When Googling “women’s struggles,” it turns up about 72,600,000 results. When Googling “men’s struggles,” it turns up about 32,800,000. Both are a very large number, but there’s a considerable difference in the number of articles for each gender’s struggles. While women have been very vocal about their struggles and helped provide resources and outlets to help their fellow women, many men don’t feel comfortable opening up about their mental health and suffer alone.
When asked, almost all of the interviewees, high school boys, agreed that they didn’t feel comfortable telling their friends about their struggles, with one saying, “Society has shaped us into hiding our emotions, keeping our problems to ourselves, and fixing them by ourselves. For some of us, we don’t want to open up to women since that will show us as vulnerable, which is what society doesn’t want us to be. That’s the main reason most guys keep their issues to themselves; we don’t want others to see us as extremely sensitive or ‘unmanly.’”
Many of the interviewees said that they were self-conscious about their heights and that they felt pressure to be rich, sexually experienced, happy, and always able to fix everyone’s problems. One person said that they used to feel scared they’d never get another growth spurt and therefore never be in a relationship.
Something that was brought up a few times is expectations in a relationship. One person said, “I believe that men and women need to have the expectation in a relationship that the other person’s personality/who they are will make you a better person.” Many agreed that they hope for a relationship with someone who won’t judge their struggles and who will listen to them and make them feel heard. One of the interviewees mentioned that they believe men and women blame each other for their problems too often and that it only increases the divide between the sexes.
When asked how they cope with their problems, the interviewees said they engage in their hobbies, hang out with the friends that understand them, listen to music, reflect on their problems, and try to figure out what they truly want in life. One of them stated that they, “don’t think the struggles will ever go away, they just kinda faded in with our lives; it’s just a matter of whether we let it interfere with ourselves.”
Teachers and female students, when asked how they felt about these problems, agreed that society does expect certain things from men, but said that those things don’t really matter and that men need to stop being hard on themselves for having issues. Male teachers said that they felt those struggles when they were young, but now see how wrong they were. One teacher said that it’s important to remember that everyone has problems and you should never be ashamed to ask for help.
All in all, the pressures that men feel are all too real but also entirely unnecessary. It’s okay to have problems and it’s okay to talk to your friends about them. Never feel scared to reach out to someone you trust and open up to them. Remember that many of the struggles you feel are from the media and that most people don’t really mind.