September 15th 2026
–
WellBeing Magazine
–
Her father died when she was young; her mother’s dying now. She’s birthed four children; she’s carried a mother’s mental load ever since; and recently, she started lifting weights. One day, when tackling an especially heavy load, a wave of sadness hit her and she found herself in tears. It was the first time, but not the last.
The friend who told me this has since learned she’s not alone; that engaging certain muscles, pushing the body to certain limits, can surface grief. It seems the body is releasing pent-up tension and emotion. It’s been internalised; extreme exertion drives it out.
Deborah Levy knows what it’s like for a specific emotion to manifest in response to a physical sensation, one the subconscious seems to understand as metaphor.
“That spring when life was very hard,” she writes in Things I Don’t Want to Know, “I seemed to cry most on escalators at train stations. Going down them was fine but there was something about standing still and being carried upwards that did it. From apparently nowhere tears poured out of me and by the time I got to the top and felt the wind rushing in, it took all my effort to stop myself from sobbing. It was as if the momentum of the escalator carrying me forwards and upwards was a physical expression of a conversation I was having with myself.”
Why do such onsets come as a surprise? I think about all the worry and the guilt, confusion, doubt and disappointment we all carry, of all the loads we knowingly and unknowingly bear. I think about how the physical sensation of finding a certain weight too much, or feeling carried without agency, could make the hardship we’ve been trying to contain — to carry, keep — flood out.
I think of my friend, of the heavy load, the unexpected tears, again, when I hear writer Sam Graham-Felsen speaking to journalist Anna Martin about loneliness, and pumping iron, on a New York Times podcast. Graham-Felsen speaks of how, despite growing up in a feminist household, he came to think there were only two acceptable modes for men to relate with each other: kidding around, or fighting. It left him lacking close male friends in adulthood.
When Graham-Felsen first realised that, apart from his beloved wife, he no longer had close friends, he wasn’t thinking about how expansive masculinity could be. He didn’t want to risk his old friends thinking him “needy” or “soft”. And so, rather than seek their company, he sought to fill the void of loneliness with exercise.
One reason lifting weights appealed was the knowledge that, although it’s difficult, it’s easier than “emotional work”; it’s easier than being vulnerable.
So, in his late 30s and early 40s, this man spent “every spare moment” building physical strength. He was trying to conquer loneliness, to remain in control, to be strong and become stronger. He’d internalised the idea that “showing weakness as a man is tantamount to not being a man”. Afraid of being emotionally weak, and inspired by tough talk on The Joe Rogan Experience, he pursued physical strength, as if that was the “strong” thing to do.
His obsession didn’t make him happy, and it annoyed his wife. The strong response would have been to take a risk, be vulnerable, reach out. Thankfully, eventually, he saw this was the case.
As he listened to another kind of podcast, Man of the Year, Graham-Felsen saw he could rekindle his friendships if he dared to try. All he had to do was “be the friend, and call them, and go hang out”.
“And I remember feeling really emotional; having that image in my mind and thinking, how did I let myself go for so many years without connecting to all these people who I love?” he told Martin. What’s strange to me, now, isn’t that lifting weights made my close friend cry; it’s that it didn’t make this lonely man weep.
After 51 days in the wilderness with no contact with friends or family, Martin Linke, a contestant on the show Alone Germany shares a revelation with the camera: “Something’s bothered me for four days,” he says.
“I kept thinking I wasn’t eating enough, that my body had deteriorated too much, that my body had reached a point where it was simply saying, ‘Boy, the batteries are dead.’ And as I was thinking about it, lying in my sleeping bag, thinking about my family, my friends, I suddenly burst into tears. And believe me, I’m a tough guy. But I really burst into tears — briefly but intensely — and I wished I could go home. And then I realised that it wasn’t the food causing me problems. I’ve been feeling lonely for four days. For four days now, I have felt alone.”
I wonder how many people end up without close friends, but don’t realise or don’t act. I wonder how many are suffering the symptoms of loneliness but haven’t diagnosed the cause.
In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk describes human beings as “synchronous beings”; our systems are “made to move in synchrony with the people around us”. He speaks of the pleasure we feel when moving our bodies in time with other bodies — walking, running, singing, dancing — but also of the pleasure we feel when we’re in a conversation with another person who “really gets” what we’re saying. To go five days, let alone 50, starved of company is difficult, of course it takes a toll. Going decades without friendship does as well.
We’re all needy, every one of us. As much as we need food to eat, water to drink, we need each other. Not just one person — people, plural. And not just people. People we care about and who care about us.
Metaphors can be written and spoken, they can be understood intellectually. But they can be experienced — felt, emotionally and physically — as well. The boundaries between what’s physical, intellectual, emotional and relational aren’t always clear-cut. We can be strong physically, and weak relationally. We can be starved of food, or friendship. It takes one kind of strength to realise this, another kind to act.
The post Masculinity and Loneliness appeared first on WellBeing Magazine.
Read the full article here:
https://www.wellbeing.com.au/body/health/masculinity-and-loneliness.html
