Here’s something I’ve noticed over the years, and maybe you’ve noticed it too.

You ask a man how he’s doing. Could be your husband, your father, your brother, a colleague. And he gives you the same answer he’s given you for the last decade: “I’m good.” Same tone. Same flat delivery. Same faint half-smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

You move on. He moves on. Nobody follows up.

Now, I’m not saying every man who says “I’m good” is struggling. Some genuinely are good. But psychology is starting to paint a more interesting and, frankly, more sobering picture. For a lot of men, that phrase isn’t an honest check-in. It’s a pre-programmed response, one that was rehearsed so many times it became automatic. And the reason it stuck? Because somewhere along the way, they learned that nobody was going to dig any deeper.

So let’s talk about what’s really going on when a man runs on emotional autopilot, and why it matters more than most people think.

1) It starts earlier than you’d expect

If you think emotional suppression is something men pick up in adulthood, think again.

Research highlighted by Scientific American found that boys are actually more emotionally expressive than girls during infancy and into early childhood. They start out with higher levels of emotional arousal and reactivity. In other words, little boys feel a lot.

But something shifts. Studies have shown that parents tend to use a narrower range of emotional language with sons than with daughters. Mothers discussing emotions with their girls use more varied and deeper vocabulary, while conversations with boys tend to center around a single emotion, often anger. And research has found that parents are more likely to punish negative emotions like sadness or fear in boys while reinforcing those same emotions in girls.

Over time, the message becomes clear: expressing vulnerability isn’t what boys do. So they learn to put a lid on it. And that lid, once sealed, can stay shut for decades.

2) There’s actually a name for it

Psychologist Dr. Ronald Levant, a former president of the American Psychological Association, coined the term “normative male alexithymia” back in the early 1990s. Alexithymia literally translates to “without words for emotions.”

According to Psychology Today, about 10 to 13 percent of the population has significant levels of alexithymia, with men experiencing it more than women. But what Levant described was something broader. Not a clinical condition, but a cultural one. He observed that many men had been so thoroughly discouraged from expressing or even identifying their feelings that they genuinely didn’t have the language for them anymore.

These men weren’t cold or unfeeling. They just didn’t have the vocabulary to express what was going on inside. And when you can’t name what you’re feeling, “I’m good” becomes the default answer for everything, from genuine contentment to quiet despair.

3) The body doesn’t go on autopilot just because the words do

Here’s the part that troubles me.

A man might say “I’m good” every single day and mean it, at least on a conscious level. But his body isn’t fooled by the script. A 12-year study published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research tracked the relationship between emotional suppression and mortality in a nationally representative US sample. The findings were stark: people who scored high on emotional suppression had a 35% increased risk of dying from any cause during the follow-up period. The risk climbed to 70% for cancer mortality.

And it doesn’t stop there. Emotional suppression has been linked to elevated blood pressure, increased cardiovascular reactivity, and chronic activation of stress pathways. The body keeps responding to unprocessed emotions even when the mind has learned to ignore them.

My father was a classic case, though I didn’t have the language for it back then. He worked double shifts at a factory in Ohio, came home, sat in his chair, and if you asked how his day was, you’d get some version of “fine.” Every time. He wasn’t being evasive. I think he genuinely didn’t know how to answer any other way. That was the world he grew up in. You worked, you provided, you didn’t complain.

4) It rewires how men relate to the people closest to them

When emotional expression gets automated, relationships inevitably take the hit.

As I covered in a previous post, vulnerability is one of the most important ingredients in a healthy relationship. But for men who’ve spent years on emotional autopilot, vulnerability feels about as natural as speaking a foreign language.

Research published in the American Journal of Men’s Health found that many men rely almost exclusively on their female partners for emotional support, maintaining a stoic front with everyone else. Their wives or girlfriends become the single outlet for whatever feelings occasionally break through the surface. This creates an enormous imbalance, one that can lead to tension, resentment, and emotional burnout for the partner carrying that weight.

