I saw a short video clip on Twitter yesterday. There’s a very famous soap opera in the UK (the longest running) called Coronation Street (known as Corrie). The clip was of four men sat around in the pub basically saying how much they were struggling in life and they came to an agreement that if they needed any help, they would share it amongst each other.
Now, of course, everyone was saying it was gay and cringe but, truth be told, I was expecting the clip to be embarrassingly unwatchable but I was, in fact, rather touched by the clip and thought to myself ‘if only most people realised what many men are actually going through.’ Would men even admit their struggles?
Doubtful, especially given the outpouring of scorn they’d get for owning up what was ‘going on inside’.
No matter how awake or down the rabbit hole people go, there are accepted norms of how we ‘should’ behave. What we should like and what we should ridicule.
The truth is I know there are many, many men like me who do so-called masculine things (work, do gym workouts, etc.) but we also have great depth of feeling that we want to sort through. We ARE sensitive and we don’t necessarily see it as a bad thing, we also don’t want to let our worries and anxieties ruin our lives.
It’s a balance but, honestly, I quite liked the clip. I found it comforting.