Why it's good for men to talk

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1:13Hello, I'm Luke Jones. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. This time in BBC OS Conversations, we bring together men to discuss why it can be so difficult to share their emotions and vulnerabilities. Our guests today are from the UK, Spain, India and South Africa and are all men because they're going to share why men need to talk to each other more. They all discuss the stigma around opening up and the damage caused when men don't seek support from each other. We taught a man shouldn't cry, a man should protect, a man should be brave, a man should be strong and that it's only girls that are allowed to express emotion.

1:51So the question then becomes, where do those emotions go to when they get suppressed?

2:02There is no good reason why women should be any better than men when it comes to sharing their emotional problems, of course. Yet it often seems that way. And it's something which the men in the conversation you're about to hear are trying very hard to change. All three are of Zimbabwean heritage and they live and work in the UK and are all good friends. They are Impo, Itte and Tinto. My colleague Mark Lowen began by asking Tinto how they communicate with each other. And I should warn you that the men do discuss a friend's suicide during the conversation.

2:31Kholekile:Itai and Mpoh and Dai have a brotherhood that I think has pretty much gone past the test of time. Itai I've known for the best part of 31 years now or 32. Mpoh I've known is coming up to two or three years. and we have regular meetups as gents and most of them happen around the home and it's always over a braai we call them a braai but they're better known as barbecues on this end of the world so our communication really stems from a very chilled social environment that enables us to talk about things that are funny happening with each one of our lives but then at some point the conversations kind of become very serious and when they become very serious it's about things that matter to us as men if we have found the opportunity to speak about them openly.

3:16Kholekile:And I think the most recent of those in my case would have been when I was trying to make the decision as to whether or not I need to get into a serious relationship based on the fact that some previous ones had been pretty bad. And so opening up was now the conversation about, Aiman, can I trust you with my vulnerabilities as a man? And some of those vulnerabilities could be coming from, for instance, a fear that maybe I I don't communicate with my partner the way that I'm supposed to and to feel understood. And then maybe the vulnerability in having issues and understanding what the other person is trying to say to me and having the patience to sit down and listen.

3:50Kholekile:Because I think by nature, what I do as an individual is try to find the solution to a problem. So whenever I'm listening to somebody who I'm getting familiar with, it's to try and find where the problem is and where there's no problem, I don't have a solution. So it's this kind of conversation to then bounce off the brothers like Itai and Dumpur to try and see if I can trust you enough with this perceived vulnerability. And if you hear me, are you going to laugh at me and say you're a weak man or not? And how that pans out. And for me, that's how I initiate communication with these guys. Primarily, it's over food.

4:21Kholekile:It's always over food and always over a nice chill drink. Yes, that's a good starting point, I think, for everything in life. Itai, do you feel you can open up with Tinto and Impoa in the same way? Oh, absolutely. And actually, this is the interesting thing, because Tindai mentioned something about his relationship. I'm unfortunate in the sense that I had to go through a very traumatic divorce a few years ago. Obviously, I've moved on. I'm with someone else now. I'm very happy. But going through that experience, if you're in a marriage and you've known someone for 20 years plus, it's a difficult time in everybody's life.

4:57Right. And for men, you know, that were going through the same similar situation to me, I could then relay my own experience to them. And also, I think, you know, as men, we're meant to be like, you know, the resilient people. We're meant to be the reliable, dependable, the shoulder to cry on in most situations. But when you show that vulnerability, when you show that soft side, when you show that sensitivity, you know, some people may consider that to be a sign of weakness, even though we know it's not. So I think sometimes men are very hesitant to show their vulnerabilities. Impo, do you feel that it's been easy for you to kind of get past those stereotypes of masculinity, let's say, and open up to your two friends?

5:36I have. I quite value the perspective that Tinto and Itai have from their different experiences and exposures. And it's a similar thing with most of my male friends where I live my own life. But getting sort of advice or getting to know what they have been through helps me out. maybe when I am facing something similar or a similar challenge. I'm much younger than Tintu and Itai. But from the experiences of relationships, I can then be vulnerable about what I am going through in my relationships as I am being a man and going into maybe planning my first marriage soon. So they have valuable input into what works, what I should be looking for, what are red flags.

6:32And I understand you didn't grow up with a father figure. Do you think that being able to speak to close male friends provides that outlet that you may have lacked? It does. So I've been quite fortunate to have good male figures around me and we will have barbecues here and there. And I'm able to open up to things probably that I would have opened up to my father if he was there. Tinto, tell me about your podcast that you launched, which is particularly on this matter.

