The Mask of Bravado
~Newman Hart

In his book Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons From the Myths of Boyhood, *Dr. Pollock proposes that boys “lose their voice, a whole half of their emotional selves”, beginning at age 4 or 5. “Their vulnerable, sad feelings and sense of need are suppressed or shamed out of them”, he says – by their peers, parents, the great wide televised fist in their face. He added: “if you keep hammering it to a kid that he has to look tough and stop being a cry-baby and a mama’s boy, the boy will start creating a mask of bravado”

We as boys and later, men, are even known to compare our own against other men’s masks. The pressure is constantly on to never show weakness, never cry, to never go soft. We ridicule men that are weak and count up their flaws. What are we counting? The flaws in their personal mask.

I never cried from the days of childhood until midlife. At times I even wondered if my tear ducts were dormant. No, I don’t believe I was “hardened” against the sympathetic times of life – tears and crying just weren’t there. I had seen other men cry; but it just wasn’t for me.

One fellow – George, was in our party scene when I was younger. He sure didn’t have any problem showing his “softer side”! At a party you would frequently find George surrounded by girls – it was enough to make the rest of us mad. He would get strokes and touch and attention in the female quarry but most of us MEN, didn’t care to enjoy his company quite as much. He was a “wimp” a “cry-baby”, and most of the female attention he got was in comfort of his woes.

One might think that George had discovered the perfect method to “pick up girls” because he always seemed to have their doting attention - but this just wasn’t so. As the night progressed and we “bad boys” got more rowdy, away from the sidelines of dart games and drink and onto the dance floor – guess what?! The girls went home with the “bad boys” – the ultimate reward for our mask of bravado! It seems that even women prefer a bad boy over a sad boy.

The “mask of bravado” is not simple to wear and it takes attention to detail. You need to be “bad” but know where to draw the line. You must control and squelch nearly every emotion. The only emotions we men may legitimately show are – rage, triumph, and lust. “Anything else”, as Dr. Pollock says, “and you risk being seen as a sissy”. We wear our mask of bravado throughout adulthood. But it gets tested and shaken at midlife like nearly everything else.

When a man’s midlife passage begins – usually in concert with the low spike of our testosterone that we all experience around our forties – there is an unavoidable period of sadness that occurs. This period of sadness often leads to what Terrence Real termed as ”covert male depression”. That is, our mask of bravado DEMANDS that we squelch out the sadness because it does not fit within the range of the allowable three! But the sadness/depression doesn’t go away that easily so we are forced to force it beneath the surface – it goes covert but it doesn’t go away. We need to and would sooner be seen as ”bad boys rather than sad boys”.

Covert depression causes us to withdraw from those closest to us, take up our mask of bravado, and try to “deal with our feelings in private”. We seldom get away with this endeavour around our wives because they know us too well. She will ask repeatedly “what is wrong?” but we know beyond any shadow of a doubt that we don’t want to talk about it because that will unleash that sad animal we are trying to keep under control and once it is out we have shown weakness to the very roots of our being. Depression threatens our manhood and puts it on the line. Our choices seldom include visiting a counsellor to get help.

The earmark of a man that is covertly depressed is his denial of his symptoms. Covert Depression is seldom seen by the typical signs of depression that are overtly displayed. The symptoms of covert depression can only be seen by the increase of our acts of bravado that we use to assuage it. These acts of bravado are what we typically call a Midlife Crisis.

So how does it end?

Covert depression cannot be readily treated. Most often because we fail to admit its existence. It is only when the covert becomes overt; that is, visibly recognized and seen, that we can treat the depression. It often takes a crisis to end a midlife crisis – something that will bring out his depression from its covert state into the realm of the seen. For some men that are resiliently resistant to this happening it will take a loss that brings them to “rock bottom” in their lives. Sadly, many men seem to come to the place of losing their marriage, business, career, financial well-being, or more before facing their midlife issues head-on. The sooner that a man will find this crisis that ends the crisis the better off all will be. Once a man’s covert depression becomes overt his depression can be treated and he can move onward toward accomplishing his own midlife transition. It is his midlife transition that turns a midlife man into ten times the real man than he ever was before.

Newman Hart
FortySixty.Org