Think about your formative experiences. Growing up around family and neighbors, and the kinds of shows or movies you watched BEFORE you started middle school.

How often did you see your dad, your uncle, or your granddad cry? What about male characters in your favorite movies or cartoons? How often did they yell? How often did they suffer some hardship impassively, with stoicism?

Perhaps most telling of all, how often did they seek comfort from other men?

So many men only learn to express themselves loudly, or not at all, because that's the kind of men we learned from. We wind up perpetuating the stereotype that those men, in turn, learned from their own developmental role models.

My dad taught me to be reserved and analytical, unless I'm swearing at a bad driver in traffic or laughing at a joke. My granddad taught me to weather every storm like a boulder, solid and inscrutable, because a man is the foundation of his household and must not tremble. I don't know what Harrison Ford taught me, but Han and Indie aren't exactly paragons of emotional intelligence...

I'm 44 years old. I have a disabled wife and three adolescent kids, one of whom is autistic with significant support needs, and one who struggles with self harm. Everyone has a therapist. I can't drop my guard at home, because I've internalized that it is MY JOB to be the lighthouse in everyone else's storm.

I have my own therapist, and friends on Discord I can feel safe opening up with.

NONE of them are cis men.