Toxic masculinity doesn’t just hurt the man who is suppressing his emotions and failing to live authentically. It creates distance in relationships where there should be connection. Regardless of whether you’re fulfilling your role as a partner, parent, or friend, toxic masculinity impacts all of your relationships.
Understanding Toxic Masculinity
Toxic masculinity refers to the societal pressure placed on men to act stoic, dominant, and emotionally detached. It’s the idea that showing vulnerability or embracing traits seen as “feminine” makes a man appear weak. This mindset is reinforced by cultural norms and expectations and passed down from one generation to the next.
How Does Toxic Masculinity Affect Relationships?
Whether you’re a partner who doesn’t understand your significant other’s needs, a father who doesn’t express emotions with your children, or a friend who always seems to be holding back what they really feel, toxic masculinity seeps into all your relationships in different ways.
Emotional Disconnection
Perhaps one of the most damaging effects of toxic masculinity in relationships is the inability to connect emotionally with others. Many boys are taught that showing feelings other than anger, pride, or aggression is a sign of weakness and that emotions should be buried instead of expressed. You then carry these ideas into adulthood.
As an adult, you may struggle to articulate your feelings, avoid difficult conversations, and shut down emotionally during heated moments. You may even experience an intimacy disorder that causes you to keep everyone at arm’s length and leave them lonely.
This lack of emotional connection can result in resentment, frustration, and misunderstanding for you and your loved ones. Your partner may feel neglected or unloved. And you may feel overwhelmed or confused by expectations you were never taught how to meet. Over time, this issue can erode any chance of intimacy.
Communication Barriers
Open, honest communication is critical in relationships, but toxic masculinity keeps communication on the surface level. Meaningful conversations are challenging if you were taught to suppress emotions, avoid vulnerability, and prioritize control.
If you’re influenced by toxic masculinity, you may avoid talking about your feelings at all because you don’t want to look weak or out of control. But you still have feelings like sadness, fear, or anxiety. Instead of being able to communicate them, you may instead become withdrawn, defensive, or angry.
Not expressing your true emotions can cause conflict and leave you and those you love feeling unheard and misunderstood.
Power Dynamics and Control
Toxic masculinity is all about control and men needing to appear as and feel that they are dominant in every situation, including with their own emotions. This mindset can create power imbalances in your relationships where you think you’re showing you care while others see you as domineering and controlling.
This power dynamic can leave your loved ones feeling voiceless, dismissed, or constantly like they need to defend themselves and their feelings with you.
Intimacy in a relationship is impossible if one person thinks they must have all the power, authority, and control. Relationships don’t feel mutually beneficial or like partnerships.
Healing From Toxic Masculinity
Healing from toxic masculinity means unlearning harmful thoughts, behaviors, and expectations and replacing them with healthier, more balanced views. It also means you must learn that it’s acceptable and positive to connect with and rely on others.
To heal from toxic masculinity, you must:
- Recognize the Signs. You can’t heal from something you don’t identify. That means you must recognize how you subscribe to ideas of toxic masculinity and how it’s impacting you and those you love.
- Understand Healthy Masculinity. So, what does being a man look like? You need to learn what it looks like to be masculine without the toxicity. Learn what this means for you and model those behaviors.
- Embrace Emotion. Emotions are human. There’s nothing wrong with having or showing them. Embracing emotion helps you break the cycle of toxic masculinity.
- Seek Help. You may need professional support when breaking the habits of toxic masculinity, and that’s ok.
Getting Help at Begin Again Institute
How does toxic masculinity affect relationships? It ruins them at worst. It makes them unhealthy at best. Begin Again Institute can help you break free of the ideas that are causing you to live an inauthentic life and learn how to make real connections with others. Contact us to discuss how we can guide you to more authentic, meaningful relationships.
Edward Tilton is a proven behavioral healthcare leader with an established track record in the recovery industry space. As an accomplished healthcare leader, Ed has diverse management experience including clinical and business operations, expansion of program development, and clinical service offerings.
