Why do men feel so unloved?

A Facebook post caught my eye today: a young man complained that women, children and pets are unconditionally loved. Men, he lamented, are not.

I am not sure what in this person’s life prompted such a comment, but it got me thinking why someone would feel this way.

What is it to be loved? And why is it that, in our modern times, men in particular feel so terribly unloved?

I believe the term ‘crisis’ is unhelpful and overused, but something has gone seriously wrong with masculinity.

Despite a noisy mental health movement obsessed with telling us that we need to talk and share our feelings more, it still feels like we really haven’t understood why the mental health of men is being so badly affected. Nor do we give enough focus to this as a particular problem for men, despite the fact that young men make up a disproportionate amount of suicides, and that when they attempt suicide they are more likely to succeed.

I’ve been fascinated by the extraordinary popularity of the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, whose writing and lectures focus on rules for living a meaningful life, taking personal responsibility and finding order in the chaos of life.

That may sound rather grand – psychologists tend to do that, but it is Dr Peterson’s ability to put this in simple terms that has made him such an extraordinary hit with young, disillusioned and unhappy men.

Undoubtedly, Peterson brings his own gift of charisma to the phenomenon of his own success, but it is nonetheless extraordinary that someone can resonate so much by telling young men that to get started on improving their lives, they should smarten up and clean their room.

What Peterson is doing for these young men, however, is filling a void of tangibility. What they are craving are manageable ways to improve their lives, relationships and prospects.

It’s fashionable at the moment, largely thanks to a popular book by Gary Chapman, to talk about ‘love languages,’ and to encourage each other to be in touch with the ways others choose to demonstrate love, and perceive that they are receiving love.

I have some reservations about this way of thinking, but it clearly helps untangle the kinds of crossed wires that leave people feeling unimportant and unappreciated.

I think, however, that masculinity and femininity also are their own languages. Telling men that it’s okay to cry more and that they need to be more open may be well-meant, but it’s like telling the British that they may only speak Chinese.

What I have observed through supporting men in difficulties, is that being knocked off course is not only distressing, but can lead to a profound inward rejection of the self.

The saddest relationship advice scenarios I have dealt with are those involving young men, often in their late 20s, who have not had the experience of a romantic relationship.

What makes it so sad isn’t that this is itself a terrible thing – it really isn’t. However, they have often allowed this fact to convince them of all sorts of other untruths: they are ugly, useless, awkward, or simply have something undefinable and unfixable that’s wrong with them.

IT is not just them: although anyone can of course be lonely, isolated and unhappy, I find that men’s capacity to feel this way apparently regardless of having all the trappings of a good life (family, job etc) is much stronger.

This tendency of self-rejection also explains why, at the point that men become suicidal, they are not typically seeking only an escape from crushing unhappiness, but have convinced themselves that the world and those they love would be better off without them.

Talking to them may dissuade them from making a terrible decision, but actually unpicking that perception they have built up is like trying to unstitch an entire tapestry with a single blunted fingernail. If you’ve tried to do it with someone at 3 in the morning, you’ll know.

This turning of aggression on to oneself probably has lots of causes, about which I do not profess to have a clear understanding or expert knowledge.

I believe, however, that it has 2 principal causes:

First, despite our obsession with equality, the inconvenient truth is that our notions of manliness haven’t changed anything like as much as we pretend. In fact, I don’t believe that it is possible for them to do so.

Men expect to be tough and stoic. They expect to be the ones with solutions. They value strength, courage, hard work and responsibility in each other.

It’s simply less acceptable for them to be unable to fix things or to themselves be a problem. Thus they hide things, and they do so rather well.

Second, a man has fewer safety valves. Their friendships often lack the emotional intimacy of a close circle of female friends. Indeed men are more likely to see their partners as their best friends, in contrast to women who can often identify a best friend with whom a comparable bond of trust to that with their partner exists. This is important, because friendships come with fewer obligations than relationships, and fewer reasons to keep your gripes to yourself.

What the solution to all this might be is probably a post in itself. The popularity of Jordan Peterson, and the continued anxiety about the mental health of men, suggest that the answer is complex.

Yet when we simply demand that they talk more and open up more in a society that fails utterly to understand or appreciate masculinity, we’re simply finding another way to make them feel like failures. We’re asking them to be less like a man.

I think this is why we find ourselves scratching our heads and asking ourselves, why do men feel so unloved?