There’s a trail in the Rockies that still haunts me.
A thin ribbon of ice and snow stretches across a sheer drop, just wide enough to place your boots side by side. The wind cuts sharp, stealing your breath, and each step requires the full measure of your attention. The crunch of boots on ice, the hollow silence beneath you…everything whispers, Don’t look down.
On either side, the stakes are real. One misstep to the left, and you tumble. One slip to the right, and you vanish.
That’s what modern masculinity often feels like. Walking a narrow ridge where a move toward vulnerability risks being called weak, and a move toward anger risks being called dangerous.
The Map Men Are Given
The ridge narrows for a reason. It’s the product of maps drawn for us long before we could read them. Maps that tell us where we can and can’t walk, what parts of ourselves earn welcome, and which parts we must hide. To understand how to widen the trail, we first have to ask: what map were we given… and what did it leave out?
The map is drawn early. Sketched in invisible ink and passed from hand-to-hand without ever being spoken aloud. You can feel it more than you can see it:
- Hide your emotions.
- Never cry in public.
- Anger is acceptable; but only in measured doses.
- Tenderness? Keep it behind closed doors; if it’s allowed at all.
The message is clear:
Stay off the soft ground. Avoid the valleys. Stick to the high, narrow ridge where no one can see you cry.
How the Ridge Narrows Over Time
The ridge begins in childhood. Research shows parents tend to offer less physical comfort to infant boys than to girls, and they use fewer emotional words when speaking with sons (Chaplin, 2015). By grade school, the patterns are clear: boys are praised for toughness and problem-solving; girls for emotional expression and relational skill (Levant & Wong, 2017).
By adolescence, society trims the emotional range for boys down to one dominant hue: irritation or anger (Mahalik et al., 2003). Sadness, fear, tenderness are quietly discouraged. Not always by rules, but by teasing, disapproval, or a sudden chill in the room when they appear.
Psychologist Niobe Way (2013) calls this a crisis of connection. Boys begin with deep, emotionally rich friendships. As a boy becomes a teenager, the language of intimacy is stripped away. Replaced with silence and safe topics. The ridge gets narrower.
Meanwhile, girls are often encouraged to explore the lowlands. To learn the winding footpaths of empathy, to stop and study the weather before it turns.
Research backs this up: women tend to score slightly higher on measures like empathy and emotional self-awareness, but psychologists are clear; that edge comes not from greater capacity, but from greater permission (Chaplin, 2015; Levant & Wong, 2017).
Normative Male Alexithymia
The American Psychological Association calls this pattern normative male alexithymia. It’s the inability to identify or verbalize feelings, not from lack of capacity but from training to mute them (Levant, 1992).
It’s like carrying all the right gear in your pack but being told you’re weak if you take it out.
By adolescence, many boys know that showing sadness, fear, or tenderness carries a social cost. Irritation and anger become the only “safe” emotions. This restriction leaves men walking a knife-edge.
Too Much or Not Enough
Here’s where the footing gets trickier:
Too much anger? You’re a bully, unsafe, abusive.
Not enough anger? You’re passive, disengaged, indifferent.
It’s a double-bind. Both paths invite criticism (Bateson et al., 1956). Psychiatrist Terry Real (2002) calls the toll covert depression. The chronic suppression of every feeling but frustration, which over time breeds numbness, workaholism, substance abuse, or withdrawal.
Even the “permitted” emotion faces limits. Oliffe et al. (2024) finds that men often see anger as socially acceptable, but also feel pressure to contain it to avoid backlash. This means the narrowing cuts inside the narrow range. Leaving fewer and fewer healthy outlets for distress.
The end result….Silence. Detachment. Isolation.
The Hidden Weight of Silence
Silence doesn’t just shape a man’s inner life, it reshapes his body. Suppressing emotion adds to the body’s allostatic load, the cumulative wear and tear from chronic stress (McEwen, 2004). It raises cardiovascular risk (Gross, 2015) and increases anxiety and depression rates (Levant & Richmond, 2016).
It’s like hauling a heavy pack up the ridge. At first, you can carry it without complaint. But mile after mile, step after step, the straps dig deeper. Eventually, it drives you to your knees.
