In my country it’s the anniversary this week of some suicides. The current narrative is that people are always absolutely shocked when a man takes his life. Nobody saw it coming. Nobody knew. There was no way anyone could help. It came right out of the blue.

If only men would speak up. Tell the world what’s wrong.

To me, as someone who has been suicidal, it amounts to victim blaming. Men do try to speak. Nobody wants to hear it. When you’re in that vulnerable, dark place, most men don’t want to confide in another guy. It feels weird, it doesn’t feel right or comfortable. You want to confide in a female. They’ll care, they’ll help.

Women are generally terrible in these situations. They can take it personally (think Carmella in Sopranos), can think it’s not serious, can broadcast it to the world, can paper over it and pretend it’s not there.

So what happens? You don’t say it as freely the next time (and there is almost always a next time), until the next time run out and you realise nobody cares. The women in your life won’t or can’t help or fuck it up too many times. The guys (you think) wouldn’t understand.

There’s a great sentence in one of Brene Browne’s books “most women would rather their man die on his white horse than fall off it”. So true.

Telling men “to speak up” puts all the blame of their experience on themselves. If only they’d said something everyone would have helped. Well that’s bullshit. The vast majority of people don’t want to hear it, don’t want to be put in that position. Women especially.

Men maybe do need to talk more, but society sure as shit needs to listen and care more.