In our misunderstandings of what it is to be Man, we’ve come to fear masculinity. We see it as brutish and severe and something to be contained. Only, it’s not on us to contain. It’s not on us to decide, from our feminine minds, what masculinity is. And because we’ve done that for the past several decades, we now have an underlying fear of men. In some cases, this fear is healthy. Only, we’ve carried it so far as to have some fear of our husbands as well.

We fear their decisions that would be different than our own. We fear what they might do to our bodies should we give them freely. We fear their confidence, their expectations of us, we even fear their respect because we don’t truly understand it. We even sometimes fear their word. It’s time to stop this. These men are the ones who have vowed to love and cherish us, forsaking all others, for the rest of their lives. They deserve our trust and our understanding. Not only our understanding of them personally, but our understanding of what it is to be a Man.

Some will say, why should we do this? Why shouldn’t they be more like women and understand us? We’ve tried that now. We’ve tried it for at least 4 decades and it isn’t working. Women are reportedly more unhappy than ever before and men are (understandably) fleeing from ever getting married. When we strive to understand masculinity and our men (as much as we can. There are things that will always be beyond us), our families, our children and we as women tend to be happier. When there are times of needing feminine perspective, it is time to go to other women. To go to them to learn what is going on.

What exactly are we afraid of? Our friends not understanding why we don’t talk badly about our husbands? Why we choose to care for them? Being vulnerable to the man we vowed to spend our lives with? I understand that there are a few occasions of men taking advantage of this vulnerability, but how often does this really happen, and do we truly fear this from a man that many women have spent years and years with, with no sign of any trouble?

One of the things I was trying to get at in my last post (and I’m not sure I did), is that there will be times when we stand back that our husbands might get stern, or unequivocally make his expectations known, or do something else that might frustrate or anger us or cause fear. It might take us by surprise, but in these instances, is it really out of his character? Or is it the way he treats those he keeps close to him because he respects them? Leaders have expectations of those who follow them and sometimes, especially if those expectations aren’t met, he may get stern, to man or woman. This actually is a sign of respect, from a man. It means he knows you are capable. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be there. Respect to a man does not mean, he won’t hurt my feelings.

Do not fear masculinity in your husbands, sons, brothers, fathers and other trusted men. It is this that draws us to them and we should not try to hinder that drive and we should certainly trust them enough to not fear them.

** Yes, there are those who have broken that trust. I understand that. The question is, why and is he working to rebuild that again?