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Robbie Shefford
Known in the trucking and farming communities as the Gooserooter from Geraldine. Robbie talks trucks, tractors, mental health and positive thinking: speaking from the heart, sharing real-life stories at grassroot level through lived experience.
There is this line that gets thrown around all the time that men do not understand women. Maybe sometimes that is true. But the part no one really talks about is that a lot of men do not feel understood either, and the longer that goes on, the quieter we get.
Women say men do not understand women, yet women understand women and they hate each half the time. That is not a dig: it is just irony. People are complicated. So when a bloke is expected to perfectly understand a world he was never raised to speak in, while also being told his world is too simple or too closed off, you end up with men living behind a locked door. Not because we do not want connection, but because we have learned it is safer to keep the key in our pocket.
We get told we do not open up, we do not talk and we do not share what we are feeling. And fair enough: sometimes we do shut down. But it is not always ego and it is not always stubbornness. A lot of the time it is because we genuinely do not know how to say it. The feelings are there, loud, heavy and real, but turning them into the right words feels like trying to explain a nightmare you cannot fully remember. You know it shook you and you know it hurt but, when you try to describe it, the details fall apart in your mouth.
For me there is another layer. On a good day I stutter. That is just how I am wired. So when I am upset, under pressure or trying to explain something I do not even fully understand myself, that stutter gets worse. It is not just speech, it is stress. It turns a hard conversation into an obstacle course. You can feel the words sitting there and you know what you mean, but you cannot get them out cleanly. Every stumble adds more pressure and that pressure tightens everything else. The harder you try the worse it gets and then people think you are being evasive, dramatic or not communicating, when really you are fighting your own brain and mouth just to get one sentence across the finish line. So we go quiet, not because we do not feel, but because we are tired of being misunderstood halfway through a sentence.
Then comes the part everyone says they want until it actually happens. We finally break. We finally have the meltdown. We finally cry. We finally see the real feeling instead of the filtered version. You would think that would be the moment where things soften, where someone just says I have got you and leaves it there. Sometimes that happens. But a lot of the time it doesn't. A lot of the time, even after you crack open, you still get told you do not talk and you get asked why you do not open up while you are literally sitting there opened up like a bonnet with the engine running.
Men already struggle to open up and then on top of that we struggle to find the right words. When we finally try, it still comes out wrong. Something comes out clumsy or blunt or backwards and it gets taken the wrong way. The whole conversation shifts from what you were trying to say to how you are it: it is all you.
Well yes, for once maybe we need it to be all about us. Not forever and not every day, just for a moment. Long enough to cry, to grieve, to let it out in our own way without it turning into a competition or a scoreboard. We do not want to be corrected while we are bleeding. We do not want our pain turned into an accusation. We want the space to be human without it being used as proof that we are broken.
Because when it gets thrown back in our face, we learn fast that opening up costs more than staying shut, so we bottle it up again. We cry in the car, in the shed, in the shower, or we lie there at night staring at the ceiling and let it out where no one can see and no one can twist it into something else.
And here is another truth that does not get said enough. Sometimes men want to be held. Not a five-second cuddle and not a distracted pat on the back. A proper cuddle. The kind where everything goes quiet and you feel safe enough to try and explain, even if you get it wrong. Because we know we are not always good with words. We know it. We need patience. We need understanding. One wrong word can flip the whole meaning of a sentence. When you add a stutter on top of being emotional it is like trying to reverse a trailer through a tight gate while someone keeps yelling different directions. You end up tense and flustered and more likely to jack knife the whole thing.
So when we do not get that patience, we go back to what we know: Hermit-the-crab mode. Shell on. Quiet again. Not because we do not care and not because we do not love, but because we are tired of the cost of being honest.
Some people cry from grief, frustration, hurt, pain, loss, exhaustion or the quiet build-up of a thousand small things that were never dealt with properly. Some cry because something ended. Some cry because something never began. Some cry because they are overwhelmed. Some cry because they have been strong for everyone else for so long their body finally says enough and some cry because all of the above. Tears do not all mean the same thing. Sometimes they are heartbreak, sometimes disappointment, sometimes fear you cannot name and sometimes anger that does not feel safe any other way. Sometimes it is not even about now. It could be about old wounds and old conversations and old versions of yourself you had to bury just to survive. Crying is not always loud and it is not always dramatic. Sometimes it is one tear in the car before you wipe it away. Sometimes it is a tight chest that finally breaks open. It is not weakness and it is not manipulation. Sometimes it is just pressure leaving the system so the system does not explode.
Some men have learned how to cry. They have done the work of unlearning the old rules: man up, harden up, don’t be soft. They have realised crying doesn’t make them less of a man: it makes them honest.
But some men are still learning. Not because they don’t feel deeply, but because they were taught to lock it down, praised for being tough and rewarded for being silent. For some the tears are there but the permission is not. For others the emotion comes out sideways as anger or withdrawal because no one ever showed them what safe release looks like. Learning to cry is not about dramatic breakdowns. It is about allowing yourself to soften without shame. Some men have mastered that. Others are still standing at the edge of it.
And both deserve patience.
That is the trap. If we stay quiet, we don’t open up. If we try, we say it wrong. If we cry we are weak. If we don’t cry we are cold, don’t love and don’t care. If we need comfort, we are needy. If we ask for space we are making it all about us.
We are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Basically, either way, we are fucked.
This article was originally published by the Gooserooter at Truck This & Truck That.
