what women don't understand about men

an essay exploring both the differences and similarities between men and women

There’s a silence that follows most men. Not because they have nothing to say but because they’ve never been taught how to say it.

I write from that silence. For it. Through it.

And every time I sit with it long enough, it brings me back to the same ache: the quiet, invisible weight that men carry, and the wide gap between how it feels and how it’s understood - Especially by women.

And maybe more importantly, what men have forgotten about themselves.

It’s not an attack. It’s not even a complaint. It’s more of a helpless exhale. Because I’ve seen it too often, in my friends, in myself, in strangers who won’t ever admit it. The way a man’s life, especially in the beginning, is often built around one question: How do I become worthy?

You don’t need to be told you’re not enough. The world says it in a thousand little ways. You just kind of know. Somewhere between being a boy and becoming a man, you look around and realise everything you want- respect, love, attention, peace- has to be earned.

That’s the deal. No one hands it to you.

No one sits you down and says, “You’re enough.” Instead, life teaches you this weird language of transaction: do this, be that, win this, hide that. And maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll be loved.

Somewhere in the middle of all this earning, a girl walks into the story. And everything tilts.

Jordan Peterson explains it well: the idea that men, especially when they’re young and uncorrupted, aim to kneel before the eternal image of the feminine.

Not in submission. But in reverence. It’s like Tom Sawyer hopping on the picket fence when Becky walks by, balancing, showing off, proving himself. Hoping she’ll see him.

Hoping he’s enough.

And it’s not even about the girl, not fully. It’s about what she represents. Because for many men, especially those still becoming themselves, she becomes more than a person.

She becomes the embodiment of all they’re chasing: beauty, acceptance, peace, validation. In her gaze, they hope to find a mirror that tells them they matter.

But that’s a dangerous hope. Because it gives someone else the key to your self-worth. And when she turns away, or worse, never notices you at all, it doesn’t just sting.

It shatters something. Not just the fantasy of romance but the illusion that being “good enough” would guarantee you love.

Most men aren’t afraid of women. They’re afraid of being seen and found lacking.

That’s why rejection doesn’t just bruise; it brands. It tells a man he isn’t what he thought he was. And the world, especially for men, isn’t very forgiving about that.

Vulnerability doesn’t get medals. It gets laughed at. Or ignored. Or quietly pitied.

And so men learn to cover it up. With arrogance. With overcompensation. With silence. With ambition. With abs. With money. With perfectly curated stories about how little they care.

But here’s the twist, and I think women miss this sometimes, not out of cruelty, but because the story’s never been told right: most men aren’t trying to conquer the world. They’re just trying to be good enough for her.

The girl across the street. The one in the café. The one they wrote poems for in the dark. The one who made them feel something beyond survival.

And then comes the heartbreak. The crash. The realisation that the ideal isn’t real.

That to love any actual woman, you have to kill the fantasy of the perfect one. And that’s a kind of death.

Because that ideal is what kept you going all these years. That’s what you trained for. That’s what you lifted for. That’s what you wrote poems for. That’s what made you crawl out of bed and keep showing up when no one was watching.

But she isn’t perfect. She’s human. She cries in parking lots and sends ghostly texts when she’s scared and doubts herself in the mirror. She isn’t a dream. She’s real.

And if you want to love her, really love her, you have to meet her there, on equal ground. Not as a saviour. Not as a judge.

But as someone who’s just as flawed as you are.

That’s when the real work begins. When the boy dies. When the man begins. Not the macho version, not the loud one, the angry one, the one who wears pride like a bulletproof vest.

But the quiet one. The grounded one. The one who can sit in his pain without lashing out. The one who’s willing to lose his illusions in order to find something real.

Some men never get there. They stay bitter. They chase fantasies. They write off love as a scam. They drown in distractions. They confuse validation for affection.

They swap one body for another, hoping it’ll feel like home.

But the ones who do, the ones who grow, they begin to see clearly. They stop seeking women to fill their wounds. They stop seeing love as proof of worthiness. They stop using others to patch the broken places inside them.

They realise: love isn’t a reward. It’s a responsibility.

And that’s where the deeper truth comes in. The one most people, not just men, overlook. You cannot give what you do not have. If you don’t love yourself, truly, not performatively, you will bleed on the person who tries to love you.

