Let’s stop dancing around what everybody can feel but few want to say: Men are not suffering because women won’t let them cry.They are sufferin
Let’s stop dancing around what everybody can feel but few want to say:
Photo by Penda Kamati
Men are not suffering because women won’t let them cry.
They are suffering because other men will not let them be human.
Women have been holding emotional space for men since the beginning of time—listening, soothing, forgiving, and absorbing the damage when those unspoken feelings turn into explosions.
The truth is, men already talk—they just don’t talk about the things that could save their lives.
They will talk about:
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sports
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sneakers
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celebrities
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cars
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other men’s money
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bodies they want to “conquer”
But here’s the secret nobody admits:
It is fun to talk about sports, but that is still somebody else’s dream.
Some men can memorize every statistic about another man’s destiny, but can’t speak one honest sentence about their own fears, insecurities, failures, or longings.
Men NEED spaces to talk about what is blocking their dreams—not just cheer for men who made theirs.
Because every time a man detours into somebody else’s ambition, he is hiding from the quiet truth he doesn’t want to face:
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Why am I afraid to fail?
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Why do I feel small?
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Why do I sabotage love?
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Why can’t I forgive myself?
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Where did this anger come from?
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Why do I feel so alone in a crowded room?
That silence can be the birthplace of violence.
🧱 Issues Men Must Reckon With Together
These are not women’s burdens. They are men’s unfinished assignments:
1. Accountability Without Collapse
Learning how to face consequences without turning into the victim.
2. Respect Without Transaction
Understanding that women are not emotional mules, nor repair stations for male feelings.
3. Fatherhood Beyond Presence
Facing fears around fatherhood, so the children don’t inherit the wounds they did.
4. Brotherhood Without Bravado
Replacing teasing and ego with honesty, curiosity, and truth-telling.
5. Anger With a Map
Finding the source of rage instead of pouring it into partners, children, and strangers.
6. Power Without Predation
Learning that domination is not leadership.
It is pain dressed up as authority.
7. Sexuality Without Entitlement
Discussing desire without reducing humans to objects.
8. Emotional Responsibility
Stop outsourcing the entire emotional labor of life to women.
9. Shame Without Violence
Men must learn to sit with imperfection without destroying anyone who witnesses it.
10. Purpose Without Comparison
They must name their dreams—not live vicariously through athletes, rappers, or influencers, while their own visions rot on the vine.
🔥 Why It Matters
Unresolved wounds don’t justify harm—but they explain it.
And explanation is the doorway to transformation.
Men who refuse to address their inner storms will always find someone else to blame, someone else to dominate, someone else to wound.
Not because they are monsters, but because they are untended gardens growing thorns instead of fruit.
🗣️ My Call to the Men With Microphones
If you can gather an audience to discuss touchdowns, contracts, and highlight reels, you have a golden opportunity to gather an audience to discuss:
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father wounds
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fear of failure
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loneliness
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grief
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purpose
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betrayal
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accountability
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healing
Those are not soft topics.
Those are the foundations of a life for generations. This is legacy work. This growth will outlive you.
What the world needs now is soul commentary—men speaking from their chests, not safe predictable spaces the world expects.
Could it be, those men see women saying unpredictable things, making statements about our health and safety, telling stories in our own language and checking people when they dare to police us…….. and those men wonder when they get to speak freely? Where is their space? Those shout outs may not be for us at all but they may be shout outs to fellow men.
Help!
Men do not need more women carrying their feelings.
They need other men brave enough to face what’s eating them alive.
And until men build rooms where truth is welcome, the world will remain full of homes where women and children pay the price for someone else’s silence.