Where are Men From the Emotional Talk in Libya?

Mental and emotional health play an important role in any human's well being.  It has a major impact on our behaviour and thoughts. However, it is often taken for granted and not paid attention to. It is important through the stages of our lives from childhood to adolescence.

It is important for parents to insure that their child/children have a healthy lifestyle and parents must take care of their children mental and emotional wellbeing. The impact starts from an early age and it stays with the child for years. It helps shape people’s personalities and the way they deal with people around them. A year ago, I went through an emotional crisis and it left a huge impact on my wellbeing, many things changed and I felt that I was falling apart slowly.

I decided to take in a step and fix myself. I got professional help from a therapist but I had to do the heavy lifting. I started to read a lot about emotional and mental health. I went down the memory lane to find answers from the past and unfolded why I felt the way I felt because of an incident. I noticed that the majority, if not all of the pages I followed that promote self-love, mental health, positivity, and healing, were directed by and to females. That made me wonder where are the men from this? It was a global issue not to include men in the talk, let alone Libyan men. Men being aggressive in Libya is the norm. ‘’it becomes hard to find a partner’’ if men don’t know how to express their feelings, they will turn into aggressive creatures. They use aggressiveness to substitute or fill in the gap of the emotional expression by which they can express many other feelings such as sadness, love, confusion, etc. It is as if anger is the easiest choice of feelings we have.

Therefore, I decided to find answers on my own and talk to guys about it and see their opinion on it. I decided to choose guys that I don't know personally so it would be easier to talk and discover new aspects. I reached out to three Libyan guys because emotional and mental health are not spoken of and even guys wouldn’t share content around it. Luckily, they were open to the idea and we scheduled a day for a phone call to have a conversation about this. I decided to keep their identity anonymous. 

From one generation to another, men are raised to be warriors and they didn’t have the chance to express their emotions and based on the stereotyped image, men must show strength and accountability to provide for their families so they wouldn't have time to express emotions. It is how the majority of Libyan men were and are still raised to show strength not weakness. During the conversations I had, I tried to tackle different perspectives that could be a trigger for emotional and mental health. I asked them about their childhood, the impact of the ongoing conflict in Libya, relationships, crying, aggressiveness, etc. I was very interested in knowing the interviewees childhood in terms of emotional expressions and to what extent they got to express their feelings as kids.

- Men can cry too!
For L1, he is the youngest among his brothers and the gap in age he has with them is huge so the kind of relationship they had was based on mutual respect and nothing more. As he called back on how he expressed his emotions as a child, crying was only a result of getting punished or because of a mistake he made as a kid. It wasn't easy to say the sentence ''I love you'' and it will be substituted with a kiss or a hug to his parents for example and it was never direct. It was strange to express when there should be no limits in emotional expression and it reflects on the journey of growing up. However, crying wasn't L1's tool of emotional expression until one day, his mom called him a loser during high school years and that left a huge impact, it was more of a shock to him.

During that situation, he stopped eating and he cried for three nights. He went through emotional breakdown from that point and he found out that crying is the solution to express his feelings. He knew that crying was not shameful and lately, he would tell anyone that he cries and he would get emotional in many events. Now, emotional expression became the norm for L1 and he has high emotional intelligence as I noticed. He embraces the fact that men are allowed to cry. Men do not talk about emotions at all in middle school and high school, the norm was that boys would not talk about emotions, however, he has the ability of positive listening and openness in expressing feelings men would not necessarily show.

- The impact of war on emotions 
While L2 was heavily impacted by war in the country. War in his neighbourhood forced him to move out from the place he grew up in where he made all his memories and friends. He was in a relationship at that time. That was in 2014, it was annoying for him mentally and it was draining. his relationship was not easy on them and the idea of moving out to another place. He went through a breakup and it was because of war. L2 told me that it was very difficult for him mentally and he got depressed. He spent a lot of his time alone until he discovered movies and he said that cinema saved him emotionally. Because of that, he became emotionally expressive and it was easy for him to get to know people because they would find it easy to open up to him. He has a romantic personality and that made expressing feelings of any kind easy especially love.

- The impact of the society on men's feelings and how they influence that structure

Talking to L3 on why men are aggressive and he said ''it is an accumulation of social norms, for example, men cannot collapse and they must stay strong. also due to the social nature in one way or another, the essential burdens are on men. this will require men to make more effort. It is a structure in the society which led to making men less expressive and more into action''. Also, L3 does not remember the times he cried and he said that maybe he cried two or three times in his lifetime and they were because of a relationship. He does not get emotional easily but also he does not express emotions too.

I could understand from the three interviews the impact of the environment, family, and friends. Some can be heavily impacted by these and some would find the silver lining among these. Some found crying as a healing tool while others would find it hard and this makes me wonder how can't someone cry at all. Is it a lack of emotions or for someone to be cold-hearted to a point that they can't feel? I had many questions but at least, I could understand the influence of family upbringing in this case and the relationships one would make in his or her lifetime.

The three interviews were different as the guys have different backgrounds and experiences which I observed during each interview and with how each one expressed their ideas to me. I could sense conservativity, openness, calmness, and peace with each candidate. Awareness is still not understood in this matter particularly and people should work on the next generation. It is important to show kids the right emotions and what to express at the right time.

It is not easy to handle this topic or make an apparent change quickly, however, it should start from men. The expressive men in Libya are not a lot, in fact, this type of men is always fought by the society. It should start from the family, schools should make it normal, they must give examples and this is how it starts. It is complicated and it is not easy. Actually, it is an international crisis that men are not expressive. There should be a use of those expressive men to influence those inexpressive men and it is essential in this regard. Men must speak up their hidden emotions and that being a sensitive man is okay. It is okay for them to speak up and talk about mental health without feeling ashamed. Men must and should have this right and they should normalize it in Libya. It is not going to be easy but it can actually happen.