I’m a woman and I’ve always felt like it is so much more easier for men to emotionally and mentally detach from situations, places, things or people. How do you do it? Or maybe I’m just wrong? Maybe the men around me happened to be this way? Idk enlighten me. Thank
Men, why it is so easy for you to detach and not give a f?
r/AskMen
Comments
Attatching the first time hurts a ton, so you learn pretty quickly not to put yourself in that situation again, so detachment is easier.
It’s not easy at all.
When you’ve been taught all your life to not show your emotions or vulnerability, you tend to get quite good at it.
>I’m a woman and I’ve always felt like it is so much more easier for men to emotionally and mentally detach from situations, places, things or people.
For some men it is, for others it’s not. It’s the same for women – I’m sure you know some who can detach easier than you can as well.
A lot boils down to their attachment type, and for someone with a dismissive attachment type in particular, it’s really easy. They can appear to divest emotionally almost immediately, as though they flip a switch. I have a DA friend like this and it’s startling to watch when she engages in it.
Practice we get rejected so much in our lives in just dating. Since 8 I was held at a higher standard then my grown siblings and cousins. This kinda stuff just makes you feel like its all a neverending dream like nothing is really real.
We fix, and if we can’t fix, why dwell?
It really is that simple.
It’s not easy at all. You just do it, cause no one gives a fuck.
Because we’re taught, starting very early, that the world does not give a shit about us. We are and will be valued for what we provide in both our professional and personal lives. Get bummed out and miss work? There goes your job. No more paychecks? There goes your wife. Opening up about your feelings will only accelerate the process. Yes, a select few in the upper crust are taught they’re inherently valuable, but for most of us that message ended back in grade school.
So, we learn quickly to check out. It’s a defensive strategy.
You learn from a young age that if you don’t behave that way things can go much worse. The only emotions socially acceptable for men is anger and stoic pride.
It’s easy when we’re mocked for it when we show even a little emotion or when it gets used against us in a completely unrelated argument.
The example that always comes to mind is the middle aged man who got emotional about a spool of wire he had for 40 years and his wife decided to turn it into a viral moment filming and mocking him then making him do an apology video when she got backlash for it. There are women all over social media who mock men for showing any kind of emotion. Of course I know not all women are like that but when these women go viral for their shitty takes and personalities, it makes men think twice about being emotional. It’s already hard enough as it is fighting through decades of hearing things like “be a man” and “men are supposed to be tough”. These “influencers” make it worse.
Easy? When you’re taught to not show emotion, showing emotion is weak, to “man up” it’s not easy at all. Many men feel like no one gives a fck about them so it becomes a learned behavior. It’s not healthy but many man don’t have a choice. Life goes on and a lot of feel like society doesn’t give a fck about us.
For many of us, showing any emotion as a boy gets you smacked or on a good day, mocked. You learn quick in that environment.
It depends on the person and place. There are people I think about every day despite not having contact with them in years. Same with places. Sometimes a smell or a song brings me back to a memory that I am so overwhelmingly attached to, I almost can’t stand it. There have been times in my life where detachment from a person or place or experience has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Other times, detachment is easy because a true bond was never formed. As I got older I learned to be careful who and what I become attached to. If you find that men, or people in general, detach easily from you, it may be time to look inward and see if you are driving them away. No offense.
Also, consider that men are typically less expressive. They may be extremely attached to someone or something, but from your perspective they seem not to be. You just don’t know what’s going on in their inner world.
You mostly get used to having to do it. life has a way of teaching you skills you need.
View it as a necessary action. Compartmentalization was taught in the military so super easy to apply whenever needed.
Easy is debatable but given the many expectations often put on men it gives more inclination to do so.
We utter the phrase “it is what it is.” and then all of our emotional burdens melt away.
Men take just as long as women to process things, sometimes weeks or even months, but they are rarely allowed to show it. If they do, they get hit with comments like “man up,” so over time they learn to hide it.
I learned early in life that if I love something, it will eventually leave. That didn’t stop me from loving, because I can’t control that, but it did put me in a place where, when it leaves, I am not as crushed as I could be.
