Why do some men fear falling in love?

And why it makes a difference to the climate crisis

Who’s your favourite Disney character? Mine’s Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. Gaston is the archetypal ‘alpha male’. Brave, confident, self-assured, everything a woman wants, right? Not if you’re Belle, who sees through this facade. Gaston is in love with himself, and his narcissism is the reason he takes Belle’s rejection so badly. It eats away at his self-pride. Not that Gaston would tell anyone, he is fearless after all. Gaston doesn’t do emotion. Or rather, he’s not able to articulate his emotional state. But why? And how might this explain why a personality like Gaston would fear falling in love?

There’s a stereotype surrounding gender that continues to persist — women are naturally more emotional than men. But how we express ourselves isn’t biological, it’s a result of how we’re socialised as children. Girls are taught to be emotional, nonaggressive and nurturing. Boys are taught to be unemotional, aggressive and achievement-oriented (Wester et al. Sex Differences in Emotion, p. 639).

When a baby is born it’s a male or a female, the differentiator is a sexual organ. Its society that makes the male a boy, and a female a girl, not biology. What it means to be a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ is socially contrived.