The Cuban Missile Crisis was caused by Kennedy. It started months before when the USAF was making a decision to proceed with placing USAF Jupiter IRBM nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey. The consensus was that it was largely a waste of time as the Atlas ICBM was being deployed making IRBM's unnecessary, but Kennedy ordered the installations to go ahead.
The Soviets, not having an ICBM in service had no means at that time to deploy like missiles that could reach the US-- Until they noticed Cuba was Communist. Up to that point, the Soviets had pretty much ignored Cuba, but all of a sudden it was the perfect place to make a counter reply and they started sticking missiles there.
The Crisis occurred when the US found out about this and it ended when both the US and Soviets agreed to withdraw their IRBM's from Europe and Cuba.
At several points in the Cuban Missile Crisis it came down to one man, and not Khrushchev or Kennedy, to make a call and stop or start a nuclear war. Lucky for everyone those men made the right decision. For example, Vasily Arkhipov aboard submarine B-59 made the right call after the captain and political officer wanted to use their nuclear torpedo. Arkhipov was the commander of the submarine flotilla (4 boats) and just happened to be on B-59 at the right time. Had he not been there or agreed to the use of that torpedo, a nuclear war would have ensued.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov_(vice_admiral)
As for "messing around," I simply don't think it's a manly trait. I also don't think fondling kids and sniffing their hair like Biden seems to do regularly is manly either, instead it is just creepy weird.