Still, if she leaves, we think about her for a long time. If a place we loved closes, we hold onto the memories for years. If we realize we let someone down, that regret stings far longer than most will admit. That unphased response people see is often just a defense or coping mechanism. We truly have no room to show people anything else.
We need solutions, no time for whining
As a guy, it’s very easy for people to detach from you.
So we pick up counter-detaching pretty fast.
Once broken we stay broken, why we are built like that no idea but that how it is and will always be
We’re taught from a young age to deny our emotions. It’s not easier for men, we’re just experts at it.
It’s not that we detach easily It’s just some never attach to anything in the 1st place due to how life has treated them or in my case we’re really good at emotional masking. You learn from like about age 5 no one is going to fix your problems you might get help from people throughout your life but they’re not there to fix every single issue. So if you want to cry and have an emotional break down or whatever learn to pick the right time and place to let it out then move the fuck on. So if your gf left you sorry your boss isn’t going to give you time off suck that shit up and deal with it on the weekend if you’re not busy then.
Because nobody cares about men’s feelings men are problem solvers we don’t want to bitch about a problem we want to act and fix it
Men who can’t do this simply don’t survive. They turn to drugs, alcohol, unaliving themselves. It is a defense mechanism and works very well. No one else cares about us so we need to accept being alone over being in a bad situation. They both suck but logic dictates to move on quietly sometimes even if it hurts.
Women can detach as well. It’s not limited to gender
I wish it was easier for me to not actually give a fuck more of the time.
How have I done it?
At least partially through compartmentalization as a coping method.
Is that ultimately healthy? probably not. Has it saved part of my sanity? probably.
Why do you think it’s so easy?
LOL what a question.
I’ve found it the opposite really.. my girl eventually leaves me for another person. And then I’m left behind to pick up the pieces of my broken heart. Happened 4 times already. Everytime I tell myself I won’t get too attached or love too deeply, but everytime and eventually it happens and I end up feeling distraught at the break up..
My gf or wife on the other hand clearly doesn’t give a fuck anymore and has already happily moved on to their new partner..
It’s not that it’s easier, it’s just that anger can be a very difficult emotion to deal with. The alternative is to isolate oneself and get to a calm area before doing anything rash. I’ve found that allowing emotion into decision making can be difficult. I’d rather make my decisions devoid of emotion.
Men are more likely to appear to be able to detach from emotional situations because they are motivated to practice doing so by society’s expectation that they suppress any sign of weakness.
Women are less practiced with said detachment, as they are not constrained by this expectation, but rather society’s expectation that they be emotionally expressive and “soft”.
Neither expectation has ever been a healthy one, as men are not as “strong” in this way as they are expected to be, and women are not so ‘weak”. Performative strength and weakness take a tremendous toll mentally.
First time it hurts us A FUCKING TON.
Afterwards, not so much.
It’s not “easier”. It’s just men aren’t coddled by the world.
The ones who don’t get good at it don’t survive.
Because of the way most men’s brains are wired, picture men’s brains as a room full of card catalogs from the library. When we want to focus on a relationship, we find the cabinet with the R’s, and we locate the Re drawer and we find relationship and all the authors are people we have been in relationships with. When the relationship is over, we close the drawer and open other drawers like W for work, or G for gym and sometimes when we have time, we open our favorite drawer, the nothing drawer where we can sit in peace and think about nothing at all.
This is a alien concept for most women because your brains are all interconnected, and you can have many things going on at one time, this explains why women multitask better than men, and men detail focus on one thing perfectly.
Here is a short vid that explains perhaps better than I tried above.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ6mVumHY9I
43 m learned at an early age to shut out emotions.. just turn them off. Also learned that you cannot trust anyone but yourself so become resourceful or die. After a while not reaching out just becomes normal. Then you become comfortably numb.
I can detach from things easily. Places too. People, far less so.
