Men's wellbeing | Men's health | Better Relationships

Many factors can constitute men’s wellbeing. From physical, social to emotional wellbeing – we explore the different ways to maintain and improve it.

Men’s wellbeing: different types of wellbeing

There are many different factors that are important to men’s wellbeing. Ask yourself the following questions to understand how your wellbeing is.

Physical wellbeing

Do you have any physical symptoms that concern you?
Do you feel fit?
Do you do physical activities that will prevent disease?
Do you neglect your health until there is a problem?
Do you tend to work at a sedentary job and get most of your exercise as a “weekend warrior”?
Do you get some combination of aerobic, resistance, and stretching exercises in the course of a week?

Emotional wellbeing

Do you feel real joy and delight in your life?
Do you often feel frustrated, down, or worried?
How easy is it for you to express a range of emotions: anger, hurt, fear, guilt, and love?
Do you tend to blame others or yourself when things don’t go right, or do you accept yourself and others as OK even when mistakes are made?

Food practices

How knowledgeable are you about healthy eating?
How well do you put into practice what you know?
Are you ever compulsive about what you eat or how you eat?
Do you feel “hooked” on certain foods?
Do you drink as much water as you should (8 glasses a day)?

Intimate partnerships

Are you married or in a long-term, intimate relationship?
How happy are you in your relationship?
Do you feel understood, respected, and loved?
Are you and your partner friends as well as lovers?
Can you be yourself, with your excesses and deficits, and still be accepted?
Is there room in your relationship for closeness and freedom?
Do you renew the relationship so that it can grow over time?

Life purpose

Does your life have meaning?
Do you feel you have something special to contribute to the world?
Do you feel needed by your family?
What do you know that if generally practiced would make the world a better place?
Does your work have a purpose beyond bringing home a pay-check?
Do you feel you are expressing who you really are?
Do you feel appreciated for who you are and what you give?

Joy in life

Can you still be inspired by beauty and wonder?
Can you still be silly and playful?
What things do you truly enjoy?
Do you take the time to have fun?
Who do you know who is really fun loving?
What could you do to allow that quality to express itself in you?
How often do you just let yourself go and enjoy life with reckless abandon?

Unique gifts

Do you have things that you’d like to share with other?
Are there things you’ve learned that you’d like to teach?
Do you have opportunities to express love and give to others?
Do you honor and appreciate yourself?
Do you recognize that with all your excesses and deficits you are a great man?

Men’s wellbeing in relationships

Here are some different factors to consider in terms of men’s wellbeing in relationships.

All relationships need nourishment. Nourish your own.

Throughout your life there are three key relationships that you need to nourish. The first is your relationship to yourself, the second is your relationship to your partner, the third is your relationship to your family and community. At different times of your lives more attention may go to one or the other.

When life moves on, you may need to treat your relationship as if it were new. You may need to court your partner, find new ways to get to know her (or him), and let her see sides of you that may have been hidden over the years – allow yourself to be vulnerable – take different risks. If it has been the woman who has taken the lead in nourishing the relationship in the first half, you may need to be the one to take the lead in the second half. If she was someone new you wanted to have a relationship with, what would you do? Get creative. Have fun.

Men’s wellbeing: it’s important to look after your self!

One of the best things a man can do for his relationship with his partner is to make sure his relationship with himself is healthy and growing. When is the last time you did something nice for yourself? In the hustle and bustle of our busy lives we sometimes put ourselves at the bottom of the priority list – family and job first. A relationship can only be as healthy as the people who make it up. Be sure you are taking care of yourself as much as you would lake care of the person in the world that you care about the most.

Be sure you are ‘feeding’ your relationships with friends and community.

We need to be sure that we have other supports than just our partners. Men’s groups can be a source of a great deal of care and nurturing. “When I feel there are many sources for love in my life, I feel I have more to give to my relationship.”

All relationships go through pain – listen to the pain and take action on what you hear.

No relationship can exist without pain. If you want a relationship that is always pain free you will be disappointed in love. If we think that pain and problems are a sign that there is something wrong with our relationship and that we need to find another one that feels better, we will send ourselves on an endless search. Problems and pain are part of every relationship.

There are two main ways we tell our partners about our pain that do not work very well.

“You” statements and “Why” questions.

“You” statements focus the problem on our partners. They are a way of hiding from our pain. They sound like this: “You are always inviting people over without asking me. You just don’t care, etc.” Maybe this sounds like something you have heard before? Notice that all the statements point at the other person. When we’re on the other end of the “You” statements we usually feel scolded and blamed.

