The Value of Personal Reticence

Five years ago, Thomas Yarrow was going through a difficult time: his marriage was breaking down. He was aware of the advice given to all men  at such moments: that it's essential for your mental health to open up to friends, to talk about your feelings, to express your emotions.

His response? to spend lots of time with people who didn't talk much at all... and when they did, the discussion was about welding, axles and engine parts...

Now Yarrow, [professor of anthropology at Durham University] 48, is publishing a groundbreaking study of the relationships within the group - and it will not make him popular with the burgeoning mental health industry that centres on  coaxing men into emotional disclosure. In fact a stiff upper lip, he found, serves many men pretty well.

The study, published later this month in the journal American Ethnologist, is subtitled "Rethinking male friendship and the value of personal reticence".... It argues that research routinely linking emotional repression to toxic masculinity is missing something crucial about how male friendship actually works.

Mid Silence and Shade
John Lochhead (1866-1921)
Photo Credit: Aberdeen Archives, Galleries & Museums [Public Domain]  

"There's a discourse about men opening up, and we think that real connection and real friendships are about sharing our innermost feelings and emotions," said Yarrow. "I had those assumptions myself - that repressed older men can't talk about their feelings.

"But I slowly realised that it wasn't that they couldn't, but that they didn't want to. That men, particularly older men, can find support and intimacy in forms of friendship that are not at all about those things; They're centred on activities, doing things together, often in companionable silence... The friendships I saw in the group, and made myself there, were... I hesitate to call it therapeutic, because that word is part of the problem. But they were supportive, in a very unobtrusive  way. I came to to love that quiet."...

His findings fly in the face of much accepted wisdom in mental health. Repeated academic papers have claimed that men not discussing their emotions is harmful. Men "must learn to talk about how they feel," says the charity Mind.

Yarrow's railway volunteers were having none of that: as one told him with a smile, "Let's face it - we're just not into emotions." Despite this, he found the group to be full of warmth and care, not spoken but quietly shown...

Humour was key. "The point at which I felt I'd been accepted in the group was the point at which the banter got sort of harder," he said. Male banter - the currency of mutual insult on which many male friendships rest - has become unfashionable, and Yarrow accepts it can be used to disguise rudeness, but for those in the group it was a way of expressing trust...

He also suspects that, in a confessional age where social media is awash with emotional disclosure, younger men may be more willing to bare their souls.

But his heritage railway group is not on board. "The men are aware of these societal shifts, and they're quite critical of that confessional culture... they're quite happy the way they are."

Not talking much suits many men pretty well.  "But it's not an 'unthinking' not talking - it's a conscious decision about what you share and what you withhold."

"Focusing on the interest you share is often the sensitive thing to do. It means you're not poking or prying or assuming that that people want to share everything. Because not everyone does.

(Stephen Bleach, Sunday Times, 2026) 

By all means open up to friends, talk about your feelings, express your emotions if that's what you want to do. But don't feel compelled to do it if you don't want to. Don't assume that's the right or only way to go. Silence can be golden. Going on a silent nine mile walk with a friend can be an absolute joy. No need for any talk, or looking at a phone, just an appreciation of what you are seeing.

And banter? It may be unfashionable but it has never left the lips of many male friendships. In fact it usually is an essential part of them. Sharing everything? Leave that to the celebrities and the influencers!