You Are A Man.

Masculinity is a greatly misunderstood concept in the world of today. For instance, the good man dilemma is a real one. There is an image of the ideal man that most women desire. Growing up, this image was usually created from the fiction that girls used to read. The heroic hero who saves the princess at the end of the story. This image evolved into TV and movie stars. And now, this image has evolved around the rhetoric mentioned on social media. Usually, created from misunderstood psychological jargon regarding masculinity and gender identity.

Masculinity remains one of the misunderstood concepts in society, especially by women. Most women will explain how they desire a good man, a man who can listen, who she can feel safe with, physically and emotionally, and a man who can be free to express his emotions and have his heart open towards her. But you see, the moment the man does this, he becomes weak in the eyes of the woman.

When you watch closely at the movies and read the stories that paint the ideal man, you quickly realise that this ideal man is not a good man. Jack from Titanic was a homeless vagabond. We made to believe that Rose having an affair with him is a true description of love, when in reality it is a story of a woman cheating on her husband or husband-to-be.

When bringing the narrative closer to home, women tend to explain that “Indoda must”. Once again, we have a story of a woman who falls in love with a dangerous man and chooses him over the safe option of a good doctor. The beauty of a story such as The Wife, it does not shy away from exploring the sexual, emotional and physical abuse that Hlomu experiences in her relationship with Mqele, who is perceived as a real “Indoda”.

One might read this and reduce it to the fact that this is fiction and cannot be translated into real life. But as a man who lives in the real world and has dated women in the real world, I can confidently confess to the fact that I know it can.

I am fortunate enough to have dated enough women to come to this conclusion. I am fortunate enough to have friends who are good men, and  I have friends who are bad men. You see, I have been dumped a few times because a woman would tell me that I am not masculine enough.

Each time I ask what they mean by this, they give the narrative that a man must be the strong, silent type. That he should be emotionless. Distant and never discusses his emotions. He must be an “Indoda” like a Mqele. The total opposite of who they usually describe in the beginning of the relationship, where in the beginning, the man they find ideal is the one who can listen, who she can feel safe with, physically and emotionally, and a man who can be free to express his emotions and have his heart open towards her.

The weird thing about this fact is that statistically, the stereotypical strong, silent type are the men who beat their wives and are serial cheaters. Because they lack the emotional intelligence to process their emotions. And so they usually drown it in liquor or lust. When hurt by their women, they chose fists to express their pain.

The same woman would tell me how I need to open up, express my emotions more and be more human in the beginning of the relationship, will at the end, tell me how that was her greatest turn off about me at the end of it. And therein lies the good man dilemma.

I remember one woman telling me that I am a good man, but she can’t be with me. She said this after we went on a date, and basically was telling me how she missed her ex. Her ex who was a married man.

But you see, this married man, who had a wife and two children, gave her money. This married man who could charter a plane to anywhere in the world with her was who she was comparing me with. The whole date, she was basically telling me how she misses him. Basically, seeing if I would continue where he left off.

The other woman I dated was an extremely jealous woman. Well, to me, because a few years after we broke she got married to a polygamist as his third wife. When I met her again, she was single. We dated again, and she told me how being married to that man was the most emotional and mental anguish that she had ever experienced.

And you know, what hurt me when she said this was because I was a good man to her. She dumped me, saying I do not display enough masculinity for her to have confidence in me, married this ideal masculine description she desired and got burnt by it. So, dating her the second time around, I was basically a regret, a second option, a rebound to try and win the game still. I was the “eish, at least I have someone”. I decided to leave her even though I loved her.

Therein lie the dangers that social media-defined narratives pose. Remember when Musa Mseleku bought his wives Mercedes Benzes, and suddenly, a polygamous marriage was not such a bad idea, according to most women on Twitter? Cat Matlala, a hardened criminal, you find women in comment sections on social media saying he is handsome and wouldn’t mind being his side woman. Similarly, forgetting what happened to Teboho Thobejane and how she is now struggling to find a man because of her relationship with Cat Matlala.

Granted, I know that not all women are like this. I have dated women who did appreciate me and women who loved me for me. Women who knew exactly what they wanted and, most importantly, understood what they wanted. And when my journey with these women came to an end, it ended amicably that I can call these exes friends.  

One woman, for instance, whom I was with, told me that she is celibate. She made a promise to God, and the celibacy expresses this pact with Him. My relationship with her was beautiful. She knew who she was.

She knew what she wanted from a man. She had a very realistic understanding of the ordinary man, thanks to her having male cousins who shared with her the plight of being a man. She gave me the purest love that I had ever felt.

She reminds me of the author of the book, Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Year Disguised As A Man, by Norah Vincent. When you read this book, and you read the summaries and watch the interviews she conducted about the book, you quickly realise that she knew or understood very little about the male psyche. She only came to understand it after her 18-month social experiment.

There are plenty of gems in the book, but the one that stands out, which is relevant to this discussion, is when she started dating women while in character. She thought that, being a woman herself, she would be able to love a woman better. She quickly realised how wrong she was. She realised that women do not want the understanding, listening, caring, pay attention, always there for you type guy.

