It’s BAD.
Really, really bad.
Awful, really.
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Generation upon generation of men failing to show up for their women- whole-heartedly, completely.
I am not saying that has, in fact, bred the breed of strong independent women.
But wait a minute, maybe I am.
Men failing to show up for their women may not have birthed the whole species of strong independent women but they are certainly responsible for the rise of a special subspecies.
As more and more men have continued to grow more and more disconnected from their hearts, merely relying on a woman’s heart-strength to sustain their relationships, more and more women have begun to wear their own brand of emotional armor, out of necessity.
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Yes, I know it is unhealthy, but it is, perhaps, the only option available to women who cannot find ‘love’ with disconnected men. I can say this with a fair degree of certitude because I have been there, done that!
I have been in love with disconnected men, trying to ‘show up’ for them when they wouldn’t and love them with all my heart when they had let their own love juices dry up- but try as I may, I kept falling miserably short because love isn’t a one-(wo)man game!
Suggested read: Strong women aren’t difficult to love, nobody is
Trial and error wasn’t the way to win at the game of hearts, so I quit. I stayed away from the field of love for a long time. I was content to be watching the players from afar, and learn just what it was that set apart the winners from, well, for the sake of being polite, those who weren’t winning!
It didn’t take too long to get to the answer.
It took an open, vulnerable heart- a heart honest and brave- to show up, to be there, to be present.
But didn’t I have that covered?
Wasn’t that what I put on the table each time? Only to have my heart battered and bruised and carved back into the hollow of my chest- an aching pump for breath?
There was definitely something more to all of this.
A piece of the puzzle I was missing.
And I couldn’t see the complete picture without it.
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It took another disconnected man to bring me the missing piece. Another failed love story.
An open heart was so foreign to these disconnected souls that they embraced the hell out of it. For a while. A vulnerable soul was ‘too good to be true’- everything that they’d never imagined they’d find. So, when they finally did, things got tricky.
A vulnerable soul deserves to be met on its plane of vulnerability. Removing that suit of armor, piece by piece, seemed so unnatural to their disconnected habits and years of unawakened living on the planet that they fled. Their hearts withdrew, as if determined to keep any harm out.
It took me my final failure at love to realize that their escape wasn’t about me.
These men had depended on their ‘disconnection’ for so long to keep from scraping old wounds that they felt scared, even terrified of baring their hearts to anyone else they found themselves even remotely close to vesting with the power to inflict new ones!
My open heart unearthed so many wounds in their closed ones that they needed to escape to tend to them, to stitch them shut and keep up with their act of defiance. Of detachment. Of disconnection. Meanwhile, I had grown so accustomed to ‘showing up’ for them that once, led unto the throne of their heart’s royal chambers, I couldn’t bear to not just be barred from being crowned ‘queen,’ but also kicked from the castle with the drawbridge drawn to prevent entry.
Suggested read: If she scares you, love her
Having tried everything from using my love as a battering ram against the slammed door to declaring a siege, I can tellnothing works. You can sit and wait patiently on the banks of the moat outside their heart’s castle or cry and flood its shores, you can love the sh*t out of him when he’s ‘opening up’ and even more, when he’s closed or you can love-bomb the walls of his heart so you can get inside and declare your undying love, you can maintain that safe space for him by holding the door open, regardless of how many times he chooses to waltz in or dash out- but here’s something that will never change- the battle.
His battle with his reservations, his demons is his own.
No matter how strong an ally you vow to be, you wouldn’t be much help in a war that you can’t see.
But it will bruise you all the same. It will rip apart your insides, and write the story of your unrequited love in blood. You will choke on the putrid smell of dying dreams, but you wouldn’t be able to escape. Soon, you will feel the invisible arm of your own ‘futile hope’ of love lock you in a death-grip and kill you, albeit slowly.
The alternative?
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To don the suit that protects the ones who have the power to hurt.
Yes, that high-walled armor of resistance to the forces of love, vulnerability and all things real. The very same.
Because even though love is a natural instinct in humans, self-preservation, too, is!
And until our men become open-hearted, our women will have to be this ‘aloof’ breed of strong independent women who do not want their hearts broken, again and again.
Because try as they may, they aren’t getting in.
Maybe it is time that men (wo)man-up, show some good-natured open-heartedness and barge in through the doors they put a lock in, in the first place!
And then, we’ll all be happier and healthier for it!
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