That’s why it’s not just men who need to reflect inward. Women do, too. Because too often, love is used as a balm for unhealed wounds.

People enter relationships hoping to be completed, not realising that the best kind of love doesn’t complete you, it complements you. It adds to you. It sharpens you.

It supports you. But it cannot make you whole.

To ask someone else to carry your brokenness is not romantic. It’s unfair. That’s not partnership. That’s projection.

We all carry stories. Regrets. Wounds. Things we wish we did differently. But love should not be where we hide. It should be where we emerge.

Whole or half-formed, it should be the place where honesty meets effort.

Anaïs Nin wrote, "We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are."

That holds true in love. You will always project your inner landscape onto the person you’re with. If you’re at war with yourself, love will feel like a battlefield. If you’re at peace, love will feel like home.

So do the work. Sit with your mess. Journal. Reflect. Forgive. Not because it’s poetic, but because if you don’t, you’ll end up hurting people who didn’t cause your pain.

And that’s the great irony of it all: we all just want to be seen. Men, women, everyone. We ache to be understood without having to explain. To be held without being asked to justify our weight.

We want our wounds to be acknowledged, not stitched up with platitudes. Our fears are to be met with presence, not solutions.

I remember back in university, I watched it happen more times than I can count. Good men, confused men, moving from one woman to another, not out of malice but out of habit.

I had a conversation just last week with a friend from those years. We were sitting across from each other in a quiet café, and something in him had shifted. His voice didn’t carry the same bravado.

He said he felt hollow. Even though he wanted to love someone, really love, he didn’t know how to anymore.

He’d spent years chasing the high, the dopamine rush of the after-sex calm, the thrill of being desired. Cooking breakfast the next morning, laughing, pretending it was something deeper, and then ghosting them when the buzz wore off.

That became the pattern. A cycle. In the beginning, it worked.

Or at least, it felt like it did. But over time, it started to cost him pieces of himself. The connection wore thinner. He stopped seeing people, really seeing them. Every time someone tried to get close, he pulled away.

Not because he didn’t care, but because he didn’t know how to be seen without the performance.

He told me, “It’s like I trained myself to crave attention, but not intimacy. And now that I actually want the real thing, I don’t know how to stay.”

If you’re a young man reading this, standing at the edge of that strange in-between, somewhere between boyhood and something resembling adulthood, I want you to pause.

Just for a moment. Not to take notes. Not to decode some hidden rulebook. But to feel something real. Let it settle somewhere deep inside, not in your mind but in your chest, where the quieter truths tend to live.

This isn’t advice. God knows you’ve had enough of that.

This isn’t another voice trying to fix you or fix your future. I’m just offering a moment. A reflection. A small truth I’ve learned the hard way: don’t chase the idea of love.

Don’t build your identity around the high of being wanted. Don’t shape yourself to fit someone else’s hunger. And don’t mistake longing for meaning.

Because lust fades. Beauty fades. The fantasy always breaks. The image cracks. And what’s left, what remains when the fog clears, is you. Just you.

And the question of who you are and who you’re becoming.

That’s the real work. That’s what nobody tells you.

The pursuit is addictive. Being seen, desired, and chosen makes you feel alive. But if you build your worth around it, you’ll stay starving. You’ll move from face to face, hoping someone will finally fill that ache you’ve been carrying for years. But no one can. Not in the way you hope.

Because real love doesn’t come to fill your emptiness. It comes to stand beside it. It’s not here to complete you, it’s here to meet you. Wherever you are.

And maybe that’s what love is. Not the performance, not the pretending, not the picture-perfect ending. But the quiet, terrifying decision to stay. To show up. Fully. Without the mask. Without the jokes. Without the charm or the bravado. Without the armor you’ve learned to wear so well.

Just as you are.

Tired. Flawed. Trying.

buy me a coffee

Note: I know this might not land with everyone. Some might disagree. Some might not even make it through the whole thing. But if even one person reads this and it sits with them, really sits with them, then I’ll consider this piece a success. It’s personal. It’s raw. And it’s reflective. Thank you for reading. I’ll see you again on Sunday with the weekly newsletter. Much Love.

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