A stimulating conversation tonight taught me exactly this when a friend divulged that his current relationship had been torn into pieces in an ugly way and that his heart was clinging on to its last string for dear life. The deep, excruciating pain that he felt deep inside was something he had never experienced before, his cave man projection was lost and his modern man couldn’t stop crying. But why had this happened? What truly awful thing had happened? It was that she simply hadn’t understood that we are men, and we take a little bit longer to work out what’s going on, to acknowledge feelings we’ve never felt before, and to try to put into words and gestures just how we feel. 

As time rattles past at an alarming rate we are getting left behind. The times to have your first kiss, first shag, first deep relationship when you’re but a mere teenager are fast disappearing into the black of past and we are left shivering in the present wondering what the hell we’re supposed to do now. My generation of male friends are single, we’re past the drunken shags, we’ve realised that actually, deep down, we’re not players, we just want to love and be loved but we seemed to have missed the express train and have been left in a desperate mess with no idea what to do. Women our age know what they want, they have high expectations, and won’t take any shit. The slightest mistake we might make and we’re kicked to the curb, no second chances, no opportunities to learn as we go along. But the irony of the situation is that WE are the good guys, we’re working out what we want, we have good jobs, are independent, know where we’re going in life, all the things that women tell us they want but yet, because we weren’t the jocks in high school, because we didn’t get those relationship experiences early on and are trying to feel our way along like a blind man without a cane we are penalised for our mistakes. 

I’m not trying to paint a rosy picture, I know the truth. We are stuck in our ways, we don’t talk about feelings, aren’t overly affectionate, find any kind of emotional giving to be an extreme kind of torture, but we too know that we want to change, we acknowledge a need to learn, it is finally dawning on us how this whole love thing works…so please….give us a second chance when we need it!