Edit2: It’s a subjective perception I’m talking about. Are you offended? Why?
What’s the matter, why can’t men deal with me being sensitive and emotional? Is it because they struggle with me reminding them of having, too, emotions?
Edit: Do men think I’m weak when I show emotions? If so, why?? Why do women see it as a sign of strength when men are vulnerable, but men don’t seem to get it? Are they/are we dumb??
I don’t know your exact experiences, but I had a similar feeling in the past. However, recently I noticed it was a lot of how i behaved to them. I started speaking more openly with my male friends and noticed, they also value my emotions. The main difference was, that my friendships with women started on an emotional level making it a lot easier to open up for me. With my male friends, I needed to just say how i feel, which i have not dared for a long time. My own stereotypes probably played a larger role than the gender of the people involved.
However as others have said, if they do not take you seriously when you open up, they are bad friends.
They wouldn’t be bad friends out of malice though, that’s a bit harsh
Yep. And it’s really liberating once you become comfortable plainly sharing your emotions about things with other men. I didn’t even realize I was keeping things in until I stopped keeping things in. I think it’s helped my relationship with my wife too, just by building better habits around isolating and speaking my emotional reaction to things.
Then you run into a full-blown narcissist and they will mistake your openness for weakness and start to weaponise it against you. Ask me how I know this.