We Give An Inch... You Take A Foot

On Monday my psychology professor said something that struck me. She said that men are more emotional than women. As I've matured I've noticed that as much as I may not want to express it, I'll feel emotions nonetheless. My professor believed that men don't express themselves as much because of the reaction they may fear of a significant other. She said that a lot of times women say they want openness and they get it, but when they do their reaction to whatever it may be might not be the right one.

As she spoke I really began to relate. Showing emotions is something men aren't bred to do. So obviously a man having to show emotion in some cases has to involve learning. You have to be comfortable and it takes time. For a woman, she's encouraged to be a woman and be emotional by her peers, her home, and society. There isn't any criticism for a woman being emotional, it's simply seen as second nature. There's obviously exceptions to this as there may be overly emotional men and under emotional women by society's standards. Nevertheless those two groups are in the minority, they may relate to you.

Sometimes you may be in a relationship in which someone complains that you're not communicating enough. This is probably a very frequent occurrence, and as I've said before some of these things need to be learned and encouraged. Sometimes I know for the fellas it seems nothing may not be good enough. I know personally that when I started opening up more to someone it was still said that i was holding back too much. It confused me because I had thought I was getting better. Maybe what I wanted to hear was more encouragement, something to the effect of "hey thanks for opening up a little more." There's nothing wrong with some positive reinforcement. If anything that only promotes more openness and positivity.

My point today is that when you get a little bit of vulnerability from a guy, understand to him, it's a big step. What's and inch to you, may be a foot for him. You have to understand that being that open all of the time is out of his element, and a variety of factors may have attributed to that. I'm asking for patience and understanding. And with a little encouragement and time, your man will be okay opening up more, but you can't just pull all of that out of us at one time. Just a little food for thought, Y'all be good.