7:02Kholekile:Yeah, so I've got a podcast known as The Feeling Station. It's been running for about five years and it's been hugely successful and I think for two main reasons. One, it attempts to give the individuals anonymity by giving them a name that they use for the duration of the podcast. And then on top of that, they're real life lessons that every guest has to present before they share their story. And what I've found is it has allowed people to really open up and be vulnerable, but also it has helped me identify a very key statistic. When I look at the back end and the demographics, there's a huge, huge difference between the numbers of women and men who present on the podcast.

7:37Kholekile:So right now I'm sitting at 94 % of my guests being women, talking very openly about what's happened in their relationships with friends, family, and romantic relationships. And as far as men go, it's only 6 % of the entire conversation. And I've been on social media, the platforms that I'm on, and I've said, men, I need you to come forward. What can I help you with to come forward? And if I do say 20 in a month, I would only get maybe one response from a man. And the man is basically saying, I would consider, but I will feel judged. What is holding men back, do you think? I think what is holding men back is really the difference in which men and women by nature, in my opinion, operate and think.

8:18Kholekile:Women communicate because they want empathy, they want connection, they want feeling. Whereas on the other hand, by default, I think men are solutions oriented. So until then, unless they have a solution at the forefront for what it is that they're facing, they're going to retreat into a cave. Yeah, men tend to be problem solvers. As you said, we tend to be more rational. Women, it's more emotional based to try and make sense of every situation. But how do I feel about it? Men are less likely to kind of be vulnerable, you know, from that perspective. The detriment that, you know, there are certain situations that you then bottle up.

8:54And that is in itself inherently unhealthy as well. Have you faced any of those moments, Yitai? I have. Oh, absolutely. There were times when I would find myself in, you know, very dark places where I wasn't talking to anybody. Even if people were checking up on me, I didn't feel that, you know, I wanted to talk to anyone in particular. even my parents, you know. And I think that was to my own detriment. I'm definitely learning and growing and, you know, learning to change, learning to be more open. And actually, you know, whatever is on my mind, whether it's something troubling or, you know, something that is to be celebrated, I'll definitely open up about that now.

9:33And I've had to kind of be more self-aware of, you know, that kind of negative side. I understand both you and Tinto lost people who were close to you. How important has it been to be able to talk and to allow it not to be bottled up? So we had a very close friend who was going through a very troubling time in his life. Neither of us were aware of exactly what he was going through. Unfortunately, you know, he then went on to take his own life. This is about 10 years ago. And that really affected both of us. And I remember when I learned about it, I phoned up my father and I was in tears. And I said to him, Dad, my friend has just committed suicide.

10:13And you know the first thing he said to me? He said to me, stop crying and man up. Never forget that.

10:20Kholekile:Yeah. When that news broke as well for me, I remember getting onto the phone with Itai. And the first words we were able to say to each other were just literally high. That the rest of that was just tears from both ends. Because we didn't understand how this happened just under our noses. but we were also able to share a very vulnerable moment where we forgot what it is that we are trained to be as African men, which is do not shed a tear, be as strong as you can be a man. In that moment, I think in realizing that we both put that aside and let nature take its course and let that tear flow to allow us to calm down did us more harm than good.

10:57Kholekile:And I think it also then translated into some things that happened between ourselves. I remember opening up to him and telling him about a moment in which a difficult situation I'd been in with my past relationship made me consider taking my own life. And the only thing that stopped that from happening was one, remembering what had happened with our friend, and then valuing what it was like when we sat down and we said, we wish we had known and wish he had spoken. So I didn't want to burden my close family, Andy Tai, with the thought of saying I should have said something to him or we should have spoken.

11:29Kholekile:So we spoke and I told him about it. But maybe what's also important to point out here, just to go back to your question, when we're saying, why do you think men are like this? By nature, we retreat into a cave until we find a solution. So I didn't actually tell him in the moment or on the day that I felt like that. I was only able to tell him after I was able to reposition myself and say, no, this is not the best way to do it because I remembered what it felt like to have lost a friend. So I think around all three of us, Mpo included, because Mpo, remember, I think you've also spoken to us about things you've dealt with after the fact.

12:01Kholekile:is that one important thing that happens within this friend group is there is still the component to try and resolve an issue by yourself first which I think is just the way we're wired as as men the conversation he's talking about was with regards to my ex where we had had about a two and a half year relationship and I thought it was going somewhere and then at some point I was just like, no, this is not really for me. And it was through conversation after the fact, they were wondering how I managed to get to two and a half years in that relationship. And maybe by their standards, they would have left at the first instance of what was going on.