Partners, yeah if someone shows me who they truly are and it’s ugly, I’ll detach pretty quickly. But good people, I tend to be loyal to the grave. My best friend who I met in college, We’ve been friends for around 35 years. I’d never let him go unless he just didn’t want me around anymore. And that’s unlikely to happen. He stood by me through every tragedy, he celebrated every victory with me, he was part of my groom party at my wedding and comforted me during divorce. I’d die for him if it came down to it.
Same with my kid. She nearly died at age 6 due to a very nasty run-in with spinal meningitis. Had she passed away, I would have too very soon after. I have no desire to live in a world where my baby is gone. I’ve lost my dad a few years ago, mom went to be with him earlier this year. As it goes. I miss them, I’m blue about it, but that’s what is supposed to happen. You hit middle age, your parents pass away. You childhood heroes die (R.I.P. OzzY), it’s natural. But not my baby. There’s no detaching that, not for me anyway. I like being “dad” too much.
Everything else is transitory. Houses comes and go, property can be replaced, even family photos -while I treasure them- they too are scanned digitally and saved now anyway. That stuff is fleeting, but connection to loved ones is far from easy to detach.
It is not easy, men are forced into a life like that.
I will never love a woman 100% ever again because I learned not to, and I am constantly reminded from hearing the shit of women I know do to their men
I started paying for sex because it’s easy going from one girl to the next rather than jumping through hoops for one
Pretty much agree with most of the points here about how we are raised to just deal with crap and shrug it off…
A lot of women seem to think that they need to change this about men, when in actual fact Im sure most of us are quite content with this ability or dare I say durability..
It allows us to do things like sit by the side of a lake for a whole day with our minds completely and utterly blank and peaceful.. or spend a day working on an engine with the rest of the world completely shut out……it’s a fucking superpower..:-)
I think many of us guys are pretty skilled at smashing it all down until you can kind of ignore it. Pain is still painful, but you just don’t focus on it and you get on with life.
I think about all those action movies where the hero gets shot and thrown out of a helicopter and run over by a truck, but he still keeps going until he saves the day. We don’t cheer for the hero who gets hurt once and has to take a time out so he can cry about it. We cheer for the hero who fights through the pain.
In daily life, most of us take emotional damage instead of physical, obviously, but it hurts just the same. And we handle it like the action heroes do. Try to shake it off and keep going.
It doesn’t always work and I’m sure there are a myriad of reasons why this method can be unhealthy, but it can also be beneficial, too. You can’t just sit in the mud and cry about things. You have to keep moving forward.
Don’t know about men in general but I was taught that nobody wanted me as a kid and felt that way until I met my wife. Once it’s ingrained in you that you have yourself and nobody else it’s easy to not give a rat’s ass about anything else. I’ve spent my adult life learning to care first about my wife and then about my 2 sons.
When the world doesn’t care about you then you don’t care about the world.
Because we are trained from birth that our feelings are irrelevant. We have to continue moving forward no matter what. “Big boys don’t cry” is what our Moms tell us from an early age. “Man up” is what we hear regularly. Men in the USA can get drafted. So we are taught to set aside our fears in case we one day have to charge into enemy fire. Or stand on the deck of a sinking ship as women and children go to the life boats. Men are expendable at any moment. We only have as much value as a moment in time determines. We have to be ready to save a woman or child’s life at the expense of our own. That’s the male reality. We have been trained to emotionally and mentally detach. Essentially we are invisible to society in general until we do something that gains us recognition. Women and children are much more valuable as humans than we are. That’s the hard and simple truth.
We spend pur entire lives knowing that we are disposable. Women have value from the day they are born to the day they die. Men, we learn young that we are disposable and easily replaceable. You either accept it or you dont.
We do care. We care a lot. But when you realize that the world doesn’t give a fuck about you, you just learn to keep on going. A great example is the man and his spool of wire.
Because we’ve been trained to do it since a young age.
“don’t cry, walk it off.” -putting physical pain aside and focus through it.
“Get rid of all distractions and focus on the play.” -sports training. Especially violent sports where you have to fight your internal fears of getting hurt to perform.
