Hello! Thank you. :)
To answer your question: I write so often about sad, lonely, addicted, terrified men because so often, in our society, men are taught that showing emotion means being weak, being “less.”
Women, like me, are normally thought of as the emotional ones, the weepy ones who cry at movies and commercials and sappy love songs.
Men are normally thought of as brave, strong, stoic, the ones who sit through a sad movie and don’t even break a sweat or shed a tear.
That’s not true. In fact, it’s completely wrong, and, in my opinion, unacceptable.
Men are human beings, therefore they have human feelings. I’ve seen men cry; I’ve seen them weep openly with their faces in their hands.
They are not superheroes nor are they always stonefaced: they feel pain, they have struggles, they feel hopelessly, extraordinarily alienated and lonely too.
Men weep at funerals. Men cry at sad commercials. Men feel pain. They are just as messed-up, complicated, tragic, and absolutely, painstakingly ordinary as the rest of us.
It’s almost a stigma-to men, society says “You shall not cry. You shall not show your weakness.”
But they do, they do. And you know what? In showing weakness there is strength. Weakness is only human and to show it means to be vulnerable. To display one’s vulnerability is to be very, very brave. It’s a courageous thing.
So I write about men like this because too often, writers write about women like this instead.
Everything women feel, men feel too.