Torn Apart. Transformations in the Emotional Culture of Sadness Among Young Men.

This paper aims to examine the transformations in the emotional culture of sadness among young men. The research involved eight in-depth individual interviews conducted with students from social sciences and humanities programs at universities in Warsaw. Using concepts from the cultural perspective in the sociology of emotions, the study identifies and analyzes contradictions within male emotional culture, including beliefs about emotions and norms regulating their expression and experience. Additionally, the language used by the participants to describe emotional experiences is analyzed. The study reveals that concepts from therapeutic discourse dominate the rhetoric, ways of talking about emotions, and thinking about their social regulation, while the cultural model of "classical" masculinity influences emotional practices. This confirms findings from previous research suggesting that the emotional culture of young men is "disordered." This state is caused by the blending of these two distinct cultural frameworks shaping attitudes towards emotions. The research serves as a starting point for further analysis of changes in male emotional culture in Poland.