12:45So it's an interesting point. And I think it goes back to how we are brought up as boys into men, you don't really get to talk about your feelings on a daily basis. It's mostly how you're going to be solving a problem or have you done this? Have you solved it? There's no community as a boy into a man. You know how women will call each other about, I've just had a date right now and it went well. Men will never do that. We would only open up maybe after the fifth or sixth date. And that's when we talk about things. Ita was mentioning that this, he used the phrase, you know, it's as we as African men, it's what we are trained to do.

13:32I mean, do you think that there is a kind of cultural stereotype on top of the gender stereotype, which deepens that inability to kind of open up? I think it's there to an extent, though, because I've seen the videos that have been floating around where men are calling each other to say, I love you or to say goodnight. Don't be calling me, Ty.

13:56Kholekile:Don't be calling me to say goodnight. And yes, we might say on this call that it's an African thing, but it's also there in Western communities. It's there in some white American households where men are calling each other and they're finding it weird to say goodnight. They're finding it weird to say, I love you. I mean, what do you make of this TikTok viral trend that the goodnight calls? If you got a phone call either from each other or from another friend just to say goodnight before bedtime, how would you feel, Tinto? I wouldn't like that. And I don't know why. I couldn't tell you why. Honestly, I imagine one of my friends actually calling me and I nod and be like, Oi, are you okay?

14:42Kholekile:What's going on? It would have been very awkward. And even after seeing the trend and knowing that if somebody does call and they say that, I would still find it strange. Even despite your podcast, even despite having this close relationship with your male friends? It's too intimate. You're going to expose a bit of me, a soft side of me that I don't think I'd like to be out or I don't think I'm ready for it to be out. On my end, it's been kind of easier because I've had this one friend since high school. At the end of any phone call you have with him, he will push for saying I love you. So I think I've just been fortunate again to have a mix of people who I talk to, including Tinto and Itai, that just open up.

15:24Mpo, Itai and Tinto, three friends in the UK on the huge mental health benefits from talking to one another during good times and bad. I'm Luke Jones and from the BBC World Service, you're listening to BBC OS Conversations on why it is good for men to talk.

15:43You heard the three men just there discuss the suicide of one of their friends and the impact it had on all of them. Now, while suicide rates vary around the world, according to the World Health Organization, just over twice as many men take their own lives globally compared to women. The men in our next conversation have all struggled emotionally, but they say they've been helped enormously by joining support groups aimed specifically at men. They are Wasif in New Delhi, India, Coliquile in Cape Town, South Africa, Hilario in southern Spain and Kenny in the south of England. Kenny began by describing what led him to seek help two years ago.

16:21My mental health support group is called For Men To Talk. and when I first joined the primary reason is I had a 10-year relationship that broke down overnight and from that the biggest feeling that I really had was hopelessness. I was already under the community mental health team here in the UK and I was going through a lot of grief which sadly they didn't really have a lot of answers or a lot of treatment that could be available. so for me it was a bit of like desperation really I didn't have a lot of family it's just me and my father and my full-time care of my friendship circle was very small so it was really reaching out to people that not only just understood but also finding a community.

17:10Did you find that in your group? Yes and also a bit of family from joining the group I now actually facilitate in the same group so I've taken the help that I've received and also now help men that were just like me back then. Kolakile take me back to when you decided to join your group. I was sitting at work on a Wednesday and and we had just gone through a work meeting and it didn't go necessarily well for me and then at that point when I like you know what I just need to leave this company And so I wrote up my resignation letter, submitted it to my HR director. And he received the letter and sat down and like, okay, so let's talk about you.

17:56After 30 minutes, he said, look for this organization, the Mankind Project South Africa, and see if there's any weekend coming. If you like what's happening, go attend the workshop and then we'll take it from there. And that was literally two weeks before the training weekend was about to happen in Cape Town. So I'm like, I have nothing to lose. I go attend the workshop. Came back on a Monday. And after the workshop, we sat down like, OK, so I have your resignation letter. Can I still go ahead? I'm like, no, let's not go ahead. But what that weekend did, what introduced me to concepts around myself that I didn't even know existed as issues that I was dealing with internally.

