I watch good men get discarded by women who should have been on their knees in gratitude.

Men who work long hours and still show up for their children.
Men who fix what is broken without needing to be asked.
Men who remember birthdays, refill gas tanks, open doors.
Men who protect, provide, participate.

Men who deserve to come home to softness instead of hostility.

But instead they walk through their own front doors and get met with bitterness.
With sharp tongues and cold shoulders.
With women who take their devotion as an inconvenience
and their loyalty as a given.

Their kindness is ignored.
Their effort is invisible.
Their presence is taken for granted.

And when these men pull away, when they go quiet
because they are exhausted from giving more than they receive,
those same women accuse them of being distant, uncaring, emotionally unavailable.

It is maddening to witness.

Because while they complain that their husbands do too much,
I have spent years with a man who does not do enough to even qualify as a partner.

I know what it feels like to be married to a man who was never taught how to stand on his own.
Not a bad man.
Not a cruel man.
Just a man raised to be taken care of instead of taught how to show up.

A man who learned dependence rather than responsibility.
Who grew up believing love meant someone else would always handle the hard parts.
Who was praised for existing, not for contributing.

But understanding where it comes from does not mean it meets my needs.
It does not feed me.
It does not support me.
It does not give me a partner.

Because if I have to tell you to take out the trash,
if I have to write down tasks like chores for a child,
if I have to prepare you for what needs to happen while I am gone,
if I have to volunteer you for things because initiative does not exist in you

Then I am your parent, not your partner.

Love cannot grow where leadership is constantly forced.
Desire cannot survive where responsibility has to be babysat.
Intimacy cannot deepen with someone who only rises when told.

He is not malicious, but he is missing.
And I am left holding the structure of a life he does not even know how to maintain.
I sleep in a separate room, not out of anger, but because the emptiness beside me is louder than silence.

So when I look at a good man,
when I see him giving, helping, loving, trying,
the ache inside me is not jealousy.

It is grief.

Not for him.
For what is being wasted.

Because some women are handed the very thing others spend a lifetime longing for,
not because they cherished it,
not because they earned it,
but simply because life has never been fair.

They disrespect what I would honor.
They discard what I would value.
They waste what I would worship.

And still, even with all I have seen,
I choose hope.

Not the kind that expects miracles,
not the kind that imagines my own life suddenly becoming what I wished it would be.

Just the hope that goodness will be recognized.
That the men who show up will be seen for who they are and what they give.
That someone, somewhere, will look at them and feel lucky.

Maybe that someone will never be me.
Maybe my path was meant to teach strength instead of softness.
Maybe I was shaped by a kind of solitude that others are spared.

Still, I can admire what others overlook.
I can recognize the rare without needing to possess it.
I can honor what deserves reverence.

A witness to what others are given
and what I still quietly honor.

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