What Nobody Taught Me About Being a Man, Husband and Father — Eric “Mr. E”

What does it cost a man to grow up believing that strength means suppressing what he feels?

In this episode of Mama Never Told Me, Erica talks with Eric “Mr. E” about the lessons he wishes someone had taught him about manhood, emotions, relationships, marriage, and fatherhood.

Eric traces his understanding of masculinity back to childhood. Raised by a single mother during his early years, he later had a stepfather he admits he wasn't ready to listen to. Instead, some of his ideas about being a man came from the streets and images of men as aggressive, tough, and emotionally closed off.

Those ideas followed him into adulthood. Eric discusses falling in with the wrong crowd, incarceration, losing his mother, and how studying helped change the direction of his thinking and his life. He also reflects on intimacy, empathy, marriage, autism, mental health, and the difficult work of recognizing patterns without using them as excuses.

Today, as a single father raising two sons, Eric is trying to give his children something different: the tools to understand emotions before emotions control their decisions. He talks about teaching his sons openly about relationships, sex, women's bodies, intimacy, accountability, fidelity, and the responsibilities that come with adulthood.

At the center of Erica and Eric's conversation is a simple but consequential idea: emotions aren't weakness. Fear, sadness, anger, love, and empathy all carry information—but we have to learn what to do with them.

It's a conversation about what Eric wasn't taught, what experience taught him instead, and what he's determined to pass on differently to his sons.