“Don’t panic, breath, be prepared, have a plan, etc.” – We can’t panic in a stressful or emergency situation because the “women and children” depend on us. “Deal with it later, you need to man up now.” Which is how we deal with emergencies, then years of PTSD later.
Sports, violence, war games, how to deal with emergencies, we get trained for it all from a young age and have it drilled to us that WE are the last line of defense, we MUST perform or our loved ones suffer, etc.. Through exposure and training.
I was in sports, boy scouts, camping, first aid (and life-guarding). It prepared me for planning for emergencies, adapting and adjusting plans due to the unexpected, dealing with pain and endurance, the sight of blood and saving lives with first aid, and the responsibility of others lives depending on me (life-guarding).
Also going to a farm and hunting really teach you life isn’t fair, a level of detachment from the cute animals, understanding we do what must be done.
AND you can teach your girls the same thing, but they won’t be the same “innocent and ignorant, happy kids” because it breaks the illusions/delusions of our perfect fair world.
So much pessimism here. Yes we absolutely do have issues around men being forced to suppress their emotions and it’s terrible but I think there’s another, hopeful layer too.
I don’t think it’s always detached, sometimes it’s just calm and steady. Im someone who feels really deeply about things but I’m also an outwardly calm person and sometimes people read that as not caring, but it’s not the same. I care a lot, I care enough that I want to act with intention on the things I care about, and not just let myself be useless when people need me.
I think a big part of this is because we don’t learn helplessness the same way. You know when a kid falls off a bike and if you run to them all afraid they’ll start bawling? But if you laugh and say “oh wow! That was a big fall buddy! Let’s put a bandaid on that, can you pick out a cool one?!” then they bounce right back? I think something like that plays out a lot and it gives men the space to see themselves as someone who can be confident, resilient, and in control. When you expect more of people, they often want to live up to those expectations. And that can be relentless and cruel at times, but it can also be really empowering, if it’s done right.
Anyway, that’s my little note of hope, if it doesn’t get lost in the algorithm.
Because it’s that or jail.
The ones who don’t find a way to detach from situations get arrested.
So it’s not all men; it’s just the ones who can’t you don’t exactly run into unless you are into conjugal visits.
Like squirrel mentioned, we’re taught at a young age that the world doesn’t give a fuck about us. There are only 3 things in this world that are lived unconditionally, pets, children, and women. Men are only loved on the condition that we provide something. Not only that but when we show our emotions we lose any respect we’ve gained. Women say they want a man in touch with his emotions… until they see a man in touch with his emotions and they start losing respect for that man. Women say things they don’t mean in this regard. Worst case scenario here if we do show out emotions it just gets thrown back in our faces later when she’s mad at us. Emotions are worthless in a world that gives absolutely 0 fucks about you. That’s not even including the fact that emotions hinder judgement. Name a single time you’ve made a good decision when you’ve been emotional. If you actually do your trying act like a poor decision was a good one. 99% of decisions made while emotional lead to horrible choices. It’s easy for women to make horrible choices cause society largely supports you. Get fired from your job, there’s support for that. Have kids you can’t feed, there’s support for that. Women are first in shelters and last out. Women are 10 times more likely to win custody than men. Women get half of everything a man owns in divorce, even if she’s the fault of divorce. This society panders to women while men get fucked. We CAN’T make bad decisions cause if we do there’s 0 support for us, we’re literally fucked if we make a bad decision so we can’t be emotional. We have to be in control of our emotions.
Women dump a good man thinking they can do better. They don’t talk to this man, they just block him or email him. That man isn’t going to care as much next time. They are unfairly treated.
It is not easy. We do it anyways because it usually works better than all the drama.
You get used to it pretty quickly when you get constantly rejected by everything and everyone.
Because little boys are taught that showing any emotion other than anger is weakness, and weakness is unforgivable.
Taught that we are disposable at a young age and that we are quite easily replaceable.
Taught how to love your wife from a young age but no one teaches how to love a man.
