The Emotional Man
In previous articles, I explored the implications of patriarchy, including the conditioning of male-centered thinking and the ways many men are socialized to prioritize endurance over emotional awareness. In my first book, The Work of Remaining, I reflected on the tension many men experience between endurance and emotional awareness, and the cost of confusing one for the other.
One of the most persistent myths I encounter, both culturally and clinically, is the belief that women are the more emotional sex while men are somehow more rational, logical, or emotionally controlled.
Yet my experiences in the therapy room suggest something different.
As a Black male therapist, I have often found myself navigating many of the same cultural messages my male clients received: that strength is measured by endurance, and emotional expression is something to be managed rather than understood. While these messages may differ across families, communities, and cultures, the underlying lesson is often similar: feel less, endure more.
Yet therapy repeatedly challenges that assumption.
The issue is not that women are more emotional than men. The issue is that society has historically granted greater permission for women to express certain emotions while encouraging men to suppress, deny, or redefine their own. Emotional expression and emotional experience are not the same thing.
As a therapist, I have worked with countless men experiencing anxiety, depression, shame, loneliness, jealousy, fear, grief, insecurity, and anger. What often differs is not the emotion itself, but how men have been taught to relate to it.
Many men learn early that vulnerability is weakness, sadness is fragility, fear is incompetence, and emotional dependence is something to avoid. What often remains acceptable are emotions that can be disguised as strength, certainty, or control. Anger, irritability, dominance, defensiveness, and contempt are frequently treated not as emotions, but as justified responses to circumstances.
Clinically, this distinction matters.
A person can be highly emotional while lacking emotional awareness. Likewise, a person can experience powerful emotions without possessing the ability to understand, regulate, or communicate them effectively. This is where it becomes important to distinguish between self-awareness and emotional intelligence.
Psychologist and science journalist Daniel Goleman, in his landmark book Emotional Intelligence (1995), helped popularize the understanding that intelligence extends beyond cognitive ability. His work identified four core domains of emotional intelligence that continue to shape leadership, relationship development, and clinical practice.
The Four Domains of Emotional Intelligence
Self-Awareness is the ability to recognize emotions, thoughts, motivations, and behavioral patterns.
Self-Management is the ability to regulate emotions and respond intentionally rather than react impulsively.
Social Awareness is the ability to understand the emotions, needs, and perspectives of others.
Relationship Management is the ability to communicate effectively, navigate conflict, establish healthy boundaries, and foster meaningful connections.
Through the lens of emotional intelligence, the question is no longer whether men are emotional. The question becomes whether men have been given the language, permission, and support necessary to develop self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.
In my experience, many men have been taught endurance long before they were taught these skills.
Many men learn to push through adversity, suppress vulnerability, and continue functioning despite emotional pain. Yet endurance and emotional intelligence are not the same thing. The ability to tolerate hardship does not automatically translate into the ability to recognize emotions, communicate needs, understand other people's experiences, or manage conflict effectively.
It is also important to acknowledge that emotionally intelligent men are not rare. They are simply less discussed.
In my work, I have met many men who demonstrate strong self-awareness, empathy, emotional regulation, and relational accountability. Yet some describe being misread as weak, overly sensitive, or insufficiently masculine because they communicate emotions openly and value emotional connection.
Interestingly, these men often present with a quieter form of confidence. They tend to demonstrate greater self-assurance, emotional flexibility, and comfort with vulnerability, even while navigating the risk of alienation from traditional expectations of masculinity.
Their presence challenges the notion that emotional awareness diminishes strength. If anything, their experiences suggest the opposite.
In many ways, these are the men who receive the least attention in conversations about masculinity. Not because they are rare, but because emotional intelligence tends to be quieter than emotional dysfunction.
These men are often more comfortable acknowledging vulnerability, uncertainty, and emotional complexity without feeling defined by them. They are not free from anxiety, insecurity, disappointment, or fear. Rather, they have developed a healthier relationship with those experiences.
In relationships with women, they often demonstrate greater curiosity than defensiveness. Rather than immediately challenging or dismissing a partner's emotional experience, they are more likely to seek understanding. This does not eliminate conflict, but it often changes how conflict is approached. Conversations become less about determining who is right and more about understanding what each person is experiencing.
In relationships with other men, emotional intelligence often creates space for honesty that traditional expectations of masculinity discourage. These men are more likely to discuss grief, fear, disappointment, loneliness, and self-doubt without experiencing those emotions as threats to their identity. As a result, they frequently report deeper relational connections and a stronger sense of authenticity.
What I have observed clinically is that emotional intelligence does not make men less masculine. It often makes men more secure in who they are, requiring less performance, less defensiveness, and less reliance on external validation.
This distinction becomes especially important when emotional intelligence is limited.
A recurring dynamic I have observed involves men dismissing, minimizing, or invalidating the emotional experiences of women while remaining disconnected from their own emotional realities. In its milder forms, this may appear as describing a partner as irrational, dramatic, too sensitive, or overly emotional. In more severe forms, it may evolve into patterns of gaslighting, where another person's emotional experiences are repeatedly questioned, distorted, or invalidated.
In many cases, the dismissal of women's emotions is not evidence of emotional control. It is evidence of emotional discomfort.
Social justice scholars have long noted that patriarchal norms often reward emotional suppression in men while devaluing emotional expression in women. The result is a cultural paradox: men are encouraged to disconnect from vulnerability while women are criticized for expressing it.
This dynamic is not simply harmful to women. It is also harmful to men.
When emotional awareness is underdeveloped, emotions do not disappear. They simply emerge in different forms.
Fear becomes control.
Shame becomes defensiveness.
Insecurity becomes dominance.
Grief becomes anger.
Vulnerability becomes contempt.
The belief that men are less emotional than women often survives because some emotions are more socially acceptable than others.
In reality, emotional suppression is not the absence of emotion. It is often evidence of emotion seeking another outlet.
My work with men consistently suggests that emotional suppression comes at a cost. Relationships suffer. Communication deteriorates. Conflict escalates. Mental health symptoms increase. What remains unaddressed internally often finds expression externally.
The question, then, is not whether men have emotions. The question is whether men have been given the tools necessary to understand them.
In the therapy room, healing rarely begins with teaching men to become emotional. More often, it begins by helping them recognize that they already are.
The work involves learning to acknowledge emotions without over-identifying with them. This distinction is central to mindfulness-based approaches, which encourage individuals to observe thoughts and emotions without becoming consumed by them. Anger can be acknowledged without becoming an angry person. The emotion is real, but it is not the entirety of who we are.
The work also involves replacing judgment with curiosity.
Judgment seeks certainty. Curiosity seeks understanding. Rather than asking, What's wrong with me?, individuals learn to ask, What is this emotion trying to communicate? Rather than viewing emotions as weaknesses to overcome, they begin to view them as sources of information.
Mindfulness supports this process by helping individuals develop a more flexible relationship with their inner experiences. Instead of suppressing, avoiding, intellectualizing, or reacting automatically to emotions, they learn to notice them, tolerate discomfort, and respond with greater awareness and intention.
Viewed through Goleman's framework, these practices strengthen self-awareness and self-management while creating greater capacity for empathy, social awareness, and healthier relationships. Emotional intelligence is not the absence of emotion. It is the ability to relate to emotion skillfully.
Ultimately, emotional intelligence is not measured by how little emotion a person expresses. It is measured by the ability to recognize emotion, understand it, regulate it, and respond to oneself and others with awareness and intention.
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