what men don’t understand about women

or maybe, what we were never taught to see: part two

There’s a mystery to women that men often romanticise.

We write poems about it. We fantasise about "figuring them out." We confuse unpredictability for magic and silence for depth. But maybe the truth is simpler.

Maybe the mystery is just humanity. The kind we were never taught to see clearly.

Most men don’t misunderstand women out of malice. It’s not always arrogance.

More often, it’s blindness. Inherited. Accidental. Unexamined.

We grow up around women, mothers, sisters, classmates, but somehow, we don’t always see them. Not as full people. Not in the way they deserve.

We see roles. Archetypes. Projections.

“The girl next door.” “The dream girl.” “The one who got away.”

We reduce them to the feelings they make us feel.

And it’s subtle. Dangerous because it’s subtle. Because we can swear we respect them while never really knowing what they’re afraid of at night.

Or how long it takes to heal from being made to feel small for having a voice that shook the room. Or what it’s like to exist in a body that people comment on without permission.

We say women are “complicated.” Maybe that’s a cop-out.

Maybe we say that because we were never taught to listen without trying to solve. To witness without reacting. To sit in the discomfort of their truth without making it about our ego.

A lot of men think strength means silence. Stoicism. The "I got this" vibe. But for many women, strength looks different. It looks like emotional labour.

Like navigating the world while constantly managing other people’s feelings. Like surviving being underestimated every day and still showing up, soft.

Still hoping. Still giving.

And maybe what we don’t understand, what we were never shown, is how much effort it takes to move through the world as a woman. Not just physically, but emotionally.

Mentally. Spiritually. How exhausting it is to be everything at once: beautiful but not too vain. Smart but not too loud. Caring but not clingy. Independent but still “feminine.”

We don’t understand how lonely it can be.

How often women feel like they’re too much, or not enough.

How often they shrink themselves to fit into rooms built for someone else’s comfort.

We don’t understand what it’s like to carry the weight of someone else’s fantasy. To be loved for your softness but punished for your anger. To be wanted but not understood.

To be touched but not heard.

And sometimes, we mistake their boundaries for rejection. Their independence for arrogance. Their standards for ego.

But here’s something that hit me recently: a woman is not obligated to receive your love just because you gave it. And her "no" doesn’t need to come with an apology.

She doesn’t owe you softness. She doesn’t owe you understanding just because you’re hurting.

That’s a hard one for men to sit with. We’ve been taught to see women as the balm. The redemption. The thing that’ll finally make us whole.

But she’s not here to fix you. She’s not your mother. She’s not your saviour. She’s a person. A flawed, beautiful, complex person.

And when she loves, really loves, it’s not because you earned it like a medal. It’s because she chose to. Freely. Bravely. Vulnerably.

But even that love has limits.

Especially when it’s unreciprocated. Especially when she keeps giving and giving and giving, and you keep taking, without learning her language. Without meeting her in her fears. Without seeing who she is beneath who you need her to be.

Because women are tired, too. Of being the emotional scaffolding. Of playing therapist. Of being asked to carry both her pain and yours, with grace.

She wants to be held. To be protected. Not just physically, but emotionally. Spiritually. She wants a partner, not a project.

And maybe the biggest thing men don’t understand is this:

She wants to be seen.

Not stared at. Not studied. Not “figured out.” Seen.

Seen when she’s unsure. When she’s messy. When she’s ambitious and angry and grieving and soft and all the contradictions that make her real.

Seen without being fixed.

Seen without being compared to the fantasy version you built in your head.

And if you can do that, if you can drop the script and just meet her there, in her humanness, you’ll realise she was never a mystery to solve.

She was just waiting for someone to listen long enough to hear her truth.

My father taught me to hold doors open for women. Not just for dates or family, anyone.

I remember once, we were walking through a market, and he gently pulled me back before I could rush through a door ahead of an older woman.

"Respect isn't a performance," he said. "It’s how you move when no one’s watching."

That stayed with me.

And it wasn’t just about chivalry. It was a way of moving through the world with awareness.

Of recognising the space someone else takes up and choosing not to dominate it. But the older I got, the more I realised how rare that lesson was among boys my age.

