AOL Health: Are men really less emotional than women — or are they just less emotionally expressive?
Wexler: Men are not less emotional than women — they just express fewer emotions. Early childhood studies show that boys are actually more sensitive to feelings of danger, aloneness, disconnection and mother-child separation than girls are. Yet on some non-verbal, primitive level, boys learn to mask those feelings and to cope with their anxiety by developing the “I don’t care” classic male persona. Though boys’ core emotional vulnerability is equal to or even greater than that of girls, that vulnerability is streamlined out as a result of the cultural expectations that boys pick up on. Somewhere between ages three and five, they’ve already been socialized to be less emotionally expressive. Real: Before boys learn to read, they’ve already read the basic male code: Men are not emotional. The more invulnerable you are, the more manly you are. That’s why in my office every day, I see guys who are just awash of emotions and they have no idea what’s happening. All the things boys learn abou
