Who told men they aren’t allowed to be loved?
There is something I have been noticing lately.
And the more I notice it, the more I realise how easily the media can turn an observation into a worldview.
It starts with a video.
Then another.
Then a tweet.
Then a TikTok.
Then a WhatsApp status.
Then a joke.
Then another joke.
And eventually, nobody remembers where the idea came from.
They just know it feels true.
I saw a video recently that made me think about this.
A man appeared to have broken down by the side of the road. The bonnet was open. Smoke was coming out. He stood there trying to flag down passing cars.
Nobody stopped.
Then a woman appeared beside the car.
Suddenly, someone stopped.
The video ended with a message along the lines of:
Being a man isn’t easy. Nobody is coming to save you.
And I understood the point.
Being a man isn’t easy.
Being a father isn’t easy.
Being a brother isn’t easy.
Being a son isn’t easy.
There are expectations placed on men that can be exhausting.
Be strong.
Provide.
Protect.
Don’t complain.
Don’t cry.
Figure it out.
Handle it.
And if you fall apart, preferably do it somewhere nobody can see.
But I think there is a problem when we take that reality and turn it into a philosophy.
Because “men are expected to be strong” is an observation.
“Men should not need anybody” is a belief.
And those two things are not the same.
—
This is where my Mass Communication brain starts disturbing me.
Because I remember learning Agenda-Setting Theory.
The media may not necessarily tell people exactly what opinion to have, but it can influence which subjects receive attention.
And then there is Social Learning Theory—the idea that people can learn behaviours and attitudes by observing others.
Put those two ideas together and social media becomes incredibly powerful.
Because what happens when the internet repeatedly shows men as providers, protectors, soldiers, hustlers, heartbreak survivors and emotionally unavailable machines?
Eventually, that becomes the picture of masculinity.
The man must endure.
The woman must be cared for.
The man must give.
The woman must receive.
The man must pursue.
The woman must be pursued.
The man gets hurt?
“Be a man.”
The woman gets hurt?
“Who hurt my baby?”
And yes, those are stereotypes.
But stereotypes become dangerous when people stop seeing them as stereotypes and start seeing them as instructions.
I think one of the strangest things society has taught men is that being needed is their responsibility, but being loved is somehow optional.
A man can be useful.
A man can be dependable.
A man can provide.
A man can protect.
A man can sacrifice.
A man can solve everybody’s problems.
But sometimes the moment that same man says,
“I need help.”
The room becomes uncomfortable.
And I don’t think that’s fair.
Men are human beings before they are providers.
They have insecurities.
They get scared.
They get lonely.
They want reassurance.
They want affection.
They want somebody to ask, “Are you okay?” and actually wait for the answer.
They want to be appreciated without first having to accomplish something.
They want to be loved for existing, not only for what they can provide.
And somehow, that part of masculinity rarely gets the same attention.
There is something almost ironic about the way we talk about men’s emotional health.
We tell men:
“Talk about your feelings.”
But we also spend years teaching them that vulnerability makes them weak.
We tell men:
“It’s okay to ask for help.”
Then we praise the man who carries everything silently.
We tell men:
“You deserve love too.”
Then relationship conversations often focus heavily on what a man should provide, how he should behave, how he should protect, how he should pursue, and what he should sacrifice.
None of those expectations are automatically wrong.
But where is the conversation about what a man deserves?
Not what he should do.
What he deserves.
And this is where I think we need to be careful with those viral videos.
A video showing that nobody stopped for a stranded man can start an important conversation about how strangers respond differently to men and women.
But if the lesson becomes:
“Nobody will ever help you because you’re a man.”
we have gone beyond observation.
We’ve created an identity.
And identity is powerful.
If you repeatedly tell a young boy that nobody will save him, eventually he may decide that asking to be saved is shameful.
If you repeatedly tell him that crying is weakness, he may learn to hide sadness.
If you repeatedly tell him that his worth comes from what he provides, he may begin to measure his entire existence by productivity.
And then one day, he becomes the man everyone calls strong.
While nobody knows how tired he is.
But I don’t want to swing the pendulum too far in the other direction either.
Because women have their own expectations placed on them.
Women are told how they should look.
How they should behave.
How they should love.
How they should be mothers.
How they should be wives.
How they should handle themselves.
There are pressures men don’t experience.
There are pressures women don’t experience.
The point isn’t to decide who has life harder.
Pain is not a competition.
If one person is drowning, telling them that someone else is drowning deeper doesn’t make them breathe any better.
Maybe the conversation should simply be:
What if we stopped teaching people that suffering is proof of strength?
What if being strong could include asking for help?
What if being a man could include being cared for?
What if being a woman could include being the provider sometimes?
What if love wasn’t divided into masculine and feminine responsibilities?
What if we stopped telling men that nobody is coming to save them and started telling them:
“You are allowed to save yourself. But you’re also allowed to let somebody help.”
Because there is a massive difference.
The internet has incredible power to shape what we consider normal.
A joke repeated enough becomes a stereotype.
A stereotype repeated enough becomes an expectation.
And an expectation repeated enough becomes a rule.
That is why the things we laugh at deserve examination sometimes.
Not because every TikTok is dangerous.
Not because every WhatsApp status is propaganda.
But because we are learning from what we consume, whether we realise it or not.
Maybe being a man isn’t easy.
Of course it isn’t.
But I don’t want young men growing up believing that difficulty is the price of admission into masculinity.
I don’t want a boy thinking he has to earn affection by being useful.
I don’t want a man believing that needing somebody makes him less of a man.
And I certainly don’t want the sentence “nobody is coming to save you” to become the most important lesson he learns about life.
Because sometimes somebody will come.
Sometimes your mother will.
Sometimes your father will.
Sometimes your brother will.
Sometimes your friend will.
Sometimes your partner will.
Sometimes a stranger will.
And sometimes you’ll have to save yourself.
That’s life.
But being capable of standing alone should never mean you are forbidden from leaning on someone.
Maybe men don’t need less strength.
Maybe, they just need permission to understand that strength and vulnerability were never opposites in the first place.