18:39And then that's how I joined the Mankind Project back in 2009. 2009. It's got a support, it's a men's organization, it's got support programs in it, wherein we meet as a group of men, a group of 12 that meet together every second week since 2009 and we're still going, but the organization is far bigger than that. And it just opens up opportunities for one to look at myself as a person, what are my issues, what are the things that I'm not looking at, what are my childhood traumas that I hardly look at or I don't even acknowledge exist and what their impact has been on my growing up and on my outlook on life.

19:21And Hilario has a similar sort of experience to what you had? To some extent yes at the beginning I was just sort of curious because I never had one of these groups. I was also separating from my partner at the time we have a daughter and I I started to talk about raising a child alone and needing help just to go out to buy something you have forgotten and being able to leave the altar with someone. And of course, I didn't have women friends that could help me with that. Since I was curious about this men's group, we began to talk about that. He invited me to a first meeting. we were eight to ten people to ten men they have different ages and and and social classes and studies and so on and i discovered something that i didn't know and that we could share our personal life and our responsibilities and also became aware of all these gender norms that are supposed to constrain men and not being able to talk about or think about their personal life.

20:39That was back in the late 90s. And we stayed sort of eight years meeting each 15 days or so. It was much like a friend's dinner, but we decided that we wouldn't talk about work or football or women. and we sat there five minutes looking at each other and asking ourselves what the hell are we going to talk about and then we started to talk about our absence. That's so interesting you had to kind of get the usual topics out of your mind in order to be able to open up emotionally. Yeah right. We've got the line up to Wasif as well from India. Could you just explain what made you want to join the support group when you did and what was the emotional state you were in that made you decide to do it?

21:31I am a part of the organization Men's Welfare Trust. So they run the support group meetings here in New Delhi in India. I was going through a very bad marriage. And being a man in the society, if someone is going through your matrimonial issues, there are not many people who will empathize with you, except your family members. And this marital issue was giving a lot of mental stress. I had contemplated suicide as well during that period. So I was going through and searching for support for men. Then I came across this organization and I joined them. They run a weekly support group meetings and people going through issues like me, mostly domestic issues.

22:08They discuss their cases, discuss their issues. There are people with a lot of experience who will mentor you, but they're like-minded people like me who will share their stories. So when I found this group, it was a big, big mental burden was off my head. They were not judging me. They were not questioning me. I've spent a long time there i've met good friends there it's becoming like a brotherhood for us so we are constantly in touch we share our personal personal issues with each other we discuss our personal problems we are together in the times of joy we are together in the times of grief as well one of the the missions of four men to talk is to break down the stigma of men talking to each other about not just the mundane work but actually about how they're feeling the simple question is how's your weak bin is something that not a lot of men do and that's why we we close up as well so it's harder for men to open up.

23:02Kole Kile is there also that stigma in South Africa that you need to be tough and not be emotionally fragile? Definitely I think it's a it's an issue that you find across the world wherein there's a certain societal expectation around what a man should look like and how a man should show up in the world. So if you look even right now around the world, the biggest perpetrators of problems are men. And if you sit down with these men and realize that this person is either scared or fearful of something that he doesn't even know. So we taught as men, even down here in South Africa, that a man shouldn't cry, a man should protect, a man should be brave, a man should be strong.

23:49and then that it's only girls that are allowed to express emotion. So the question then becomes, where do those emotions go to when they get suppressed? And they found outlets in wrong ways, either through alcohol and drug abuse or through violence, because these are the only ways I can express my suppressed emotions. We want to cry, but I'm told that, no, you shouldn't cry in front of children. and they'll think that you are weak. And so getting spaces where I can sit and comfortably break down and know that I'm hurt, once I've released, I then go back home feeling a bit better and I'm able to deal with the same problem completely differently from how I was looking at it a few minutes or so ago or before I go to my men's group where I had a safe space.

24:42So as men, we do need those safe spaces. It makes life so wonderful Wonderful, because now I know where I can go and I will not be judged. For us, for Men To Talk is only five years old. So to hear some of the guys that have gone, you know, many, many more years in this journey is just eye opening and amazing to hear. And something that I will spread to my groups as well to say, look, you know, we're not alone in this battle. Kenny in the UK, Wasif in India, Hilario in Spain and Kola Kile in South Africa. on the positive impact of sharing their emotions, their fears and their vulnerabilities with other men.

25:21If you're affected by any of the issues raised, you could speak to a health professional or an organisation that offers support. Details of help available in many countries around the world can be found at Befrienders Worldwide on www.befrienders.org. If you're in the UK, a list of organisations that might be able to help are at www.pbc.co.uk forward slash action line. I'm Luke Jones and you've been listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service