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HEALING THE PATRIARCHAL HANGOVER — PART III
When He Softened, So Did I
When men learn how to surrender, it flips the whole script from struggle to thriving
TLDR When men choose to lead themselves away from the dominator mindset of the patriarchy, women can finally relax, embrace their own feminine, and be a generative and constructive part of healing relationships.
Men often don’t recognize the ways in which patriarchy has harmed them until they hit a crisis. They suffer burnout, divorce, emotional breakdown, or the creeping realization that they are deeply unfulfilled.
For generations, men have been conditioned to believe that dominance, control, and suppression of emotion are the hallmarks of masculinity. But what happens when they start to question this? What happens when they realize that their suffering is not because of women, but because of the rigid, toxic structures that have shaped their entire existence?
On some levels this realization was a slow and painful one in our home. My husband had withdrawn emotionally, numbing out with video games, unable to fully engage with the stress I was carrying as the woman in our family.
I had hit my breaking point and was standing with one foot out the door. I was exhausted from carrying both financial burdens and the unseen mental and emotional labor of our household. I couldn’t force him to change, but I also knew I couldn’t keep martyring myself in the hope that he would.
So it took some rough times for both of us, but especially him, to question the way we’d been relating, and to make a choice to fundamentally shift.
What he changed, and why it made all the difference
My husband’s transformation wasn’t about grand gestures or philosophical pronouncements. It was about the small, tangible, and consistent shifts in his approach to life and his day-to-day behavior that made all the difference in the world to me.
• He learned to embrace vulnerability
The martial arts he’s always practiced was all about sitting with discomfort. But in his transformation, he also…
