A man's silence

"...Eventually a man overcomes his pain, and everything goes back to normal. What women need to understand is that the pain of heartbreak and rejection is very deep..."

So where do men go when they have their hearts broken? To the bar? To the church? To the football field? Is it as easy as it is for men to tell people their problems as it is for women? The simple answer is NO! Men are not like women. While a woman will easily sit in the park shedding tears openly, men will not. So what will men do? 

Difficult to tell what a man will do and since men don't talk much about their problems, not much is known on this. However, being a man, I can tell you a few things a man may do when he is sad or heartbroken. First we have the religious type. The type who will openly cry before the Lord, describing in detail exactly what it is that hurt him and his sincere desire to have the Lord  ease his pain. Then there is the drinking type. This is the type of man who usually calls his buddies for a drink on Fridays and weekends. Once his heart is broken however, he goes to the bar alone. Not wanting company, he will probably head for the counter to drink alone. However, he is usually not alone by the end of the night, and I think you know what I mean. And we have the third type, the monk. This man has taken a vow of silence. He is impossible to break, he will not speak of the heartbreak nor of the girl. This man is secretive, mystical. He will act like he has lost a loved one to the curse of death, and as if his silence is a commemoration of his former lover.

So why do men act so strangely, especially when it comes to women? Why do men hang themselves and get themselves drunk silly instead of just talking to someone to have their problems solved? Well as you probably guessed, men don't like accepting help. The world of men is built around ego and a man's ego is based on his competence in the real world. That is, his ability to solve the problems that face him. If a man is able to solve many problems, especially the ones that not many men can solve, his ego grows. Consider this, you are on your way to a party with your friends when your car breaks down. Assume there are two men in the car and three ladies. The first man tries and fails, then you, the other man tries and succeeds. For women this may not be a big deal, but for men this is. The man who will have fixed the car walks away feeling proud and confident, able to handle a lot of things. The man who fails feels less confident and less competent.

Back to our story, men have an ego that is based on their competence in handling problems. In solving any ordinary problem, a man will do his very best to solve the problem alone. When he fails, he turns to someone he respects for advice. This is especially why men always give advice whenever a person tells them a problem, it is what they are trained to do. If the advice works out, the man is grateful for the help. In most cases, this is what a man will do, but in the case of the matters of the heart, he does not do so. Why?

First of all, men hate being seen as weak, it interferes with the whole "macho" image. It is not custom for a man to speak of matters of the heart, matters of the heart are considered to be a thing for women, the "weaker sex". So when a man speaks of matters of the heart to another man, he often comes across as being too soft, as being a lesser male, a weaker man. These are ideas and thoughts that a man cannot tolerate and is the principal reason why men don't speak of matters of the heart with fellow men.

Secondly, men do not speak of their heartbreaks because this is a problem most men consider to be personal, meaning the man believes that only he alone can solve the problem. While women openly turn to their friends and colleagues for advice, a man will only turn to his best friend for advice. If one is absent, he shall not speak of it to anyone. Reason? Why is the best friend privy to a man's deepest secrets? Well, mostly its because for a man, the best friend is usually the person whom the man has shared stupid seemingly nonsensical experiences with. In simple terms, a man does many things, and only his best friend usually knows and understands these things without judgement. 

But even if a man tells his best friend of his heartbreak, he does not really expect for a solution. Like I said, a man believes that once the relationship is over, no one else can help him fix it, he must be the one to fix it and since the relationship is over, it must mean that he failed to fix it. This is a major cause of depression because men like to be able to fix things. 

Is drinking a solution? No, not really, its just a temporary patch. A brief escape into a fleeting fantasy world that will soon end  but not before the man is prepared to face the truth, the heartbreak, or at least that's what the drinking man hopes. The church man hopes that God must have a deeper purpose for the events that culminated into the heartbreak. He reasons that God has better things in store, or that God will somehow work his mysterious ways to make everything make sense someday. The monk, well, who knows what the monk expects? Maybe he hopes that his silence will bear some hidden meaning that the ex-lover will someday know. Whatever the monk hopes, I cannot fathom. What I can tell you is that men don't really like talking about their problems, they prefer to face them in a mature way as a sign of their competence. Those who do talk about their relationship problems or cry are considered to be weaker men, even though they consider themselves strong and courageous.

Eventually a man overcomes his pain, and everything goes back to normal. What women need to understand is that the pain of heartbreak and rejection is very deep! And men don't react well when it happens.

Some of the ideas in this article are based on the book, Men are from Mars, women are from Venus by John Gray.