Through experiencing these interactions with various women, she realised that most women, unknowingly, continue to advance the stereotypes regarding men in society. And most interestingly, she realised how most women date with an expectation of how a man should be or how a man should be a correction from her past relationships.

She discovered how there is a real double standard in the dating pool, where men are often judged harshly for their mistakes but not so much for women. In fact, in a romantic relationship, in her experiment, she found that women hold greater emotional influence in the relationship, whilst without acknowledging their shortcomings, and how her shortcomings can never be the problem in the relationship.

This made me think of a break-up with a woman who told me that I am not man enough. The last few months of the relationship, I will admit, even I could feel I was losing my masculinity. The issue is that I was craving her attention. She would ignore me. Everyday. Send one or two texts again. You see, this drove me up the wall. It made me emotionally crazy, in fact.

So much so that I bought a different sim card and created a fake WhatsApp profile. I pretended to be a rich Nigerian called Bongani. The craziest part about this is that it worked. She was giving this fake account more attention than she was giving me.

She was cordial, nice and engaging with Bongani. The total opposite of how she was towards me, with whom she was nonchalant and could not be bothered by me at all. Seeing how well my conversation with her was going, as Bongani broke me. I could not hold the character anymore, and I believe that’s how she was able to pick up that something was off and ended the interactions.

The same girl, there was a day we were supposed to meet. I was so excited about this day because I had not seen her in a long time. But she wasn’t as excited as I was. We did not meet, and I lost it emotionally. I lost count of how many texts I sent her. Some VNs the tears would just come. I was properly broken.

Even worse, out of curiosity, later that night I downloaded Tinder to see if I would find her. Paid for the premium to have endless swipes. And you guessed it, I found her; account verified and all.

The next day, we talked on the phone. She basically told me how embarrassing it was for her to hear me cry. She told me that she wants a real man who does not cry in front of her woman. A man who leads. Basically, the strong, silent type. She did not acknowledge how she had ignored me and basically treated me like an afterthought.

When asking her about her Tinder profile, she first said that I created her account. Then later, she just played it off like it wasn’t a big deal to be on Tinder. Again, I was being a weak man for being bothered by such.

To her, what she did was fine. To her, being nonchalant about my feelings, not being present, was okay. Being on Tinder was trivial, and I am a weak man if that bothered me. Her shortcomings were not the reason for the relationship failing. It was her perceived weakness in my masculinity that was the reason.

What hurt the most about this is that she would tell me to open up more, especially at the beginning of the relationship. She would suggest  I should express my emotions more. She is a safe space for me. And I did. I eventually did open up to her.

Even about my hobbies, such as stick collecting. So there is a stick that my mom threw away thinking it was trash, and I told her how that made me sad. I love collecting sticks, it is a genuine real hobby of mine. The day we broke up, she brought this hobby of mine to the conversation and said how it turned her off that I told her I was upset about a stick.

This leads me to the social media-driven narrative of modern dating and masculinity. Social media has made having hobbies cringe or hobbies as ways to hustle. One social commentator suggested that the reason so many people today do not have personalities is because many people today do not have hobbies anymore.

This may sound foolish, but ask yourself, how many people do you know have hobbies today? And they engage in these hobbies for recreational purposes without the intention of turning them into a hustle? Hobbies like bird watching, stick collecting, RC racing, knitting, candle making, painting and Lego building?

Another hobby of mine is gaming. I am a gamer who enjoys playing video games. I am lucky that I started gaming when video games who being played for the love of the game. An era where you entered a store and bought the most random of games just to go play it.

Now the climate has changed. The moment a new game drops, millions of creators have already finished it. They have discovered all the easter eggs in the game. They displayed the master theory and made it seem that they were the authorities of the game. They ruin the gaming experience because one will play the game trying to emulate them. Big corporations even tried monetising the gaming industry, but failed to generate any real profit from it.

This reminds me of the content creator who once trended by saying that in the South African social media space, you trend if you either glorify poverty or embody real wealth. You see, this bleeds into the dating space as well.

An ideal man can either be the rich man who can charter a plane to anywhere in the world for his wife and kids, or girlfriend. Or an ideal man should be able to wrestle a bull and be able to kill it with his bare hands.

So, we, the middle-class children who grew up on Disney shows, according to social media, are not seen to be masculine by the average woman who judges masculinity based on what she sees on social media.

You know, I have lost count of how many women have told me that I am not masculine because I have never been up the mountain. In the same breath, however, I am fortunate enough that for every woman who has tried to strip away my masculinity and reduce it to a stereotype, I have dated women who loved

me for me.

My most serious and longest relationship of 7 years is an example of this. The girl loved me for me. She took a genuine interest in my hobbies. She was supportive when I needed her. She did everything in her power to be my life partner. When we experienced difficulties, she would sit with me, and we would actively try to find a solution for the issues that we were facing.

It was a beautiful relationship, which unfortunately, ended because the distance between us kept widening. The physical distance that is. That was the one issue that we could not find a solution for.

