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Abstract

to even try to understand your own emotions?</p><p id="144f"><b>The problem with the tired old trope of men as less emotional is that it only works if we ignore all the emotions we associate with maleness, such as anger, competitiveness, lust, rage, ambition, jealousy, and pride. And only if we pretend men aren’t affected by such feelings as insecurity, shame, sadness, fear, grief, pain, anxiety, and guilt.</b></p><p id="a656">What I observed in my professional career was that men do experience those emotions just as much as women do, but they are less aware of them, less willing to examine them, less able to discuss them.</p><p id="5b18"><b>Even feelings every human being should be proud to own, like love, are uncomfortable territory for the hyper-male to verbalize. Does that mean they lack such feelings? No. <i>So why are they so scared to talk about them?</i></b></p><p id="6246" type="7">In what sense is it rational not to try to understand how others feel?</p><h2 id="4850">Big boys don’t cry.</h2><p id="f56e"><b>To most of us, emotionality means tears.</b> Maybe this is where we got the notion of the unemotional man. Women cry, and children cry, but men are tough. They don’t react to feelings.</p><p id="5921">Well, they might react, but not by weeping. They might shout and clench their fists. They might pitch tantrums — punching walls, slamming doors, and breaking things. They might do any of a dozen crazy things, from driving way too fast to picking fights in bars, but as long as they aren’t crying at the same time, their friends won’t call them out for “getting all emotional.”</p><p id="e644">But tears are a <b>healthy</b> response to strong emotion. Tears show vulnerability, invite support, build unity with others, and regulate our neurochemical balance. Tears function as a safety valve, removing stress hormones like cortisol. When those chemicals build up, it sets us up for major health problems, including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. It also builds up pressure that can lead to desperate behavior.</p><p id="c708"><b><i>Maybe, if we taught our boys to cry, we wouldn’t see so many of our men arrested, addicted, committed, or dead by suicide.</i></b></p><p id="2497" type="7">Tears function as a safety valve, removing stress hormones like cortisol.</p><h2 id="a13e">But what about their hormones? PMS!?!</h2><p id="56ba"><b>Here’s the scoop: we all have hormones.</b> Every body and every brain has the same hormones, just not in the same proportion. And everybody’s hormones have an impact, not just on their moods but on their mental clarity.</p><p id="3e2c">Women’s estrogen levels fluctuate in predictable 28-day cycles. That’s why we see shelf after shelf of books, plus articles in every magazine that’s written for a female readership, about not only PMS and PMDD but also the emotional effects of pregnancy and perimenopause. Estrogen may be the single most-examined substance in the human body. (Or, at least, in the <i>female</i> human body, though many of the neural pathways in men’s brains are also estrogen-dependent.)</p><p id="4017">But even though males are still in the majority among physicians, testosterone has not been given anywhere near as much attention except regarding its

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impact on sexual and athletic performance.</p><p id="4887">Men’s testosterone levels surge <b>unpredictably</b>. Like every time they see a pretty woman. Or their team wins a big game. Or they get cut off in traffic. So where is all the research on the impact of those hormone surges on men’s moods and mental clarity? Or, more to the point, why doesn’t <i>that</i> research get more air time in the popular press?</p><p id="81c9"><b>Testosterone-juiced behavior has been described in many ways. Rational was never one of them.</b> But do we teach our sons to watch out for <i>their</i> hormones? Of course not. Instead, we show them how to justify their actions — to <i>rationalize </i>their irrational behavior and, if called out by a woman, accuse her of oversensitivity.</p><p id="bb86" type="7">Testosterone-juiced behavior has been described in many ways. Rational was never one of them.</p><h2 id="b8af">Conclusions</h2><p id="277a">A<b>re men more rational than women? </b>In a word, no. Just the opposite. Neither are they less emotional, just less aware of their emotionality.</p><p id="1b09">Our culture shows girl children lots of ways to handle feelings. It tells boy children just to stuff them. So the women have the tools, the tears, the talking skills. The men just have to wing it. In the dark.</p><p id="6fc1">It isn’t fair to anyone. Not fair to men who have grown up deprived of vital skills and knowledge. Not fair to women who are forced to deal with men who can become irrational at any moment, in response to feelings they have been conditioned to ignore.</p><p id="b67f">It doesn’t have to be that way. We can do a better job preparing all our children to live as emotion-having beings in the company of other emotion-having beings.</p><p id="4b69"><b>But until that happens, we should stop letting men get away with pretending they are somehow blessed with greater rationality than women. Because nothing could be further from the truth.</b></p><p id="cc07">.</p><p id="171c"><b><i>More from Edward Robson, PhD, MFA:</i></b></p><div id="2913" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/the-friend-zone-is-a-lie-f7b904035d3a"> <div> <div> <h2>The Friend Zone is a Lie</h2> <div><h3>There’s a reason you keep getting stuck there.</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/0*9tcAn5ESD5gxfeUb)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div><div id="0d10" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/you-have-the-power-to-cause-pain-ba63dcb1a55e"> <div> <div> <h2>You Have the Power to Cause Pain</h2> <div><h3>The surest way to guarantee you will is to imagine that you can’t.</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/1*56yO74vt1MVnhj5I0uIECg.jpeg)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div></article></body>