Many of them had never been told to look twice. Not in admiration, but in recognition. To see a girl not as someone to win or impress, but someone with an inner world as wild and textured as your own.

It shocked me, the jokes, the casual dismissals, the way they’d talk about women like they were either prizes or problems.

Somewhere along the way, society taught boys to conquer, not to connect. To win hearts, not understand them. And even if some of us were raised differently, we weren’t immune to the world around us.

You absorb it. You laugh along even when it feels wrong.

You let moments slide because it’s easier to be quiet than to be different. And slowly, you forget the lesson. You forget that to love someone fully, you must see them clearly.

But what does that mean, to truly see a woman? To see past the roles. Past the expectations. Past the projections.

Carl Jung once wrote, "The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed."

Yet most men are afraid of being transformed. We crave connection but resist the vulnerability it demands. We want women to open up while staying closed ourselves.

We want to be understood without offering understanding.

We want the rewards of intimacy without the responsibilities of presence.

We want her to be emotionally available without ever examining our own fears, our own silence, our own shame.

Virginia Woolf once said, “As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.”

That quote haunted me the first time I read it. Not because I understood it, but because I didn't. It forced me to confront how narrow my idea of womanhood had been, framed by media, by peer conversations, by my own immaturity.

I realised I’d been carrying around a script someone else wrote for me.

And here’s where the blindness begins. From a young age, boys are discouraged from feeling too deeply. Crying is weakness. Sensitivity is shameful. Vulnerability is mocked.

And yet, we expect these emotionally stunted boys to grow into men who can understand a woman’s interior world?

Bell hooks wrote, "The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead, patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation…"

It starts there. In silence. In the swallowing of feelings. In the disconnection from self.

Because how can a man love a woman fully if he has no practice in facing his own pain? How can he sit with her rage if he’s never made peace with his own? How can he protect her joy if he’s ashamed of his own tenderness?

We don’t need to worship women.

We don’t need to solve them. We need to sit with them. To walk beside them. To see them, not as reflections of our desires, but as lives with their own light.

And if you love her, really love her, then love her not for how she makes you feel, but for who she is when no one is watching.

Let that be the lesson we pass on.

Maybe that’s all we’re ever really asking for, on both sides. To be seen. Not for our potential. Not for our performance.

But for who we are, even in the cracks. Even in the moments that don’t shine. Even when the mask slips and all that’s left is a trembling, unguarded self.

Because beneath the noise, beneath the misunderstandings and projections, beneath all the things we were taught and all the things we never learned, there’s a simple, stubborn truth:

A woman is not a mystery to be solved.

She is not the final chapter in your hero’s journey. She is not here to complete you.

She is a world in herself.

A soul with galaxies inside. A life to be met, not conquered, not claimed, but witnessed. Fully. Quietly. Without demand.

With presence. With humility. With the kind of love that listens more than it speaks. That holds space without needing to fill it.

That doesn’t flinch when she shows anger, or ambition, or grief, or need. That doesn’t shrink when she grows.

And maybe, if we’re lucky, if we unlearn enough, if we soften enough, we’ll stop searching for the woman of our dreams.

Stop needing her to be an echo of our desires. Stop confusing her power for a threat, her independence for distance. Maybe we’ll see her, finally, not as someone who needs saving or shaping or soothing, but as someone who’s already whole.

And maybe we’ll realise that the truest form of love isn’t to stand in front of her or behind her.

But beside her.

Not to lead. Not to follow. Just to be there. Unshaken. Unafraid.

And maybe we’ll say to her, not as a line, not as a performance, but as something sacred and real:

“I know you can do it all alone. I’ve seen you. I believe you. But if you’ll let me, I’d love to just stand beside you, and adore you while you do it all.”

Because that’s what she’s been waiting for. Not a saviour. Not an audience. Just someone brave enough to stay.

Brave enough to see her, not as the dream, not as the mystery, but as she is.

Messy. Brave. Human.

And infinitely worth standing beside.

buy me a coffee

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Note: To all the people who wanted a different perspective, this one is for you. Even if just one person relates to it or finds some comfort in it, I’ll take that as a win. I’m sorry if it doesn’t align with everyone’s view. It was never meant to fit into everyone’s world. Thank you for reading. Much love.