Love, Sex, and Emotion in Boys' Development

I have the rare privilege of bearing witness to boys’ hearts. As they share those places where they register their trials, trauma and tribulations, often their hurt rises up in sobs, bursts of rage or throbbing heartache. Over the decades I have led the emotional literacy program at the boys’ school outside Philadelphia, young men have revealed what its like to have lost a parent, to be targeted with racist slurs, to witness a friend shot to death, and to experience their family’s struggles as a brother or sister battles with addiction or mental illness. And much, much more.

What is most surprising is that I am often surprised. The myth that males do not feel or cannot express their feelings confuses all of us, including me, even though I should know better. Having raised two sons of my own and listened to boys in clinical, research, and school contexts for decades, I have certainly been exposed to boys’ humanity.

But masculine myths—psychologists Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson call them “archetypes”—are so ubiquitous they are invisible. We are sure, when it comes to boys, that they are a biologically separate species. From Mars.

In the school program, I present topics that resonate for young males, then say a bit before inviting them to talk to each other. Themes like relationships with parents, with each other, with girls, pressures of dating, and so forth present boys with opportunities to share their experience and their emotional reactions. Many boys dare to show heavier feelings as they talk with each other, I notice. They find the relief of releasing tensions a remarkable contrast with the rest of their lives.

After visiting the group one senior student leader, an NCAA Division 1 baseball recruit, reflected, “There is something about being vulnerable and allowing your fellow schoolmates to be vulnerable that is so genuine. I cried later that night. It was all I could think about for days.”

So much about the boyhood we have created for young males gets things fundamentally wrong. But emotional development is ground zero for the damage we do. Without recourse to downloading their upsets, stresses, and tensions, boys are expected to rise above, press on regardless of how they feel, or hide away until they get it together.

What researchers have told us for years about the consequences of “emotional restrictedness” could not be clearer: negative attitudes towards women and gay people, dangerous risk-taking, substance use and abuse, psychological stress and strain, delinquent behavior, low self-esteem, hostility and aggression, higher blood pressure, depression, and anxiety.

And yet in most families, schools and sports programs still, boys from as early as age two are taught that they should "man up."

Boys’ sexual development happens against this backdrop. Masculinity is a constant performance, and sexuality is no exception. Boys have little opportunity to show what their new sexual experiences actually feel like—to consider, to process, to evaluate, and to correct course if things don’t feel right—because the cultural script is so set. It’s all about the performance.

Overall, their sexual development sometimes seems like a perfect storm. They are deprived of physical closeness before they are teenagers, regaled by stereotypes of themselves as hormonally driven sexual animals, first introduced to sex through pornography, and then encouraged by the scoring culture of brotherhood to view girls as objects of conquest. These forces combine to separate sex from romance, objectify both the boys’ own and their partners’ bodies, override tender feelings, and reduce sexual intimacy to arousal and satiation. Particularly for boys prone to stimulation-seeking, sex becomes another high.

Knowing all of this, I try to make space for boys in the program to be real with each other. Near the end of the year when they have built considerable trust with each other, I introduce the topics of sex and pornography. I begin by acknowledging that they are in very different places: some having lots of sex, some none at all; some with girls, some with boys; some guided by religious principles; some guided solely by their curiosity and appetite.

I explain that in this program we are not telling them what to think or do, but simply inviting them to share what sex is really like for them. When they break into pairs to talk to each other, the room is filled with animated voices and raucous laughter. They love this topic.

In the next meeting, we address pornography. I begin by asking for a show of hands: How many have viewed porn? How many still view it? How many view it weekly? Daily? I ask how many have worried about their use of porn. What the boys see is that they are not alone, that there is something about being a boy that underlies what has been a mostly private, often shame-filled act.

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I talk a bit about the pornography industry: the stereotyped nature of its themes and images, the misogyny underlying many of its portrayal of females and how distorted its view of male sexuality often is. Many boys raise their hands, eager to share their own thoughts. One boy says he knows how “viewing porn changes me,” scenes replaying in his head as he hooks up. Another boy shares how he pregames for a date by watching porn so he can “last longer” later that night.

It is almost as if boys are typecast for a particular sexual script and their conditioning prepares them for the part. We know that one boy is different from the next one, but their sexual and romantic desires are often obscured by the wholesale image of boys as “slaves to their hormones.”

A father of a girl, expressing how he felt about his daughter having intimate connections with boys, exclaimed in an interview for a popular blog: “I’m a parent of a teenage cheerleader. I’m very concerned. ‘Dirty little boys! Get away! Get away!’”

Boys today face new threats and pressures that have arisen since their parents and most of their teachers came of age, including unfettered access to pornography that has become the dominant mode of sex education. New Title IX rules on college campuses and the exploding #MeToo movement have filtered down to the high school and middle school dating scene and have raised the stakes for male sexual development.

There has been a great deal written lately about declines in sexual activity among teenagers, in general. In fact, it is young males in particular who are having less sex: according to the Institute for Family Studies, 28 percent of young men aged 18-30 were sexless in the last year, compared with 18 percent of young women. More time in school and living at home is one factor said to influence the “sexual recession,” but less interest (often on the part of women) in marriage and delays in having children are also implicated.

The new romantic landscape makes it more important than ever for boys to resist stereotypes and assert the right to be themselves. There is plenty of room for more authenticity: the image of the promiscuous and relationship-averse male is largely fictional. In one study, 63 percent of males (compared with 83 percent of females) “preferred…a traditional romantic relationship as opposed to an uncommitted sexual relationship.”

In another study, nearly half of the males hoped that their sexual encounters would lead to a romantic relationship, and they reported that they had “tried to discuss the possibility of starting a relationship with their hook-up partner.” Contrary to how they are portrayed, not every young male is so sold on no-strings sex. Researchers found that 72 percent of males—compared with 78 percent of females—reported feelings of regret following casual sexual encounters.

These studies match what I hear on the ground. Behind masks forced upon them, boys can look like the sex-obsessed machines they are portrayed as; they can even grow to fit their masks. But provided with opportunities to be themselves and to reveal what they really want, their longing is palpable and deeply reassuring: they hope for human connection.

Of the many sex education efforts afoot to teach boys about sex, I would observe that boys need less teaching and more listening. When he has a strong sense of being known and loved, a boy naturally will hold out for what his human heart most requires.