"Yes, it's that deep"

"It's not that deep."

I hate this sentence. I hate it with all my heart.

You know how it goes. Someone says something to you — dismissive, careless, maybe something that was clearly meant to sting. You react. You say something back, because you're human and it got to you. And then, instead of an apology or even an explanation, they look at you and say it.

"It's not that deep."

Sucks teeth.

Because what they really mean is — your feelings are inconvenient right now. "It's not that deep" isn't a response. It's a dismissal dressed up as calm. And somehow, the person who said the hurtful thing walks away looking unbothered, while you're left looking sensitive. Oversensitive. Dramatic. Like you're the one who started it.

What I've come to realise is — this isn't random. This is a pattern. And in male friendship, it's practically a language.

There's a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from being in a friendship where everything is a joke.

Not the good kind — the kind that comes from laughing too hard, from staying up too late with people who get you. I mean the other kind. The kind where you're never quite sure if you're allowed to be serious. Where every genuine moment gets a punchline attached to it. Where the only way to belong is to laugh along, even when the joke is you.

That's what many male friendships look like. And nobody wants to say it.

The pattern is familiar if you've lived it. Someone says something — a jab at something you care about, a joke that has just enough truth in it to hurt. You react, not dramatically, just honestly. You say "that wasn't funny" or "why would you say that?" and immediately the temperature in the room shifts. Suddenly you're the pr

oblem. Suddenly you're doing too much.

"It's not that deep, bro. Relax."

And there it is. The sentence that ends the conversation before it can start. That takes whatever just happened and buries it — not by addressing it, but by making your reaction the new issue. You came in with a valid feeling and walked out looking sensitive. They came in with a careless comment and walked out looking unbothered. That's not friendship. That's a power dynamic with a group chat.

I watched it happen once, up close. A guy named Jomiloju said something insensitive to his friend — the kind of thing you say and know immediately that it landed wrong. His friend Cypha didn't explode. He just called it out. Calmly, directly, the way you're supposed to handle things. And Jomiloju's response?

"Guy why you dey vex. Na joke na. Na guy you be."

That last line is the one that stayed with me. Not "I'm sorry" or even "I didn't mean it like that." Just — you're a guy. As if being a guy was a diagnosis. As if it meant feelings had no address there, no right to show up. Cypha went quiet after that. Not because he agreed. But because the room had already decided who was being dramatic.

What makes this so insidious is that it doesn't look like cruelty. It's dressed up as humour, as banter, as "that's just how we are." And because it's normalised — because every male friendship circle seems to run on this same unspoken code — it becomes almost impossible to push back against without looking like the odd one out.

The code goes something like this: feelings are weakness. Seriousness is soft. If you can't take a joke, you're the problem. And the most important rule — never, under any circumstances, admit that something got to you

So men learn to perform unbotheredness. They laugh things off not because they're actually fine, but because being fine is the only socially acceptable option. Every genuine hurt gets suppressed and suppressed and suppressed — until one day it doesn't come out as a conversation. It comes out sideways. As withdrawal. As coldness. As grown men who don't know how to tell their friends that something is wrong.

"It's not that deep" doesn't just dismiss a feeling in the moment. It trains you, over time, to dismiss your own feelings before anyone else can. You start doing their job for them. You catch yourself about to say something real and you think — nah, it's not that deep, and you swallow it.

That's not peace. That's conditioning.

And the cost is real. Male friendships that look solid on the outside, built on years of jokes and loyalty and shared memories, are often friendships where nobody actually knows each other. Because knowing someone requires seriousness. It requires the willingness to sit in a moment that isn't funny and not reach for a punchline. Most men were never taught how to do that. They were taught the opposite.

I'm not saying banter is bad. I'm not saying male friendship needs to become a therapy session. I'm saying there should be room — even a small room, even an uncomfortable one, where something can matter. Where you can say "that actually got to me" without it becoming a referendum on your character.

Because here's the thing about "it's not that deep" — it's always said by the person who doesn't want to go there. It's emotional avoidance with confidence. We've collectively agreed to treat it as the final word, when really it's just someone saying "I don't want to deal with this" in a cooler font.

Yes, it's that deep.

It's that deep because words shape how people see themselves. It's that deep because friendships either build you or quietly erode you, and most men can't tell the difference until it's too late. It's that deep because you deserve to be in spaces where your feelings aren't a burden to manage — but a human thing that simply makes sense.

Sucks teeth.

It's that deep.