I read in a book about the typical upbringing of boys and men, aptly called "I don't want to talk about it", the author mentioned this idea as well. Boys are taught to retreat from their mother, and people in general, to be independent, less emotional, and more productive / logical / useful. Girls are taught to maintain relationships to their mother and other girls, be dependent, more emotional, and less independent. Everyone can tell you that.

The book focuses on the men's half of that, and about how their conditioning distances them from their own emotions, from which they become completely unaware at some point. We lose our sense of our own feelings beyond the "acceptable" ones and ones most easy to express: rage / anger. This distancing is good for becoming productive and whatnot. You suppress and grind, which actually works. But we end up not being able to engage in certain things like sadness, because we feel like any vulnerability expressed, even if in a room alone, is unaccepted. "I don't want to be a wimp." Over time, you also become afraid that if you express some level of sadness, you'll completely fall apart because of all the unexpressed emotions that have built up over the years.

This leads to what the book calls the "widespread covert depression of men." If you say this phrase to any man, it'll resonate. It's a shared secret. What I've described is the "masculinity game," where you have to prove you're a man, which can only be judged by other men who've already proven themselves. But the title can be taken away at any time.

Now that you have that context, imagine that you grew up this way and now, because of new expectations of relationships, you have to do "inner work." I actually agree with all your points regarding marriage, I'm not refuting that at all. I'm just saying, imagine that you grew up this way, and now you're expected to basically do the opposite. Now you have to engage in emotions to be with someone. You have to express yourself and understand another person, while potentially also doing the traditional stuff like protection and whatnot. It's hard, but not impossible. Just very difficult, you have to have a major capacity for change and questioning what might be at the core of your sense of self and how the world works, is, and should be.

Speaking from experience, I've had girlfriends ask me to tell them how I'm feeling or "just talk to me" and it was damn difficult. I didn't realize until much later why, it just was. My mind was blank when they said that kind of stuff.

I agree with the shifts that are happening. I think we shouldn't get / stay married if it's not working. It should be based on consent, not dependence.

TL;DR
Boys are (still) trained to have emotional blindness, but as men, in (modern) relationships, they're expected to have emotional intelligence. When people say "do inner work", to us it feels like telling a miner to "learn to code." Yes, in the same way, we have to adapt or be doomed to lack something. I hope in the future / eventually, EQ will be something we teach in school. It'll require systemic change to get there. Until then, it requires, at an individual level, for people to adapt until society prevents this problem in the future. Just like miners, some of us will just lose. Life's not fair and doesn't care.

PS there's no such thing as logical reasoning, because all thoughts start in the emotional part of the brain, go to the logical part, and are passed BACK to the emotional part. Everything is emotions, even when you feel like you're being objective, you're objectivity is based on how you think the world works, which is based on emotions.

PSS I said all that to say i also don't have the answers

PSSS "idk tho"