And I’m talking to the men here, while every woman reading this already knows exactly what I mean. He’s not confused. He’s comfortable. There’s a big fucking difference.
His full emotional range - and I’m being generous here - runs from “fine” to “what's for dinner?” with a brief stopover at “I'm not angry, I'm just tired.” That’s it. That’s the whole map.
This is a man who can recall every offside call from a forgettable Tuesday night match at Arsenal in 2019 but has somehow, mysteriously, failed to retain the fact that you’ve told him you’re unhappy 17 times. This week. Before Thursday. And he’ll tell you he had no idea.
He knows.
He’s just hoping you’ll eventually shut the fuck up about it.
He knows when you’ve gone quiet in that heartbreaking way. It’s not a peaceful quiet, or relaxed quiet. It’s a dead, hollow, I’ve-stopped-fucking-trying quiet that sits in your chest like something long buried.
He knows when your laugh isn’t real anymore. It’s not an obvious fake laugh, it’s a small polite one. The laugh that sounds like you’re holding yourself together rather than showing him what you’re actually feeling.
He knows when your body turns away from him instead of towards him in bed. It’s a subtle shift, an inch of distance that didn’t used to be there. A chasm that keeps growing while he lies there pretending not to feel it.
He knows when you stop telling him things, not because there’s nothing to say, but because you already know exactly how he’s going to react.
Either it’s a flat “Whatever” or “I don’t really give a fuck.” Or it’s a grunt. Either way, you feel dismissed. He makes it quite clear that the conversation is going nowhere.
He feels it. He just sits there and does fuck all about it.
Not because he’s a cunt. Because it’s Tuesday. And Tuesday looks exactly like Monday, and Monday didn’t cost him fuck all either.
The truth is out - this is not love. Most men, and probably quite a few women, have no idea how to love altruistically. Spoiler - it’s not February 14th, you dick.
For most men, so-called love is a transaction that they probably don’t even realise they’ve signed up for. It looks something like: “What’s the least I can do to keep getting regular blow jobs after my Friday night fish and chips.”
And here’s what makes it worse. Most of these men genuinely believe their own bullshit story; his mother wrote the first draft of it for him. “He’s just not wired for this … He processes differently … He shows love through actions not words … He needs space to come to things in his own time.”
He’s told himself the Mars narrative so many times it’s calcified into fact. Like some old story he keeps polishing because it lets him off the hook.
And the women around him, his mother, his mates, sometimes even his woman, have been nodding along to that story for decades. So he never has to examine it. Never has to ask whether “I’m not good at emotions” is who he is, or just a convenient excuse that nobody ever made him pay for. Until now.
The brutal truth is he’s actually fine at emotions and knowing what’s going on with you. He can see it. He can feel it. He just doesn’t treat it like it matters.
I’ve done this. Sat there knowing full well what was happening and still choosing the easier version of myself.
As long as ignoring your distress costs him less than actually showing up, he fucking ignores it.
Read that again. It’s not because he’s clueless and can’t read the room. It’s that he knows he doesn’t have to.
He knows you’re not going anywhere. That he can shout at you, bully you, sideline you in his life, make jokes about you, and basically treat you like borderline shit and you’ll manage.
Why? Because you always fucking do. And every time you’ve done it, you’ve taught him something brutal … that your pain has a price that he doesn’t have to pay.
That’s not confusion. That’s a man making very deliberate decisions about what he responds to and what he can afford to ignore.
Read that again too.
He doesn’t respond, so you explain. Again. And again. And again.
You change your tone. Soften your words. Pick better timing. Try not to “trigger him.”
You turn yourself into a careful, edited version of yourself, like you’re proof-reading your own feelings before you allow yourself to say them out loud.
The more he continues to act like this, the more something in you starts to go off him and shut down.
You stop trying to share your thoughts and dreams with him. You stop asking or expecting, even basic human kindness has become a luxury. Like you’re asking for something outrageous… not just eye contact and a conversation that actually goes somewhere.
You remember the last time you tried. You were sitting across from him at dinner, reaching for his hand. He glanced down at it, rolled his eyes, and went back to his phone. And you thought, “Fuck it. I’m done. Never again.”
And it was.
You didn’t make a scene. And for once you didn’t cry. You now just stop trying to involve him in your inner world as he’s already proven he doesn’t care about holding it with you.
You start handling your own emotions completely because it’s easier than feeling stupid for needing him. You become strong for all the reasons that he’s supposed to love your womanly vulnerability. It’s surreal that he can look at you every single day and think that your slow heartbreak means everything’s fine.
Of course it’s fucking fine. For him it is ... No conflict. No pressure. No accountability. Just another woman slowly being starved of connection while still showing up every day like nothing’s wrong.
But then one day you change. He can’t put his finger on it but you’re quieter, colder and certainly clearer.
