Men lag at wall of emotions

MEN are not known for their ability to share. I am not talking about material things but about emotions and feelings.

Yes, it is a generalisation and there are men out there who are in “touch with their feelings”. But, for many men, there remains an underlying inability to crack through this mental and emotional wall.

I can imagine many men would find it difficult to talk about the possibility of having post-natal depression. It is a condition associated with new mothers, not fathers, and as such it would make it even more difficult for men to talk about emotional difficulties they are experiencing during the pregnancy and once the child is born.

Recalling the birth of my first child, I remember feeling “weird”. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my child, but I didn’t have an immediate outpouring of emotion, which I expected. It wasn’t until a good friend of mine asked me a simple question that I finally felt a little better about it.

“How did you feel?” he asked. A simple question but not one that anyone else had actually asked.

Most of the questions revolved around how was the baby and how was his mum doing. When I hesitated, he added: “did you feel numb?”

It was the perfect description and knowing that another dad had felt something similar lifted a weight from me. He told me it would change, and he was right.