This silent suffering is a ticking time bomb wearing the mask of masculinity.

He was the life of every party, the one always cracking jokes, the friend everyone described as “solid.” A week after his funeral, the group chat was still haunted by silence. No one knew he was struggling. He never said a word.

His last message was a meme. His last act was ending his life. And he wasn’t the only one.

It’s frightening how we all know this isn’t an isolated tragedy.

This is a story that rings like an echo in countless stories of men bound by loyalty, yet divided by silence.

You might have come across this statistic that states men die by suicide nearly twice as often as women worldwide. And this is not because they lack strength, but because society silences them until silence becomes irreversible.

They’re taught to joke instead of cry. To brush it off instead of speak up. To hold it in, even when it’s killing them.

This reality reveals a stark truth: Your best man will take a bullet for you, offer up a kidney without blinking. But ask him to talk about how he feels… Suddenly, the room goes quiet.

This is the paradox of male friendships. The love runs deep but the language of that love is insults, sarcasm, and banter.

Why?
Why do so many men bottle up their emotions, deflect with humor, or implode in private? Maybe the answer lies in a mix of biology, psychology, and generations of social conditioning.

The Biology (and Society) Behind It All

To understand how we got here, we might first look to biology. Research shows that male and female brains process emotions differently. Men have a smaller prefrontal cortex compared to women, which influences emotional regulation.

Testosterone also plays a role in reducing the intensity of emotional responses, making men naturally more inclined to suppress rather than express. It is linked to risk-taking behavior, dominance, and aggression.

Evolutionarily, this made sense. Our ancestors needed protectors, hunters, fighters. Men were, in some ways, biologically predisposed for survival, to be less overtly emotionally expressive and more action-oriented.

But we’re not fighting sabertooth tigers anymore. And while biology offers a starting point, it’s crucial to remember that we are not merely slaves to our hormones.

Society and culture are powerful sculptors, intensely shaping how these predispositions are expressed, encouraged, or suppressed. Studies have found that boys and girls experience similar levels of emotional intensity as children, but by adolescence, boys exhibit less outward emotional expression. This shift isn’t because they stop feeling emotions, but rather because they learn that expressing them has social consequences.

We mistake silent suffering for strength, but it’s really society’s way of keeping men in emotional solitary confinement. We’re dealing with job loss, heartbreak, loneliness, identity crises, and the overwhelming weight of being “a man” in a world that often doesn’t allow him to bend.

The wiring hasn’t changed much. But the world, and our understanding of it, has. And the result of this?? An emotional bottleneck. It’s just pressure building and building with nowhere safe to go.

Raised to Be Tough, Not Tender

From the moment a boy cries, he’s told, “Don’t cry like a girl.” He’s taught that vulnerability is weakness. That sharing is soft. That asking for help is a defeat. And by the time he becomes a man, he’s mastered the art of emotional silence.

Boys learn fast: “If you show emotion, then the pack will descend.” The word “gay” itself, stripped of its meaning, becomes a slur to police their tenderness. If you show too much care, too much softness, you’re suddenly seen as less of a man.

This isn’t just fathers; mothers too, enforce these lessons. They push sons toward ‘strength,’ sanding down their edges to fit society’s mold. It rarely has anything to do with cruelty, rather, it’s generations of inherited scripts: ‘Don’t cry. Don’t flinch. Don’t need.’ 

This mocking isn’t harmless. This is textbook emotional policing. But what fuels this policing? It’s more than just “boys being boys.” If you dig deeper, you’ll find society’s allergic reaction to male intimacy. Even straight men internalize this homophobia, then wield it like a cudgel against vulnerability. This fear ensures that any deep emotional expression between men becomes suspect, forcing interactions into a narrow, “acceptable” band of masculine behavior.

Men are constantly on guard, performing a rigid version of masculinity even with those they should trust most.

It’s the unspoken rulebook of male friendships: never be too open, never feel too much.

And the irony is that these are often the same friends who would stand by you through hell but can’t sit with you in your sadness, precisely because the rulebook forbids it.

He’s fine. He’s dying inside.

In therapy, we often trace the roots of depression, addiction, even aggression in men back to one thing: unexpressed emotion. Decades of pain with no outlet.

And the worst part is that this toll extends beyond mental health. Chronic, unexpressed stress corrodes arteries and cripples immune defenses. So in other words, emotional suppression doesn’t just harm mental health, but it also chips away at the body.

Men die earlier, in part, because their stress has no outlet. Often, the only “acceptable” emotion for men to display is anger- a dangerous conduit for unexpressed sadness, fear, or shame. Furthermore, the inability for men to be vulnerable makes it difficult for them to truly receive love and support, even when it is offered. And all this does is continue perpetuating a cycle of profound isolation.

The Truth About “Toxic Masculinity”

Let’s get one thing straight: masculinity itself is not the enemy. The internet has, in part, diluted the concept of toxic masculinity, unfairly dragging basic male traits.

What toxic masculinity does is weaponize this silent suffering, and call it ‘resilience’; all the while ignoring its fatal consequences.

Emotional Orphans: The Silent Suffering of Men

Many men become emotional orphans in their own lives. Surrounded by people, but starving for connection. And we often talk about how emotionally unavailable men affect their partners. But what about their friends? Their kids? Their brothers?

When men don’t know how to emotionally show up, they become strangers to the people closest to them. Their romantic partners often become unwilling sole emotional custodians, shouldering the entire weight of their partner’s unexpressed inner world. A burden that healthy friendships are meant to help share.

This outsourcing of emotional labor can lead to resentment, burnout, and ultimately, relationship breakdowns, leaving men feeling even more adrift. They become absent in presence. And over time, even their most loyal friendships start to feel like hollow performances, shadowed by an unspoken competition or a fear of judgment that keeps true connection at bay.

Brotherhood Without The Silent Suffering

Because sometimes, the pressure to offer solutions is just another way we avoid sitting with uncomfortable feelings – our own, or someone else’s.

Unlearning the Silence

If you’re a man reading this maybe it’s time to check in on your friends. Not just with a “Yo, what’s up,” but with an “Are you really okay?” And if you’re someone who loves a man, your partner, your brother, your father, give them the space to talk. Don’t judge how or when they do. But just let them know it’s safe.

Breaking these cycles isn’t easy. It requires conscious effort:

• Ask your friend how he’s really doing and wait for the pause.
• Don’t fix. Just be there. Sometimes, presence is the only answer.
• Share something real from your own life. Vulnerability breeds safety.
• Challenge the jokes that cut too deep. You can love someone and still call them out.
• And yes, it might feel awkward at first. Do it anyway. That’s how change begins.

Male friendships don’t have to be built on silence. Emotional strength isn’t about pretending nothing affects you, it’s about facing what does and that doesn’t make you any less strong. In fact, this is the very thing that makes you whole.

Because behind every joke, every insult, every “I’m fine,” there might be a weight they’ve carried for far too long. And they’re waiting, perhaps desperately, for permission to finally set it down.

The post Man Up. Shut Up. Break Down: The Deadly Cost of Being ‘One of the Guys’ first appeared on SUNGJEM AIER.