Why do men act all tough but can’t handle a cold?

I got inspired to write this after a colleague recounted how one of her writers, a man, complained to her about how difficult it was writing his column this week because he had a flu.

“From the way he sounded, you would have thought he was calling me from the ICU! Men!” exclaimed my colleague, rolling her eyes with impatience.

She then added,

“I have a cold right now, but who have I complained to? How many columns and articles have I edited today with my cold?” she wondered, sounding irritated.

Listening to her outburst, I suspected that she had had enough drama that surrounds “man colds” to last her a life time.

Her outburst was so comical though, I had to laugh. especially because the incident brought to mind this time, about a year ago, when a friend called to inform me early in the morning that she would not be able to visit that day as promised because her husband was sick.

Concerned, I asked what had happened, and what the doctor’s report had said. I mean, the illness must have been quite serious if she had to stay at home and nurse him right?

Instead of answering me, my friend laughed long and hard, and after catching her breath, told me that the “illness” wasn’t that serious, that all he had was the common cold, but from how he was behaving, one would have thought he was about to keel over and die.

PITIABLE MESS

That morning, my friend had happened to mention that she had an engagement that afternoon, only for her husband to start moaning about how she was abandoning him at his hour of need. As he said this, he was curled in a foetal position in bed, looking utterly defeated, vulnerable and sick, one would have thought he was about to be called to his maker any second.

Aware that she would not hear the end of it if she left him, she decided to stick around. She spent her entire Saturday shuttling between the kitchen and bedroom with hot water and lemon, her husband too “sick” to get out of bed.

Without going into details, because at the end of the day I will go back home, I can tell a couple of stories of my own, which would sound similar to my friend’s.

There have been times when I have been convinced that the sniffling man huddled under the covers is about to cross the great divide until I remind myself that the illness that has reduced him into the helpless, pitiable form I am looking at is the common cold.

Guys, common on! If you act as if you are carrying all the world’s problems on your shoulders when you get a running nose, (climate change, terrorism, El Niño, poverty, FGM, crime, homelessness, hunger, debt, nuclear weapons and pollution) how will you behave when you actually get sick?

I am not being biased here, but when a woman gets a cold, she simply buys a handkerchief and goes on with the business of life.

As I wrote this article, I decided to do a bit of Googling to see whether there is a valid reason that explains why men behave as if it is the end of the world when they get a cold, being the fair and objective person that I am.

I didn’t come up empty handed. According to a certain professor, a Jean Berko Gleason, PhD, professor emerita of Psychology at Boston University, “In general, men are not used to talking about their inner states and expressing if they are feeling happy or not.”

She adds,

“Men are less in touch with their feelings, so it might be more difficult for them to interpret what’s going on when they are overwhelmed or sick.”

I am not buying it.