When I think of my relationship with this woman and with the woman who is celibate, it always reassures me that there are good women in this world. And the reason for this is because their love is rooted in the real world and with real men.

I do not recall a single conversation with these women where we measured the strength of our relationship based on how relationships, masculinity or femininity are construed in movies, TV shows, literature or social media.

My masculinity or their femininity was not trying to be replicated, nor were they reduced to expectations or to stereotypes. In these relationships, the woman and I were in love with each other, and we merely navigated this emotion together. Experiencing it as it is and living each moment in the experience. Whether it was good or bad, the love and the love alone united us in an authentic and honest harmony.

And here we can see the good guy dilemma. When I think of my 7-year relationship and with the woman who is celibate, these women loved me for me. When I think of women who have broken up with me and, in not so many words, said that I am not masculine enough for them, it is because I tried being a good guy.

I have been a bad guy. I have been nonchalant. I stopped being nonchalant when I saw the pain I was causing to my then-girlfriend. The pain I was causing to another human by lacking empathy was too great for me to bear.

Before she became my girlfriend, I remember how she cried in a public parking lot, telling me she couldn’t be with me for religious purposes, even though she liked me. I was nonchalant; I lacked empathy, and because I was annoyed by her telling me this, I left her there. It is around 6 pm in the summertime.

She caught me flirting with another girl on my phone. Again, I’m nonchalant and told her it wasn’t a big deal. But it was. They say that the wounds of the soul can show through the body. They did. Here I was nonchalant, selfish about my emotions and couldn't care less about the next person, especially a woman. But she was suffering. She lost weight rapidly. We were in university at the time, and she was no longer able to concentrate on her studies. She failed her semester. In which she lost her NSFAS. And because she lost her NSFAS, she was never able to complete her degree. All because she was in love with a man who was nonchalant.

I have been the wounded, bad guy. But again, I saw how I was transferring my wounds to the next human. I do not like that feeling. I don’t want to be such a husband, and I would not want my daughter one day to ever be with such a man.

So you see, guys like me end up being  “good guys”. Yes, we will meet women who reduce our masculinity to stereotypes. We will meet women who have unrealistic or terribly skewed perceptions of what masculinity is. We will meet women who judge your masculinity and throw psychological jargon that they learned from social media to justify their judgment of you.

But in the same breath, every so often, we do meet that true gem in the dust. The woman who will look at you for who you are. The woman who will love you for who you are.

Besides the two women I have mentioned, I remember another woman who loved me with all she was. I feel bad when I think about her because it was after my break with my 7-year relationship. I feel bad because she loved me for me, accepted me as I am, but due to the fact that I wasn’t fully healed yet, I could not reciprocate her love.

I broke up with her over the most foolish of reasons. So much so that a week later, her sister told me that she was in the hospital because she had attempted to take her life. I sometimes believe it's because of how I ended things with her. Her love was pure, but I wasn’t ready for it.

So, how can I then be nonchalant or a bad guy when one understands the sheer damage that does to another human being? So we chose to be good guys. We chose to be ourselves. And the beauty of it all, there is a woman out there who will love you and find you perfect the way you are. With your emotions, with your quirky hobbies.

Indeed, media, from TV to social media, have always portrayed what the ideal man should be. Inasmuch as in most cases, the ideal man is not so ideal in the real world. I love James Bond, but one cannot ignore the fact that he is a misogynist who to him women are objects of pleasure and nothing else. James Bond and many other characters in film paint the ideal man who, in reality, is the direct opposite.

And so, staying in reality, living and experiencing your own masculinity, should never be measured by the double standards set by the media. Your masculinity should never be measured by the double standards set by most women. Your masculinity as a man is yours and yours alone.

Among men, interestingly enough, there is a real brotherhood that does not reduce men to stereotypes. We respect each other as we are. This was another interesting observation that Norah Vincent, the author who wrote Self-Made Man, made during her 18-month experiment.

She realised that men aren’t as competitive as women. That men, when they accept you into their group, you become one of them. She recalled how one guy told them that his woman cheated on him. He was crying. She expected the men to tell him to “be a man”. To be the strong, silent type. She was wrong. The men hugged him, embraced him and continually kept checking on him until he finally healed from the actions of his partner.

And most men can attest to this. Every man has a brotherhood. Every man has a group of friends with whom there is no competition. This narrative, however, isn’t portrayed so much in the media. If it is, it is toxic, such as in The Wife or most movies where the brotherhood is usually a criminal enterprise. On social media, this brotherhood is usually mocked and belittled as men acting like women. When in reality, a man’s brotherhood is where he can be free in his masculinity.

At the end of the day, most women will never understand masculinity. Simply because they are women. The danger arises when the woman looks at unrealistic expectations of what it means to be a man. The danger arises when she compares you with other men, present or past. When she fails to accept you for who you are, this is where the danger lies.

But as men, we should not let this danger poison us. I advocate for being the good guy, inasmuch as it will make you ten times more likely to be hurt in a relationship. This is true. But trust your masculinity. Because one day, a woman will trust in it as well. As it is.

You, as a man, are enough.