I can only speak for myself here. These are moments from my own life, moments where I wish someone had told me what I am about to tell you: men need men. We know how to console one another in ways no one else can.

As a father, I know how to console my son. As a husband I know that I need other men who have been married longer than me. As a son I need my uncles as well as my father. I know the same is true for my son, but more importantly, I know there are times I am not the man he needs to go to. Uncles, grandfathers, brothers, and his other guy friends will all be needed at different times.

During a particularly dark moment in my life, I needed my cousin. He was the emotional safe space for me to experience those tears with. When all was said and done, he didn’t offer me a drink like my boys would, or a joke like my brother. He didn’t look at me like a father who felt it was his responsibility to protect me. He was close to me in ways the other men in my life weren’t for the situation.

There is an unwritten pact when men go to men for emotional support. A trust so deep that words will never be capable of grasping its feeling. Men check in with a joke, or a head nod from across the room. More often than not, it’s just a little more squeeze with the bro-hug. What’s returned says “I’m good, thank you,” or “I’m still going through it, but now is not the time.” We acknowledge this, but so do the other men in the area. Now is not a time for them to be involved, so what’s noticed seems unnoticed.

When a man supports another man, it’s in that moment, for that moment. There will be no deep investigation or drawn-out emotional reflections. No solemn call weeks later to revisit the topic. What happened, happened. It’s understood, not disregarded or forgotten. This moment will not be carried into future conversation either.

It will be reflected on internally. That moment of help is also a moment of healing for both of us. Men have a unique way of helping that is part man-code, part individual, and part made up on the fly. We are problem solvers. Men don’t mansplain to men. We toss scenarios at each other until a solution comes together.

A man can lose the strength needed to keep it together emotionally around the right man. Where others will see weakness, the right male support will know that all men break at one time or another. But breaking this way is not something a man can do in front of a woman. It may seem like I am playing with words when I distinguish weak from vulnerable. I am not. Vulnerable is an openness a man shows to the women in his life. Weak in a moment is not a deficiency, just the reality of being emotionally overwhelmed in front of someone without being emasculated.

Here is a very “bro” explanation to illustrate the difference:

I was vulnerable when I chose to lift a small weight to muscle failure in a crowded gym. When the muscle failed, I was too weak to lift something even lighter. The man who steps in during that moment isn’t judging. He is paying it forward. He knows that when he is pushing himself beyond his current limits there will be someone there to make sure the weight doesn’t break him.

This weight is a metaphor for emotional, financial, and societal pressure. These three things are not unique to only men. Women experience them as well. The difference is that there are allowances and taboos that prevent men and women from expressing how they process the hardships. Where a woman can cry, a man will seclude himself to experience the emotion alone, unless there is a trusted man in his life. When men have men carrying and protecting each other it saves lives. It keeps us from carrying caskets, memories, and the burden of not being able to help.

The research reflects some of this, but only some. Males without a father or father figure are six times more likely to die by suicide than those men who have that paternal relationship. But statistics are built from what can be measured, and the communities that carry this pain the heaviest are the least likely to be counted. Disenfranchised communities don’t show up cleanly in research, which means the real number is unknown and will remain that way. What I know is that the gap between the man who made it and the man who didn’t is often nothing more than whether the right man was there.

I cannot speak for all cultures, but for mine, I can’t show weakness in front of my mother. This is not an indictment of her being harsh or unloving. It is an acknowledgment of how loving she is. A mother’s love protects, nurtures, and corrects. A father’s love protects, educates, and is maintained through meeting a lifelong set of conditions. They both love endlessly, but only one unconditionally.

I cannot show weakness in front of my mother because she will carry that weight and assume it was her love that made me weak. I can be vulnerable and share my pain with her because she taught me that vulnerability is strength, but there is a limit. When you dwell too long in vulnerability you move into weakness. A mother will nudge a man out of weakness and be the strength to dust his shoulders off as she supports him in his fight. A father will be the anger a man takes on when the father’s tough love says it’s time to be strong again.

I am not speaking about this from a distance. I have stood at that edge. Not near it. I know how it feels when conviction washes over you and seems to lift whatever weight brought us here. What I know now is that was the moment the pain died. I killed it without needing to kill me. Facing it, seeing it, and seeing that I will be okay… I opened my arms to all the good and bad of what was overwhelming. That is what saved me.

What I know from that place, from watching someone I love arrive there, and hearing other men speak about that moment is that men like me didn’t want to die. We wanted to kill something inside that we assumed had no other way out. It wasn’t death that was being chased. It was resolution: the hardships were over, and the commitment to the reality that they are over. I was fortunate that the right man was not far away. I was strong enough to know that not all commitments need to be followed through, and he was there for me in this moment. He was there before this moment too.

If you are reading this and feel like you don’t have someone, that you may be called weak, or whatever other reason you feel, please know: one man to another, you’re not. You have license to break down, to break, to not have the strength for that moment. But it’s just a moment. There are helplines out there. If you don’t know what number to call, dial your local emergency line. If you would report someone planning to commit murder, call and report yourself. Suicide is murder. The murderer and the murdered are the same person.

The help you will get won’t be easy. Pain is a monster that cuts with venom. Even when it’s gone there is still a lot of healing to be done. There will be moments when you must revisit that pain to build a tolerance. That tolerance will become acceptance, and that acceptance will become strength. That strength will be what another man needs from you some day. That strength is where what I am sharing has come from. Men need men to be men.