Feelings of Men and Women

The soul is enriched and expanded through the free expression of emotion. Women have been afforded much more freedom in this regard. Men typically have a harder time retaining their emotional sensitivity because they can be ridiculed for having deep feelings. Boys are shamed and shut down, and as a result of that we have men who are literally emotionally retarded. They haven’t been allowed the naturalness of emotionality, so they get trapped at the stages of emotional development when the feelings were denied. It does happen to girls as well, of course, but usually not to the same degree.

Great sensitivity and depth in feeling is a human capacity. It’s equally available to both men and women. Society is just more permissive of feminine emotions at present.

But in balance, society generally favours stoicism and frowns upon emotionality from anyone, so we’re all prone to varying degrees of repression. When things get bottled up, we can get messy during stressful times. Feelings can erupt in surprising ways and this confirms our societal position that emotions are unwelcome.

If we were encouraged to feel continuously from childhood, then we wouldn’t have a huge backlog of unresolved issues. Then our feeling capacity could instead take us much more easily in the more productive direction of overwhelming positive emotions.