In relationship communications, I have found that questions are usually ways of hiding feelings rather than requests for information. “You” statements: “Why are you always doing this to me?” “Don’t you know I have work to do tonight?” “Why don’t you ever take an interest in my work?” “How can you be so inconsiderate?” Have you ever heard yourself asking questions like these? It does not really work!

So what does work? We need to tell our partners about our pain. We need to let them know that what they do affects us without blaming them for the hurts that we feel. “I” statements focus on us. They tell our partner what is going on inside us.

“I” statements work.

The more we use them, the better communication we will have. But they are often difficult to use when we are under stress. Sometimes I can actually use a good “I” statement when I feel hurt: “I feel disappointed that you invited your aunt to visit without talking to me. I feel left out. I was looking forward to having time just for the two of us.” Whatever we can do, we need to notice our pain and let our partners know what’s going on inside of us.

The more we are able to do this, the more alive our relationships will be. The less we do it, the more energy will be lost from our relationships. Like everything else that is important in life, we need TO practice if we want relationships that work.

Be receptive, not reactive.

One of the great difficulties we have in discussing our hurts and disappointments with our partners is that we find it very difficult to be receptive rather than reactive. I can’t tell you how many times my wife has tried to tell me something that she is concerned about when, before she can finish, I am already reacting defensively. Being receptive is not an easy practice for most of us to master. We are much better at going on the offensive than listening to what our partners are trying to say to us. Being receptive means listening closely, with openness and love. It does not mean closing down while we smile, nod our heads, and say, “Yes dear, yes dear.”

I have found that the more receptive we are, the more secure we become. I have also found that the more secure we are, the more receptive we are able to be. In our earlier years we often equated being receptive with being “wimpy” and unmanly. In fact, being receptive is a mark of manly strength. The more we cultivate it, the better we feel about ourselves and the healthier our relationships become.

Men’s wellbeing: listen to what is being said.

Somehow many of us have gotten the idea that if we listen without responding, it means that we are agreeing with everything the other person is saying. I’ve found that one of the greatest gifts that one person can give another is to listen to him or her. When we are heard there is a kind of warmth that runs through our bodies. We feel embraced and cared for. I often have to remind myself, when I am listening to my wife say something that stirs strong emotions in me, to take a deep breath and just listen. I don’t need to defend myself. This is just her point of view, not something I have to challenge. If I can listen with an open heart I know it will help our communication and improve our relationship.

Once our partners feel heard, they are much more receptive to hearing our points of view. A great deal of the pain and conflict that occurs in relationships is because we haven’t been able to hear each other. A good deal of what I do as a therapist is just to listen to a person with an open mind and an open heart. This is a skill we can all acquire and which will improve with practice.

Learn to listen to your partner’s emotions.

We have all seen it, in our friends, on TV, or in our own relationships. Our partners are upset about something and become emotional. We withdraw behind a newspaper, the TV, or the computer. The less responsive we become, the more upset and emotional they become, and the more we withdraw. Women often complain, “I can never get through to him.” Men often complain, “I can’t take your constant criticism, you’re nagging.”

In order to break the pattern, we need to understand what is really going on. Recent research has shown that those who withdraw in the face of strong emotion are actually feeling flooded with feelings. Contrary to the belief that women are more emotional than men, men can be more emotionally sensitive — we react to emotional situations strongly — but we often keep our emotions inside.

Men’s wellbeing – withdrawing from emotion.

One of the main reasons we withdraw from emotional confrontations is that we are being overwhelmed emotionally, and that this is something we are often unable to deal with. Historically in Western society it has been considered almost unmanly to express and talk through feelings and emotions. Boys and men are expected to weather any and all kinda of turbulent situations with a “stiff upper lip;” being practical rather than emotional or verbal. Since girls and women, on the other hand, are expected to be emotionally sensitive, caring and expressive, these qualities have become associated with femininity. As such there is almost a social taboo for men to express their feelings (unless, of course, we’re talking about anger).

Since masculinity and sexuality can be called into question, it is not surprising that we tend to avoid emotional confrontations. Our upbringing often means that we are just not equipped to handle them. You can learn to listen without being overwhelmed though. This is an important factor of men’s wellbeing. Tell your partner that you need to listen a little at a time. If you start to become flooded, you need to take a break and come back when you have had a chance to let your nervous system return to normal. When you start feeling like your partner is always causing problems, you need to remember these social differences. A woman, whose emotional upbringing means she may be better able to handle stress, may more often brings up sensitive issues. A man, who is not as able to handle it, will attempt to avoid getting into the subject.

Men’s wellbeing