99% of Men React The Same Way. I Want To Know Why.

Every time I write about my lived experience with men, I watch the same thing happen in the comments from men.

This didn't happen. You're being dramatic. Not all men. This is trauma dumping.

And it's not the defensiveness that gets me.

It's how scripted it feels. Like every man is reading from the same page without knowing it.

So I've been sitting with a question.

What are they actually defending against?

Because it's not me. I don't think it's ever really been me.

What I see is that the moment a woman speaks her truth about relating with a man, something happens in men’s bodies before thought and before choice. 

Shame rises - and for most men shame doesn't feel like something to feel. It feels like annihilation. Like being cast out from belonging, from being good, from being the version of themselves they've been trying to hold together.

And the thing is that you can't stay curious when something feels like it's going to take you out.

So you defend. You deny. You minimise. You say not all men. You call it drama.

This is shame avoidance - and it's so fast, so total, that there's no gap left. No room to pause, to actually listen, to let the words land and ask - could this be true?

That absence of curiosity tells me everything.

I'm not writing this to shame men for it - because to me shame avoidance makes complete sense when shame feels unsurvivable. But the same defence that keeps shame out keeps everything else out too - repair, honesty, real connection, the possibility of actually being known.

And for the women reading this who keep speaking clearly and keep meeting that wall - it was never about you not saying it right.

The armour was already on before you opened your mouth.