To carry out this role, men are forced to postpone or even suppress their own grief. The pressures are unrelenting. Grieving is about feelings, and many men know this perfectly well. After years of suppressing, repressing, and denying one's emotions, grief momentarily strips away all defenses. But their process of grieving is often less visible than women's.
Men grieve on the inside, and their grief work tends to be more cognitive than emotional.
That men think their way through grief is something many women know quite well. They often see men metaphorically storing their grief in a file drawer in the back of their brain. Men seem to be running away, to have dismissed and locked away their feelings. To do the same, women feel as if they would have to cut out part of their heart. Women want an intimate connection with their partners, but, when their partners pull away, they have no way to break through to see if their partners are actively grieving.