When Men Don’t Talk

Obviously, not everybody, but the vast majority of men are hiders of their health.

Guilty.

Guilty.

And my partner will always say it.

It happened to me in December.

I stubbed a toe, lifted an entire toenail, big toe on my left foot off the bed in Swaziland on holiday.

I just put a plaster on it and said, no, it'll be fine.

I left it five days later.

It was still, in fact, it was much worse.

And I thought maybe I should have gone and seen the doctor at the first opportunity.

And it became actually quite a big issue, fortunately, with a good outcome.

Why is that? What do you think sits underneath that without being a psychologist? And I'm going to come to you, Kim, on that point, because you can give us a more psychological view.

But is it fear? Is it denial, embarrassment? What is it? Is it a sense of admitting that something is wrong that makes you less capable, maybe?

I think it's a fear of admitting that you are whole, that you are in control, and accepting that something is going on with you.

Men like to be tough, most men.

Not me.

I suffer with anything, so I'll let you know very, very early in the course of the disease or whatever.

But I think that's most men.

They prefer to maintain that... kind of shield around them that they are the healer the the controller the person in charge and it's yeah it carries on through the decades

kim i mean do you do you see that i mean maybe the financial planning equivalent of that because people will happily discuss investment returns and tax rates but the harder conversation is i'm frightened um i don't feel as capable as i used to maybe i haven't planned as early and i don't want to admit that

I think there are two things.

I mean, you've said about men and, you know, they're keeping it inside.

But whenever a group of women are together and we're chatting, I'm going to just give you a woman's perspective, not a financial planner's, Michael.

We often talk about men flu.

So when husbands get flu, we all call it men flu because they overreact to that.