People often don’t communicate the deeper things because the deeper things are hard and sometimes indicate a problem that’s going to need resolution. The deeper the concern, the deeper the problem that needs to be resolved, and the greater the potential for conflict. Some things that might be on your mind might be really difficult to bring forward. In life it’s just sometimes easier to cruise along, not rock the boat and pretend shit is placid. The problem though is that usually only two things happen: it just builds and then it explodes into something twelve times worse than if you’d brought it forward earlier, or you just kill your soul and your individuality over a long period of time and next thing you know you’ve been burying your concerns, or problems for so long that you wake up and you don’t know who you are. Or even worse you don’t know and you don’t care.

Maybe I’m just a different animal. I was lucky in being raised: I went to a lot of places, saw a lot of cultures, got exposed to a lot of things early and consider myself a person of this world. I have a large capacity of love within me that extends to a lot of people and in a lot of differing ways. Some I love as friends, some I love out of admiration, I love others emotionally, some I love for their mentality, and I often have love for my female friends because the beauty of who and what they are is at time overwhelming. Love is boundless and selfless and at the very least I think we should acknowledge that as a possibility. That sometimes love is limitless and that our feelings might extend to others, or that we may come to have additional feelings for others in a way that may conflict with our choices. And I don’t think the model makes allowances for that.

The irony to me is that as humans adults we take pride in our ability to chose and have the freedom of choice, yet we enter into this commitment that treats the participants as if they children: Go here. Do this. Do that. Don’t do this. Look that way and not this way. People would make the argument that you have choice in whom you choose to marry, and that is TRUE. I don’t dispute that. What I am saying is that once you make that choice, the model of the thing itself becomes very very narrow, despite the fact that as humans we are always changing and growing and evolving. The subjects grow and evolve, but the model stays the same, and that is very hard on a lot of people. And if you don’t like the model, or don’t fit it, or it doesn’t work for you, you do get frowned upon and stigmatized and that is totally fucked up. The hard thing is that if you’re not a person who fits in the model very well, who do you take that to? Society will treat you like a pariah, like you’re some sort of person incapable of committing to anything or they can often assume a condescending platform of pity towards you as some sort of person incapable of true love or feeling, which is also messed up. A lot of people have a true belief and marriage and what it represents for them, and for that I respect them totally, but if you think otherwise, not many places to turn as far as expression goes. This is something my wife already knows because we’ve spoken about it plenty of times. She knows that I struggle with it. It was hard for her to hear at first, but now I think she’d just prefer to hear the truth. But if you’re a man, how would you even begin to express any emotional problem along those lines? So, we just don’t. And it builds and builds and builds.

One of the things that I really dislike is the perception that men are emotional simpletons when nothing could be further from the truth. We are as complex as women and run the entire emotional spectrum: We know fear, anxiety, anger, jealousy, sadness. Grief and joy and love. It’s just that we communicate them differently because unlike women our communication often doesn’t come from the words, but is found in the space between the words. You know, this year I’ll go home to see my family. I’ll sit around on the couch with my Pops and watch a baseball game. During that game we might not speak for 20 minutes, or we might not speak for 2 hours, but silently, emotionally, he will know everything in that silence that I want to say. He will know that I’m thrilled to be back in DC with him, that I love him immeasurably, that he’s my old man and still my hero. I don’t need to put that into words.

Women often say men are uncommunicative but the basis of the problem, to me, is this: Men communicate in ways that make sense to them, not in the ways that women want them to. I think the problem with men as listeners is that we externalize way too much of what people bring to us. Instead of being still and just listening, we try to fix everything and find a solution. Problem -> Solution. That sort of thing. When sometimes the solution lies in the listening. The problem with women listening is that often they internalize everything when a man is trying to tell them something personal. They can sometimes misinterpret what they’re hearing as a reflection or a result of something they’re doing, or not doing. Sometimes it’s just not about you. Sometimes there is nothing between the lines, there is only what we’re saying and that’s all.

Image: ‘Tokyo Drifter’ Keinyo White Ltd. ©®