How to Write Your Crisis Budget

It’s time to plan our way through the rest of this pandemic

We’re living in a time right now when people are finding themselves unable to pay their bills. They’ve not done anything wrong, and they’ve not been irresponsible, they’ve just been wiped out by the crisis that financial experts have been warning us about for years.

For those of us who believed the financial soothsayers and have saved up a sizeable crisis savings account, you should be commended for your discipline and forethought.

But for the rest of us, it’s time to start writing our crisis budget so that we can get through this pandemic without losing our homes.

Get Out Those Highlighters

Before we begin to look forward, we need to look back.

To write a budget of any kind, we first need to understand how we’ve been spending our money over the past three months.

We need to open up an Excel spreadsheet, load up our bank history, and start typing everything we’ve spent money on. We should be as specific as we can when typing in what each item was, how much it was, and which category it falls into.

I like to colour code my entries so that I can understand everything at a glance.

Blue — Essential

I put all essential spending in blue; this includes my rent, utilities, and anything else that must be paid.

Green — Flexible Essential

I put all my flexible essential spending in green. These are items that while essential, can be altered with discipline. For me, the main culprit is food.

I need to eat, but I don’t need things like roasted brie cheese, which in Shanghai costs $20. Other things include clothing, cleaning supplies, etc.

Purple — Luxury

The final category is luxury spending; I write these in purple. This category has a lot of items, including video games, Netflix, and endless amounts of cat toys.

Now that we can see our past three months laid out on a spreadsheet, we know what our spending normally looks like.

If you haven’t made a budget before, this information may be shocking to see laid out in front of you. It’s always hard the first time you see that you’ve somehow spent literally thousands of dollars at Starbucks.

Turning a regular budget into a crisis budget isn’t difficult, but it also shouldn’t be rushed. You’re going to write three drafts of the budget, each time making changes. It sounds crazy, but hear me out. There’s method to the madness.

The Three Drafts to Financial Health

Round One

The first time you write your crisis budget, you’re going to strip it to its bare bones. That means cutting out all luxury spending and cutting back on flexible essentials as far as you can.

This means no takeout and no bloody Starbucks. Instead, you’ll budget for beans on toast for every meal of every day. After that, it’s time for round two.

Round Two

After slashing your spending back to the bone, you should notice that you have a significant amount of money that’s now unaccounted for.

With this money, take 50% and save it. This money is going to be the beginning of your crisis savings account.

Keep this money locked away in case the day comes that you can’t pay your essential bills, then on that day, you’ll have something to fall back on.

If you already have enough money saved and feel comfortable with the amount, you can start a new account for a future pandemic.

If you don’t know how to save money, or you’re not sure through which method you’d like to save it; then don’t stress because you’re not alone.

We here on Money Clip are going to start saving our money together starting on Friday, June 5th, so if you’d like to join us and get some tips, click here to read all about it.

Round Three

For round three, you should still have 50% of the slashed money remaining. With this money you’re going to carefully, and with a lot of consideration, start putting that money back into bolstering out both flexible and luxury spending.

We don’t want to live with absolutely no enjoyment or our mental health is going to unravel and we’ll lose our minds. But we also don’t want to spend like maniacs and pay no attention to correcting our bad habits in the name of protecting mental health.

Instead, we’re going to add back the luxuries we need to stay happy. For me, I can’t eat beans every night; so some of that money is going to fill out my food budget. I’m not buying any roasted brie, but I will have some cheddar.

By making a conscious effort to allocate money to the luxuries that matter most, you can enjoy them without feeling guilty. Each luxury has been chosen with intent, there are no longer unexplained or unknown transactions draining your bank of all its money.

So That’s It

This is the process I go through when making a crisis budget.

Throughout three re-writes I slash all expenses to the bone, allocate 50% of new-found money to crisis savings, then carefully and strategically place the remaining 50% back into the budget.

I don’t recommend locking up your crisis savings in investments that can’t be liquidated quickly; but don’t go the other way and put money in accounts where the interest rate is too low or below zero. In some countries right now, a savings account may actually cost you money because interest rates are so low.

So get started on that budget, then join us on Money Clip every Friday to learn tips about how you can save more productively.