Power; vulnerability. (Emotional sabotage.)

My google search string was, "men deny emotional needs." I haven't spent a lot of time here on this blog discussing the stuff I read on misogyny, sexism, patriarchy and feminism, though I read about these things *constantly* to keep myself from going completely insane.

Anyway, one of the 'hits' I got with that search string was the following, which seemed to fit in with where *I'm* at right now (untangling the 'scripts' my parents left me with):

http://www.eurekatribune.com/SaboWhaMan.html

Excerpt:

A child living with sabotaging parents and siblings learns that their desires, feelings and needs don’t matter. They learn that they are unimportant and unworthy of respect, love and the good things in life.Passive aggressive sabotage is a tool used for discipline and control in many dysfunctional families. Parents who feel trapped in their lives and feel there is no hope of obtaining their dreams, often use passive aggressive sabotage for punishment or revenge because that is the way their parents behaved under similar circumstances.

This next section relates more to the original question of 'men deny emotional needs' (bolds mine):

As men they long for a close, honest and caring relationship, but don’t reciprocate or nurture one when they get it. Instead,

they defeat emotional intimacy in their beloved the same way they deny it in themselves and then they wonder why their relationships have no lasting value. Their pain is real and deep, but they don’t change their behavior. They only reenact the same script. In their mind, that script is what a man is.

Feeling emotionally isolated and devalued, they turn to sex as a band aid to stop the bleeding of their wounded self esteem. They risk their health with excesses of Viagra, equating their value as a human being on their capacity to breed. They seem to have forgotten that all mammals breed, but all mammals are not men. In their minds the quality of their worth as a human being has been reduced to an orgasm.
[...]
The more they try to control what is happening to them, the more controlling of others they become. They usually end up alone. Sometimes they attract someone as needy and empty as they are who will tolerate their demeaning talk, negativity and anger which remain a constant reminder of their loss of fulfillment.Too many young men are taught to define a man by what goes on below the belt instead of what goes on above the neck. Sexual gratification is defined as a masculine right, at the same time most of young men are taught to deny their natural need for closeness, caring and respect.

One thing I have to reiterate here: *All* of this is about power - who has it, and who doesn't. Men deny feelings because it gives them power in this world of men.