10/06/2025
MEN AND WOMEN CARRY PAIN DIFFERENTLY. 🤎
For women, it often settles in the heart and nervous system.
It comes with alertness.
Hyper-awareness.
The sense that something could go wrong at any moment, and probably has, before.
It’s being told to smile.
Then told she’s leading someone on.
It’s shrinking in spaces that were never built for her voice.
It’s being touched without consent and then blamed for it.
It’s a kind of pain that teaches her to scan every room for safety,
then blame herself for not feeling safe.
For men, it often settles in the chest and jaw.
It shows up in the silence between his words.
In the pressure to perform, succeed, protect, provide, even when he feels like breaking.
It’s being told from a young age to get over it.
To fix it.
To push through.
And if he can’t?
He quietly labels himself as weak.
So many men are aching to be held,
not just physically, but emotionally.
But they don’t know how to ask without feeling exposed.
So they stay quiet.
Numb.
Hard.
Useful.
And so many women are tired of carrying the emotional weight, for themselves, and for everyone else.
But they don’t know how to put it down without being called unstable, demanding, or too much.
So they apologize for their own truth.
Smile when it hurts.
Nod when they want to scream.
We don’t need to compare pain.
We need to see each other in it.
Because a woman’s pain isn’t a threat to a man’s.
And a man’s pain isn’t a dismissal of hers.
They’re both real.
Both valid.
And both asking to be met with honesty, not defensiveness.
Healing between men and women doesn’t begin with blame.
It begins with curiosity.
With saying:
“Tell me what it’s like for you.”
And actually listening.
Without making it about who has it worse.
Without trying to fix it or win the argument.
Just being with the truth.
Two nervous systems.
Two stories.
Both shaped by pressure, expectation, and misunderstanding.
And both capable of something different.
Something better.
Not perfection.
But partnership.
The kind where neither person has to lose themselves to be loved.
~ Jan-Willem Van Der Heiden