Statistics trace the human cost. Men in the U.S. die by suicide almost four times more often than women (CDC, 2023). They report fewer close friendships and higher rates of loneliness (Cigna, 2021). When a man is cut off from his own emotions, he’s cut off from the relationships that could sustain him. Silence becomes both the armor and the prison.
Emotional suppression isn’t just a psychological weight, it’s a physical one. Chronic inhibition of emotional expression is linked to:
- Increased allostatic load (the “wear and tear” on the body from chronic stress) (McEwen, 2004).
- Elevated risk of cardiovascular disease (Gross, 2015).
- Higher rates of anxiety and depression (Levant & Richmond, 2016).
When Brotherhood Becomes a Memory
Way’s research revealed something poignant: almost every boy he interviewed could recall a time in childhood when he had a best friend he told everything to. By high school, that friend was often gone…not the person, but the connection. In its place: activity-based acquaintanceships, safe conversations, surface-level ties.
The meadow had been left behind. In the mountains, there are stretches where the trail widens into soft grass, where you can drop your pack, rest, and speak without fear. For many men, that space exists only in memory. The open meadow where trust runs deep and words came easily, is the same kind of confluence that true intimacy needs to survive the rapids. Read more in the blog What The River Knows : A Reflection on Love, Intimacy, and Interdependence
The Ridge Is Wider – But Only in Some Places
The trail is changing; but not everywhere. Younger men are more open to therapy, more likely to reject “man up” scripts, and more vocal about mental health than generations before them. They’re logging into teletherapy, joining peer support groups, and sharing struggles online in ways Gen X and Boomers rarely did. In those spaces, the ridge feels wider. The air feels easier to breathe.
But here’s the catch: reduced stigma about seeking help isn’t the same as feeling safe to express emotions in public. Therapy rooms and trusted friend circles are like mountain meadows. Sheltered from the wind, free from the eyes that might judge. Out on the open ridge: in workplaces, public gatherings, or even at the dinner table…the same old terrain still rules.
Many men will speak about anxiety in a podcast interview yet still choke back tears in a restaurant. They’ll post about depression on Instagram but hesitate to say “I’m scared” to their partner during a fight. The stigma has shifted, but it hasn’t vanished. The ridge is wider in private, but in public, it still narrows to a knife’s edge.
That’s the tension we live in now: progress that’s real, but incomplete.
Reclaiming the Trail
Closing the gap isn’t about becoming “less of a man,” it’s about reclaiming the map we were never given. Charting the valleys, switchbacks, and hidden water sources we’ve been told to ignore.
It’s about giving ourselves permission to carry all the tools for the climb, not just the ones that look good slung over our shoulders.
Because the summit worth reaching isn’t the one where you arrive alone and untouched by feeling. It’s the one where you’ve learned the terrain of your own heart, and can walk beside others through theirs.
If we want to change the landscape, we have to see how we reinforce the ridge. Even without meaning to. That means:
- Challenging the emotional hierarchy – affirming joy, sadness, fear, tenderness, compassion, and righteous anger, not just stoicism.
- Modeling emotional fluency – showing that a man can name, regulate, and express a full emotional spectrum.
- Creating safe spaces for risk-free expression – places where men can speak without ridicule or reprisal.
Evidence-Based Trail-Widening Practices
- Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) for boys – improves emotional recognition, empathy, and relationship skills (Durlak et al., 2011).
- Peer mentorship groups – A man’s mental health improves when emotional expression is modeled by respected male peers (Seidler et al., 2016).
- Relational Cultural Therapy (RCT) – connection and mutual empathy can dismantle restrictive norms (Jordan, 2017).
- Rites of passage & experiential learning – outdoor programs, apprenticeships, and team challenges build identity and resilience outside rigid scripts (Scales et al., 2014).
The Climb Ahead
Widening the ridge is slow work. It’s unlearning, relearning, and drawing new maps together.
But the trail is changing. Younger men are more open to therapy, more likely to reject “man up” scripts, and more vocal about mental health. While the old maps still circulate, new ones are being drafted. Maps that lead not just along knife-edge ridges, but into valleys of rest, peaks of purpose, and meadows where there’s room for every part of a man’s soul.
Masculinity doesn’t have to be a balancing act over a void. It can be a range: wild, varied, and wide enough for the whole heart.
You might also like