This man you’ve invested your life and heart into doesn’t give a fuck. And slowly, neither do you.
So, you stop reaching. You stop filling the silence. You stop carrying the whole fucking thing on your own.
And suddenly he’s confused. “What happened to you? Why are you so distant? Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?”
Tell you? Mate, she’s been telling you for fucking years.
She’s been begging you to connect in little ways since whenever. And she’s been reaching for you since forever and you just didn’t give a shit.
Not until it started costing you something.
Funny how fast clarity shows up when comfort leaves the room.
That’s when us men suddenly wake the fuck up, isn’t it?
When you stop chasing. When you stop caring. When you start looking like you might actually walk.
Oh, now you’re fucking ready. Now you understand. Now you want to talk. Now you’re full of feelings you couldn’t access when she was sobbing next to you.
And now she’s standing there thinking, “You fucker ... you did know ... You just didn’t give a fuck for all those years ... Not until it really affected you.”
This sudden vulnerability is too little too late, mate. That’s the moment something inside her shuts down for good. Not because she hates you. Because she finally sees you. Clearly.
And once a woman sees that her man understood the pain he was inflicting on her all along, there’s no going back to believing he didn’t.
Now, before the men start DM’ing , and they will , I’m not letting the women off clean either.
Some of you kept saying you were fine when you clearly weren’t. You kept smoothing things over. Kept telling him everything was OK because getting into another heated discussion when all you wanted was a hug felt way more dangerous than just slowly allowing yourself to die of a broken heart.
You trained him too. Not because his behaviour was your fault but because you were trying to survive a dynamic that was flawed from the start.
You picked a man who was more invested in protecting his fragile ego sense of self than growing emotionally side by side with you.
These survival strategies have consequences, and one of them is a man who was willing to accept you were fine because you kept saying you were. And was too obsessed with himself to press you on it … because he didn’t have to.
That’s not blame. That’s just the part nobody gets to skip.
So no, men aren’t from Mars. They’re right fucking here with you. Watching. Noticing. Understanding far more than they ever have to admit.
And if that hits a raw nerve, good.
Because mate, the question is never, why did she stop loving you.
It’s this:
If you knew she was hurting, why the fuck wasn’t it enough for you to change when it actually mattered.
THE PRICE YOU WEREN’T PAYING
You heard her breaking
like a song through a wall
and turned the volume down
so you could sleep.
You called it love
because she stayed.
You called it enough
because she didn’t leave.
But love isn’t what you feel
when it’s easy.
It’s what you do
when it costs you
something you’d rather keep.
© Zen Prem 2026
This is a man who can recall every offside call from a forgettable Tuesday night match at Arsenal in 2019 but has somehow, mysteriously, failed to retain the fact that you’ve told him you’re unhappy 17 times. This week. Before Thursday. And he’ll tell you he had no idea.
He knows.
He’s just hoping you’ll eventually shut the fuck up about it.
He knows when you’ve gone quiet in that heartbreaking way. It’s not a peaceful quiet, or relaxed quiet. It’s a dead, hollow, I’ve-stopped-fucking-trying quiet that sits in your chest like something long buried.
He knows when your laugh isn’t real anymore. It’s not an obvious fake laugh, it’s a small polite one. The laugh that sounds like you’re holding yourself together rather than showing him what you’re actually feeling.
He knows when your body turns away from him instead of towards him in bed. It’s a subtle shift, an inch of distance that didn’t used to be there. A chasm that keeps growing while he lies there pretending not to feel it.
He knows when you stop telling him things, not because there’s nothing to say, but because you already know exactly how he’s going to react.
Either it’s a flat “Whatever” or “I don’t really give a fuck.” Or it’s a grunt. Either way, you feel dismissed. He makes it quite clear that the conversation is going nowhere.
He feels it. He just sits there and does fuck all about it.
Not because he’s a cunt. Because it’s Tuesday. And Tuesday looks exactly like Monday, and Monday didn’t cost him fuck all either.
The truth is out - this is not love. Most men, and probably quite a few women, have no idea how to love altruistically. Spoiler - it’s not February 14th, you dick.
For most men, so-called love is a transaction that they probably don’t even realise they’ve signed up for. It looks something like: “What’s the least I can do to keep getting regular blow jobs after my Friday night fish and chips.”
And here’s what makes it worse. Most of these men genuinely believe their own bullshit story; his mother wrote the first draft of it for him. “He’s just not wired for this … He processes differently … He shows love through actions not words … He needs space to come to things in his own time.”
He’s told himself the Mars narrative so many times it’s calcified into fact. Like some old story he keeps polishing because it lets him off the hook.
And the women around him, his mother, his mates, sometimes even his woman, have been nodding along to that story for decades. So he never has to examine it. Never has to ask whether “I’m not good at emotions” is who he is, or just a convenient excuse that nobody ever made him pay for. Until now.
