This is technically last week’s newsletter because I was on holiday in the sunny climes of Tenerife for all of last week. I toyed with trying to write that week’s edition on my phone and send it out on Friday, but found myself chasing a four year old around Europe’s biggest waterpark instead – so here’s a Monday edition of Man Feelings. Onwards!

I was feeling some trepidation about the travelling part of the holiday. Two kids (a four month old and a four year old), four suitcases, multiple bags, and my mum along for the trip too. I tend to get a bit anxious/stressed before big trips like this, because I like to avoid surprises and be hyper-organised. Travel, of course, never goes exactly as planned, and I’m still not very good at handling this.

We’d hired a special pushchair for the baby which transformed into a car seat, which I was feeling very smug about literally until a few minutes before we headed out of the door to get the train to the airport. I’d practised folding the pram up, practised installing it in a car using seatbelts, and tagged it with a little toy bee so we’d know it was ours. The only thing I’d forgotten to do, however, was practice putting the baby in it. Turns out she was too big for it with all her cold-weather gear on and she howled the house down minutes before we were about to leave as we struggled to fit her into it.

Welcome to the seventh edition of this newsletter – thanks for taking the time to read it. I should take a moment to call out a great comment on a previous edition—Being a “fixer” of problems—by my close friend Tsering. He’s challenged some of my thinking about what men should (or shouldn’t) do in these situations, and I encourage you to go and read his take! But don’t forget to come back here afterwards and read this edition, too.

Tears at bedtime

Crying is something I rarely used to do. It’s not that the classic “boys don’t cry” advice permeated my subconscious: it’s more that I didn’t often find myself experiencing emotions to the degree that it ended in tears (or perhaps began with them). 

When I was a teenager, PE lessons at school were the bane of my existence. Never the most sporty kid, I had to line up with the rest of my nerd friends and submit to the ritual humiliation of being sorted into teams to play football on a soggy pitch in suburban Nottingham. 

I still remember the twice-weekly ordeal of the changing rooms: this felt like a no-man’s-land where the teachers—for obvious reasons—stayed well away from us, and a bunch of testosterone-addled sociopaths got to run wild for fifteen minutes. You kept your head down and got changed quickly, hoping that the target of abuse that week wouldn’t be you or your mates.

It wasn’t much better once you got out on the field to play. We had two PE teachers in my school: Mr Giles and Mr Mellor. Mr Giles was young, handsome and popular with everyone. Even us nerds looked up to him because he made it seem like with a bit of motivation, even us weirdos talking about Star Wars in the corner could develop a six-pack (or at least manage a few sit-ups). 

Just after I sent out last week’s newsletter, the “Dads ‘n’ Lads” WhatsApp group I’m in sparked into life. Unrelated to my newsletter, one of my close friends shared a Reddit AskMen post with the group to ask for our thoughts on the male loneliness epidemic. Over the course of the weekend, the five of us discussed co-regulation of feelings, the Gottman Method of relationship psychology, and—let’s be real—some ridiculous male-oriented marketing too:

A few days later, I met up with a university friend for lunch and he ended up pouring his heart out about stuff that had clearly been on his mind for a while: family, health, relationships at work and some really challenging circumstances he’s dealing with. It was easily the most personal chat we’d ever had in over fifteen years of friendship and I paused things midway through to offer him a hug (which he accepted). Man feelings!

The next day I was at the barbers for my monthly-ish haircut. It had taken me a while to track it down because it had changed names. Formerly known as “Goodlife”, it’s now called… “Maniac”?

Walking to the train station in Manchester city centre this morning, I saw a little boy of about four years old riding a tiny bike towards me, followed by a dad also on a bike. I smiled to see them, and felt a pang of heartache as I wondered what my own son was doing at that moment – I’m on my way back home after a night in another city for a gig.

As the boy rode past me, his bike tyre skidded on the wet pavement and he toppled off the bike. I turned as soon as I heard him fall, but his dad was on the scene already, slowing his bike to a stop. As I checked to see if the boy was okay, the dad just… stood there on his bike, watching?!

To be clear, the little guy didn’t seem badly hurt, but as I looked over my shoulder trying not to stare, I wondered why the dad wasn't immediately jumping off his bike and running to comfort the boy and pick him up off the sodden ground.

Maybe this was a kind of "tough love" thing the man was experimenting with? Maybe they cycle a lot together and this was a common occurrence, and the boy would quickly be back on two wheels again? Maybe the dad subscribes to that parenting notion that a child looks to you when they hurt themselves to decide how to react (eg. if you make a huge fuss about a minor injury, they'll howl with pain because they feel they're supposed to)?