One of the things I’ve found myself wondering recently is whether we’ve accidentally become much better at teaching women what to avoid than helping them recognise what they’re actually looking for.
There are now thousands of videos, podcasts and books explaining the warning signs. We talk about red flags, coercive control, gaslighting, love bombing, emotional abuse and manipulation. Every one of those conversations matters because every woman deserves to recognise unhealthy behaviour as early as possible, sadly, for their safety. I have a fifteen year old daughter and I want her to understand every one of those things before she ever needs them.
A few days ago I was reading an article by the trail blazer Liz Plank in which she wrote that the question isn’t whether patriarchy shaped us but whether we’re willing to keep asking how it still does. That sentence stayed with me because, as a man, I don’t think there is a finish line to that work. Every truth I’ve uncovered over the years has simply revealed another truth waiting underneath it and every belief I’ve challenged has uncovered another one I hadn’t even realised I was carrying.
That triggered another thought.
In much the same way that when we buy a new red car of a particular make we suddenly start seeing them everywhere, I found myself wondering:
…if there is a risk that if all we’re teaching women to do is to recognise danger, then danger is naturally what they’ll become exceptionally good at recognising.
We absolutely have to have those conversations and we absolutely must teach our daughters about coercion, manipulation, control and abuse because a lifetime of not recognising those things can fundamentally change the course of a woman’s life. My wondering though is whether, unintentionally, we’ve only been having half the conversation because a lifetime of learning how to survive insecure men doesn’t automatically teach a woman how to recognise a secure one.
That triggered yet another thought.
If insecure men rarely know they’re insecure, why are we spending so much more time teaching women how to recognise insecurity than we are teaching boys how not to become it?
I am not for one moment suggesting that we stop teaching women about the clear and present dangers they face but I am saying we should be stepping up our training of boys, teens and indeed adult men to recognise insecurity and the associated insecure behaviours so that they too can become far more discerning when it comes to listening to and being influenced by unhealthy influencers and influences.
Perhaps that’s one of the reasons so many of us men don’t actually know what emotional security looks like ourselves. I certainly didn’t.
For years I genuinely believed I was a good partner. I loved deeply, worked hard, wanted the best for my family and believed I was doing exactly what a good man was supposed to do. I actually thought I was a wonderful partner!
Looking back now, I can see that I spent a lifetime confusing insecurity and need with love. I wasn’t trying to overtly control anybody and I certainly wasn’t setting out to make anybody’s life smaller. I simply couldn’t see that my need to feel needed, my defensiveness, my certainty and my belief that I knew what was best for the people I loved weren’t signs of strength at all.
They were the behaviours of a frightened man desperately trying not to feel frightened.
In an earlier essay I wrote that insecurity rarely introduces itself as insecurity because that’s one of the most important realisations I’ve made over the years. It disguises itself as certainty, leadership, protection or simply believing you’re right. The reason that matters so much is because if you genuinely believe those behaviours are signs of being a good man, why would you ever question them? The answer is that you probably wouldn’t.
What I’ve found myself exploring and discovering ever since then is something else entirely:
What does emotional security actually look like and would I, or anyone else for that matter raised in a patriarchal world, recognise it if it suddenly showed up?
I can say with utter certainly that it doesn’t look like anything like I was taught as a boy, as a teen or as a young man.
What I have learned since, and continue to learn, is that a secure man doesn’t react out of fear when the woman in front of him challenges him, whether she does so through emotion, logic, facts or simply by saying, “That hurt me” or “I’m angry”.
He knows that somewhere inside him there will still be old wounds and old stories that can be triggered but he also knows that those wounds belong to him. He doesn’t make them her responsibility.
An insecure man very often does the opposite.
His previous wounds get triggered and suddenly the conversation isn’t really about the woman standing in front of him at all. It’s about the little boy who learnt somewhere along the way that emotions weren’t safe, that boys don’t cry, that becoming emotional is what girls do and that a stiff upper lip somehow made you a stronger man.
He doesn’t realise he’s reacting to yesterday’s wounds whilst believing he’s responding appropriately to today.
A secure man can hold space whilst a woman works through what she’s feeling. He can listen to her and hear her, these are two very different things, because he isn’t simply waiting for his turn to speak or to shut her down. As a result, a secure man is able to be genuinely curious and will seek to understand what he did or didn’t do and, more importantly, what s of that on the woman was.
He wants to understand before he wants to be understood because understanding her matters more than protecting his own image.
An insecure man explains things away, justifies, deflects, projects and denies, not because he’s a bad man but because somewhere inside him he desperately needs the conversation to stop before he discovers something about himself that he doesn’t want to be true.
A secure man knows how to say, “I’m sorry.” Not because he’s weak or because he’s trying to keep the peace but because he understands that he will always miss things, misunderstand things and get things wrong. He doesn’t experience that as humiliation but rather as another opportunity to become a better man.
A secure man will disagree with a woman and he’ll hold his boundaries when he needs to because emotional security isn’t about becoming passive or endlessly accommodating. He won’t belittle her though and nor will he demean her or make her feel foolish for seeing the world differently and he won’t apologise simply because he wants the noise to stop. He’ll stay in the conversation because the relationship matters more than winning. This applies to professional and personal relationships.
A secure man includes the woman in front of him. He treats her as his equal, shares the emotional load, the mental load and the physical load as he doesn’t assume that she’ll notice what needs doing before he does or that she’ll simply pick up the slack because she’s the woman.
As I write those words I can remember myself in having been every single example of insecure behaviour I’ve just described and, if I’m honest, that’s difficult to admit publicly. I have done every one of those things, some of them repeatedly and a few of them I still catch myself doing today.
The difference now is that I’m looking, asking and listening much more than I have ever done before.
When I receive difficult feedback these days, I’m getting significantly better at leaning towards it instead of away from it because I know that somewhere inside it is another opportunity to understand myself better, understand the woman in front of me better and become a healthier man, partner and father than I was yesterday.
I’m under no illusion that I’ll be a work in progress for the rest of my days! Growing up in 1970s Northern England with an abusive father in the heart of a patriarchal culture shaped me in countless ways that I’m still uncovering today. I suspect I will be uncovering them for the rest of my life.
Oddly, I find that reassuring as it means I’m still looking.
As a father, I find myself thinking about this more and more. We should absolutely be teaching our daughters what insecurity looks like because every woman deserves to recognise the danger signs.
At the same time, I believe that we should be spending just as much time teaching our sons how insecurity drives them to behave and the impact those behaviours actually have on others before it ever becomes somebody else’s problem.
Unless we help them understand what fear, shame and inadequacy look like before they’ve learned to disguise themselves as certainty, control and the need to be right, we simply leave the next generation of women to deal with exactly the same patterns the last generation has been trying to escape.
We are increasingly becoming much better at teaching women how to survive insecure men.
Maybe it’s finally time we taught our sons how not to become them.
Thank you, James, for writing this with so much intention. And congratulations on doing the work to become a better man—for yourself and for the people who love you.
Of all the truths you shared, the one that resonated with me most was: "A secure man knows how to say, 'I'm sorry.'"
As a woman, I never heard those words in the home I grew up in. It turns out they've become the words I've longed for most in my own relationships. Thank you for putting that truth into words.
Why don’t men recognise and respect women as humans before they have children?