The brutal truth is he’s actually fine at emotions and knowing what’s going on with you. He can see it. He can feel it. He just doesn’t treat it like it matters.
I’ve done this. Sat there knowing full well what was happening and still choosing the easier version of myself.
As long as ignoring your distress costs him less than actually showing up, he fucking ignores it.
Read that again. It’s not because he’s clueless and can’t read the room. It’s that he knows he doesn’t have to.
He knows you’re not going anywhere. That he can shout at you, bully you, sideline you in his life, make jokes about you, and basically treat you like borderline shit and you’ll manage.
Why? Because you always fucking do. And every time you’ve done it, you’ve taught him something brutal … that your pain has a price that he doesn’t have to pay.
That’s not confusion. That’s a man making very deliberate decisions about what he responds to and what he can afford to ignore.
Read that again too.
He doesn’t respond, so you explain. Again. And again. And again.
You change your tone. Soften your words. Pick better timing. Try not to “trigger him.”
You turn yourself into a careful, edited version of yourself, like you’re proof-reading your own feelings before you allow yourself to say them out loud.
The more he continues to act like this, the more something in you starts to go off him and shut down.
You stop trying to share your thoughts and dreams with him. You stop asking or expecting, even basic human kindness has become a luxury. Like you’re asking for something outrageous… not just eye contact and a conversation that actually goes somewhere.
You remember the last time you tried. You were sitting across from him at dinner, reaching for his hand. He glanced down at it, rolled his eyes, and went back to his phone. And you thought, “Fuck it. I’m done. Never again.”
And it was.
You didn’t make a scene. And for once you didn’t cry. You now just stop trying to involve him in your inner world as he’s already proven he doesn’t care about holding it with you.
You start handling your own emotions completely because it’s easier than feeling stupid for needing him. You become strong for all the reasons that he’s supposed to love your womanly vulnerability. It’s surreal that he can look at you every single day and think that your slow heartbreak means everything’s fine.
Of course it’s fucking fine. For him it is ... No conflict. No pressure. No accountability. Just another woman slowly being starved of connection while still showing up every day like nothing’s wrong.
But then one day you change. He can’t put his finger on it but you’re quieter, colder and certainly clearer.
This man you’ve invested your life and heart into doesn’t give a fuck. And slowly, neither do you.
So, you stop reaching. You stop filling the silence. You stop carrying the whole fucking thing on your own.
And suddenly he’s confused. “What happened to you? Why are you so distant? Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?”
Tell you? Mate, she’s been telling you for fucking years.
She’s been begging you to connect in little ways since whenever. And she’s been reaching for you since forever and you just didn’t give a shit.
Not until it started costing you something.
Funny how fast clarity shows up when comfort leaves the room.
That’s when us men suddenly wake the fuck up, isn’t it?
When you stop chasing. When you stop caring. When you start looking like you might actually walk.
Oh, now you’re fucking ready. Now you understand. Now you want to talk. Now you’re full of feelings you couldn’t access when she was sobbing next to you.
And now she’s standing there thinking, “You fucker ... you did know ... You just didn’t give a fuck for all those years ... Not until it really affected you.”
This sudden vulnerability is too little too late, mate. That’s the moment something inside her shuts down for good. Not because she hates you. Because she finally sees you. Clearly.
And once a woman sees that her man understood the pain he was inflicting on her all along, there’s no going back to believing he didn’t.
Now, before the men start DM’ing , and they will , I’m not letting the women off clean either.
Some of you kept saying you were fine when you clearly weren’t. You kept smoothing things over. Kept telling him everything was OK because getting into another heated discussion when all you wanted was a hug felt way more dangerous than just slowly allowing yourself to die of a broken heart.
You trained him too. Not because his behaviour was your fault but because you were trying to survive a dynamic that was flawed from the start.
You picked a man who was more invested in protecting his fragile ego sense of self than growing emotionally side by side with you.
These survival strategies have consequences, and one of them is a man who was willing to accept you were fine because you kept saying you were. And was too obsessed with himself to press you on it … because he didn’t have to.
That’s not blame. That’s just the part nobody gets to skip.
So no, men aren’t from Mars. They’re right fucking here with you. Watching. Noticing. Understanding far more than they ever have to admit.
And if that hits a raw nerve, good.
Because mate, the question is never, why did she stop loving you.
It’s this:
If you knew she was hurting, why the fuck wasn’t it enough for you to change when it actually mattered.
THE PRICE YOU WEREN’T PAYING
You heard her breaking
like a song through a wall
and turned the volume down
so you could sleep.
You called it love
because she stayed.
You called it enough
because she didn’t leave.
But love isn’t what you feel
when it’s easy.
It’s what you do
when it costs you
something you’d rather keep.
© Zen Prem 2026