I’ll be honest, this one hits close to home. When my wife and I went through marriage counseling in our forties, one of the biggest things I had to confront was how much I’d been keeping bottled up. I thought I was being strong. Turns out I was just being unreachable. Learning to be vulnerable with her, and eventually with close friends too, changed our marriage. It probably saved it.

5) It gets tangled up with ideas about what a “real man” looks like

Why do so many men default to “I’m good”? Because they were taught that anything else is weakness.

A systematic review published in the American Journal of Men’s Health analyzed 47 studies and found that traditional masculine norms, particularly expectations of emotional stoicism and self-reliance, were consistently linked to higher rates of anxiety, depression, and reluctance to seek help. One study involving nearly 14,000 Australian men found that those who strongly adhered to masculine norms of emotional suppression had a dramatically increased risk of attempting suicide.

These aren’t abstract statistics. These are fathers, brothers, husbands, and friends. Men who were taught that keeping it together is more important than being honest about falling apart.

I spent 35 years in an insurance office, and I can tell you that the unspoken rule among the men I worked with was simple: you don’t talk about how you’re really doing. Not over coffee, not in meetings, certainly not with your boss. “How’s it going?” was always a greeting, never an actual question. And “I’m good” was always the right answer.

6) The responses become automated because the follow-up never comes

This is the part of the cycle that doesn’t get enough attention.

Men learn to say “I’m good” partly because of how they were raised. But the habit persists because it works. Nobody challenges it. Nobody says, “No, really, how are you?” And over time, the lack of follow-up reinforces the idea that nobody actually wants to hear the real answer anyway.

Think about how often we ask “How are you?” as a social formality rather than a genuine inquiry. We’re all guilty of it. But for a man who already has a shaky relationship with his own emotions, that casual, unchased question confirms a belief he’s held since boyhood: your feelings aren’t really that interesting to anyone.

The irony is that when men do open up, the response is often positive. My weekly poker game is a good example. Four guys who’ve been playing together for years. For the longest time, the deepest we’d go was complaining about our knees or grumbling about the news. Then one night, one of the guys started talking about how lonely he’d been since his wife passed. Quietly, hesitantly, like he was testing the water. And something shifted. The rest of us opened up a little too. Not dramatically. Not in some movie moment. But enough. It turns out the door was never locked. We just assumed it was.

7) Breaking the autopilot is possible, but it takes intention

If you recognize yourself in any of this, or if you recognize someone you love, I want to be clear about something: this isn’t a permanent state. Emotional autopilot can be interrupted. But it takes deliberate effort.

For men, the work starts with building what psychologists call emotional literacy. That means pausing when someone asks how you are and actually checking in with yourself before answering. It means expanding your emotional vocabulary beyond “good,” “fine,” and “not bad.” It sounds simple, but for someone who’s been running on a script for 30 or 40 years, it can feel surprisingly uncomfortable.

When my son, Michael, went through a really difficult stretch in his younger years, dealing with anxiety and depression, I wanted desperately to help. But I realized that I first had to get better at talking about my own feelings before I could create a space where he felt safe talking about his. I had to unlearn some of the same scripts I’d been given as a boy growing up in Ohio with four siblings and a father who expressed love through hard work rather than words.

For the people around these men, the work is simpler but just as important: follow up. When he says “I’m good,” try gently going one question deeper. Not aggressively. Not theatrically. Just with genuine curiosity. “What’s been on your mind lately?” or “Anything you’ve been thinking about?” You’d be amazed how much a single follow-up question can do.

Parting thoughts

“I’m good” doesn’t always mean someone’s good. Sometimes it just means nobody ever taught them a different answer, and nobody ever stuck around long enough to hear one.

If you’ve got a man in your life who runs on emotional autopilot, maybe this is the week you ask him how he’s really doing. And if you’re the man in question, well, maybe it’s time to update the script.

What’s the worst that could happen?