One Thing Men in Relationships Wish Women Understood

If you ask a hundred guys what they really wish their partner knew, you are probably going to get a hundred different answers, but if you get past all the surface-level stuff, you will see it is not really about chores and/or hobbies, but about feeling emotionally safe. Because if there is one thing a lot of men wish they could just put into words, it is this: they want respect, even when they are not feeling strong.

I have seen time and time again when the man who is there for everyone else, solves everything, carrying more than his fair share of the burden, and then withdraws at home because that is the one place he can’t afford to feel like he is failing.

The pressure to always “fix it.”

Most of us grow up with this unspoken rule: your worth is what you do. So, provide, protect, comfort, and fix. For this reason, we have learned to wear a mask, and a lot of us are scared to death of letting that mask slip. Afraid that if we admit we are scared or just plain tired, it will change how they see us.

We wish they knew that when we go quiet, we are not necessarily checked out or mad, we are just us letting some problem be, while we figure out how to solve it. In short, we are just…processing.

To be clear, processing isn’t the same thing as shutting down. You will know this is what it was when he comes back and engages.

The thing about respect

You may not have thought of it this way, but one thing about respect that doesn’t get said enough is that for a lot of men, respect feels the same way being cherished feels to a lot of women. It is all about feeling like we are not failing at the one place where we are supposed to have it together. For this reason, most guys would rather be alone than be with someone who makes them feel incompetent.

It may sound, for lack of a better word, dramatic, but think about it. When you ridicule how he does even everyday stuff or how he handles a situation, it can feel bigger than it really is. In reality, it is not about him thinking he is perfect; it is just that it starts to feel like you don’t ever trust him to get things right.

You want to know what fuels a man more than almost anything? It is knowing that you believe in him. When you have his back, and he knows it, he feels like he can take on anything. On the other hand, feeling micromanaged or subtly dismissed will make him feel like he is already failing, and that is one hell of a weight to carry at home.

“You may not have thought of it this way, but one thing about respect that doesn’t get said enough is that for a lot of men, respect feels the same way being cherished feels to a lot of women.”

A few small changes make all the difference

If you want to see more of that hidden side of him, you will, and it doesn’t take a grand gesture:

1.Be a safe place when he does open up about difficult things. Just try to listen and resist the urge to immediately jump in and “solve” it or point out where he went wrong. A lot of the time, he just needs to know you are on his side before he can figure it out.

2.Acknowledging the stuff he does, especially the little things, goes a long way. It is how he knows he is not just a background character in your shared life.

3.Let him have his “cave moment” when he is pulling back and getting quiet. It is probably not about you, and let him know you are there when he is ready. Just solid twenty minutes of actual quiet has a funny way of bringing us back around.

“Sometimes the place a man feels least respected isn’t out in the world, it’s at home, but that’s the one place he was hoping would feel different.”

Again, be clear, no one has to walk on eggshells, and no one has to pretend everything is fine all the time. This is all to create that dynamic where both of you feel safe to be fully yourselves, ups and downs, and all. For many of us, feeling that kind of safety starts with knowing we are respected, even when we are not at our best.

PS: All of this only works in relationships where respect flows both ways.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.