It’s something that I’m trying to bring myself a bit closer to. I haven’t cried since… Though I find myself closer to allowing myself to do it.ĭid you ever see a girl start crying and three or four females descend and just hug and there’s no discussion no nothing, just ‘it’s okay’, some body contact, a bit of a hug and a ‘thank you’? There might be no explanation, just support. It was something small, like I hadn’t taken the bin out or something and I went into the shower and I just broke down crying and couldn’t stop. I had just left a teaching job, my girlfriend was helping me out massively and I felt like I couldn’t do anything right. It was in November and it was the first time I cried since I’d say I was a teenager. When there’s a problem a woman will say how they feel whereas a man just looks for the solution. Maybe it comes from films where the female is crying and the man is there for her to put her shoulder on. I’m not sure where it comes from, but there’s almost a stereotype that the man must be strong. You’re never more exposed than when you give your true feelings on something. I guess it’s because you just leave yourself so open.
Bruce Springsteen: a story of depression full of hope.Books that every man should read, as recommended by women writers.We can justify it by saying we have more testosterone but I’m not sure that’s the reason… sometimes I think that the physicalness of it all might be linked to men not being good at speaking about feelings.Īre you more inclined to talk about your feelings than when you were younger? And there are men who don’t grow out of that… It’s so ridiculous when you think about it.
There was a stage in adolescence where maybe there was nothing else to do, but sometimes you were almost looking for a fight. It becomes a place where you can make those inappropriate jokes you can’t make in normal society and that breeds a mentality where you start thinking a certain way. I guess the term “boys will be boys” is a justification for bad behaviour. How 20 men will behave in a room with no females changes completely with just one female in the room.
The next thing she’d wallop you and you’d know she meant business, that she could hold her own. Girls and boys played together up to a certain age – you’d be marking a girl – and sometimes a girl would teach you a lesson on the field. It’s a place where you can go and do that safely. It was controlled aggression… Some of the best guys you’d know off the field you’d have the mightiest of battles with on the field. Sometimes we’d say ‘How come my sister gets to stay at home from the bog and we have to go out?’ But we didn’t want to do the inside jobs – washing the dishes or tidying the mess the lads have made, it was more about dodging work.įootball was a great outlet. What did you feel about that at the time? A certain gender did a certain type of job. The work in the home was all done by women.
Traditionally the man did the stuff outside.
So manliness for me was 90per cent of the time about manual labour – mucky hands, walking around in your socks, working hard. All my uncles were turf cutters or mechanics or in construction, some sort of manual labour. We all lived in the same house and all our aunties and uncles were local. I grew up with two sisters, four brothers, my mother, my father and my grandfather. If you would like to add your voice to this series, email did being a man look like to you growing up?
How to be a Man is a series exploring masculinity and the challenges facing men in Ireland today.