deal. People often have ideas of what a friendship "should be." I was always offended by the idea that "a friend is a person who does X, Y and Z." No. No. No. Every person is an individual, with different needs. Every friendship is comprised of at least two people (sometimes also a larger circle) - and then the nature of the friendship forms organically around their needs and the specific nature of the bond. So how can someone tell me "A friend should _________ do X" ... ??!! Who is the boss of what "a friend" is, anyway?

In the situations that ended up badly, I had asked them many times: "If you believe a friend should do XYZ, then what do you want from me, considering I don't/can't do those things?"

Somehow I've never had a guy friend do this to me, though it has happened in romantic relationships. But in romance, I've had the type of relationships where we both express ourselves completely, so these differences tend to be on the table from before the beginning. I don't feel as much need to lay out immediate 'needs, disclaimers and boundaries' with friends - I just let it evolve organically, which may be a mistake. I'm a heart-gut person, and I follow my passion, which can lead to beautiful things but can also lead me into corners where people are expecting me to behave based on some arbitrary modern social code that I've never heard of, because it doesn't exist on my home planet.

Thanks I also have some old friends who are amazing. And also I would be fine if I had no friends at all, but when I do have them I cherish them to the moon and back. But you know, I still have my own vision in life as well, and it doesn't include 3 hour phone calls to talk about our feelings every night.

Purrr :3 . Yeah. I think I'm ok with asking people things... sometimes... but I tend to imagine I'm capable of doing everything myself, which made some of my past partners feel useless. Daeva does things for me that I cannot do on my own.

So glad you agree

Edit: I just saw your new post, what I wrote above was aimed at your first post. What is next does focus on your second post:

@Volcana
I did not think you were being cold, just honest about where you are at. It sucks when people claim all of your time and attention without taking into account your needs. And it sucks even more when you are invested and these people are good friends and you know you have to break away from them when they are toxic. I had some friends who asked for my advice and help, but they kept doing that and their problems kept resurfacing, without paying any attention to my needs even if I made the clear. Granted, I was taking on more problems than I could handle, thinking I could easily solve whatever problems they were dealing with. That was my error of judgement, but I just learned that people who absolutely cannot respect your needs, even after repeated warnings, just need to be cut out of your life.

Ugh I'm sorry to hear you went through that too. Yeah.. I guess that's the long and short of it. We can only do what we can do, and if people can't accept that.... what choice have we but to wish them the best and move on?

[Animal]

So, to bring this back to your OP, my sense of things is that women are often pressured to show more support than they are able in female-female friendships, whereas men are often pressured to have it together, be "a man" (eyeroll) and never look for support, in male-male friendships. Sad.

[ledyanoy]

This is a good point. Support can definitely look different. I think it also really depends on the person, not even on gender per se, although I think gender does have some influence on it at least, by virtue of society's ideas on what support should look like per gender.

Some friends don't appreciate hugs, or emotional venting and some just want to work things alone. It's good to hear your husband found so much support in a tough time.

Perhaps the problems start appearing when your preferences of the sort of support you want/need does not match up at all with what people of your gender are willing to give in general. I do think that everyone can learn a little from experiencing and learning to appreciate different ways of showing and receiving emotional support.

Yeah, I was speaking in generalizations, perhaps it doesn't get to the heart of the issue of people having trouble finding/getting/accepting support.

If you're willing to elaborate:
What exactly makes you distrust support from others?
What makes support from women especially suspect for you?

Okay ? I will come back to your questions.

[ledyanoy]

Vive

Answers to your questions

Vive asked:

[ledyanoy]

https://biblereasons.com/trusting-people/




A salient word to me in this psalm is confidence.

Psalm 118:9 It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in princes.

I like this one a lot. We are all frail.

[Animal]

Yeah, this is very similar to what I was getting at - that the problem isn't "all women are bad" or "the women in my life are horrible." The problem is that either societally or biologically, or some mix of both; we are hard-wired and conditioned to look for certain things from certain genders. This becomes really complex with transgenderism, homosexuality etc, but that's another story. In a more traditional sense I believe women treat women differently than they treat men, and vice versa. So our experience with women as women may be different from our experiences with men. Our individual personalities determine which trend works out better for friendship, though of course there are exceptions.

[Vive]

I think you're right about that. I don't think it is talked about much.


I think I get what you're saying. It reminds me of the saying: "The road to hell is often paved with good intentions" I say this is true insofar those with good intentions don't pay proper heed to what they are doing. When I was practicing giving parts of a therapy (I'm studying for my Masters' in Neuropsychology) earlier this year I found myself struggling to find the right response to the patient and the family, which in this case were others students playing that role (they were pretty good actors). I knew what I wanted to say, but I was afraid I would express it such that it would upset the patient and their family. Afterwards my teacher talked to me and talked about what she had observed. As I told her about my difficulties in trying to phrase things correctly she told me: "It doesn't necessarily matter how you say something, as long as you do it with good intentions and pay attention to the reactions you're getting." I think she was right and it did help me a lot in getting my point across more easily.

Perhaps you're right in that we perhaps cannot all learn to appreciate these other forms of support, but I think what we can do is learn to appreciate people's genuine intention and their attempt to support us. Not everybody can know you well. What I've found best is just to recognize somebody's intention and then proceed to tell them what does work for me.

I think there's a lot of truth to your axiom. The only one who is guaranteed to be there for as long as you live is you. Trusting or relying upon others is a risk, but there are some pointers that can help you to see whether it's worth the risk. Some people turn out untrustworthy and unreliable and some don't. Even if I make a poor choice, it's a learning experience and extra info for scoping out the next person.

Yeah, personal information is sacred. Though I'd say you not everything can be truly protected. I am very easy to read and by nature am quite reactive. As you've mentioned people have trampled and shit all over things that were dear and personal. However, when I fully owned whatever it was they had shat upon and openly owned it and spoke about it, they could never do such a thing again. Some things are better kept to oneself, though.

@Volcana

Yeah, this is very similar to what I was getting at - that the problem isn't "all women are bad" or "the women in my life are horrible." The problem is that either societally or biologically, or some mix of both; we are hard-wired and conditioned to look for certain things from certain genders. This becomes really complex with transgenderism, homosexuality etc, but that's another story. In a more traditional sense I believe women treat women differently than they treat men, and vice versa. So our experience with women as women may be different from our experiences with men. Our individual personalities determine which trend works out better for friendship, though of course there are exceptions.

I think this is a neat summary of the issues, experiences and an explanation for some of them.