When you get accustomed to being disposable like a lost Mary vape, you learn how to treat others like they are disposable because you reflect the love you have been shown back
When you learn how to love your wife but never taught how to be loved by your wife
Get burnt really bad once then never let yourself get that happy or attached to anything ever again. Easier to detach when never 1000% committed 🤷🏻♂️
Because in a pinch no one will care two shits about us. It’s me vs. the world and I make the rules how I deal with it in my case.
We’ve been thrown away by society, so it’s hard to care anymore.
For me, it’s the opposite. Women flip that switch and just go cold, with no consideration, empathy or accountability and embrace selfishness.
You have that point of view; I have mine – perhaps they’re both right, and it’s a people thing, not a gender thing.
You gotta be kidding. I’ve seen it plenty where a couple breaks up, the man is devastated and the woman has found someone else a week later.
This is the patriarchy in action against men. It doesn’t just work against women. defy the gender norms, rebel against them, then the next generation might stand a chance.
TLDR at bottom as I tend to be long winded.
When I was 15 my first real GF introduced me to another dude as her other BF till she decided which one of us was better. The idea was great till I introduced her to another girl as my other GF till I decided which one was better. Then I was being an asshole.
From 16-18 I had a on/off GF who would cheat on me every chance she got, but always yell at me whenever I talked to or spent any time with another girl, even co workers, and made many public scenes.
At 20-22 I was with a woman who left me for a friend of mine when I was hospitalized and stole my dog. Had her dad threaten me with a golf club outside her house when I went to pick him back up. Never skipped a chance to tell people how horrible I was after we broke up despite her having no issues living with me for over a year. Living in my apt without paying a dime for anything while I worked 3 jobs.
24 my GF left me for her community college art teacher, telling me it was my fault because I didn’t make enough money to support her dreams.
At 30 I married the woman I was with for almost 5 years. After our first kid she started cheating on me so I just treated our marriage like it was open just didn’t tell her because she seemed to enjoy sneaking around. Even though she was terrible at hiding her guys I didn’t get mad because by this point we both had other people. It kinda felt nice even though I knew some of them were just with me because they didn’t like her.
After our second kid she broke down about having an affair with her hair dresser and I said it’s fine, and offered to just have an open marriage. Holy shit was that the wrong thing to do. She freaked the fuck out. Threatened her life and the lives of the kids. Never told her that we basically had an open relationship since the first time she cheated on me. Marriage ended badly several poorly hidden guys and too many crocodile tears later.
At 37 had my gf cheat on me when her old college friend showed back up. Then I was the bad guy for not taking her back and her mom came to my house to yell at me for hurting her daughter like I did something wrong.
39 had my GF and kids nanny try to steal my house out from under me and put my kids in foster care.
Ghosted at 41 by a woman that lived with me and my kids were attached to because she found god and realized that she can’t be with a guy who’s a dad…despite having 4 grown kids from 4 other guys
At 43 I caught my girlfriend cheating on me so she called the cops and told them I was a child abuser, then fled across the country when I pressed charges on her.
It took too many years but now at 45 it’s just me and the kids. My girlfriends have their own place and we hang out when they want to but I’m just done. I’m ok being an on call part timer. Too much drama? My phone goes on silent. Made a bad choice? I feel ya. I made them too. Good luck though. Not letting anyone else in that can ruin my kids lives on a whim. It’s one thing to let someone upend my life. But seeing them go through heartbreak, fear, and getting abandonment issues really woke me up.
TLDR: you keep getting cut in the same area over and over the skin hardens. Most guys have been getting the same cuts for a long time. Life’s more enjoyable when you focus on what you want and what’s important to you instead of fighting with someone who doesn’t even know who you are but wants to cookie cut you into their life.
Well the top response really covers most of it, but there is another element. Most men don’t spend energy on things outside of their control. Yes, the outcome of the out of control thing will impact me, but it is what it is. We’ll just deal with it when it happens, and my crying about it won’t solve shit. Women seem to have a ton of anxiety over things they can’t control, but they still try to assert control by preparing for every possible situation. That preparation leads to more anxiety and attachment to the situation.