These are the Times When Men Don’t Know How To Act

There exists this myth that when men have a good woman, we don’t know how to treat them, we’re not aware of how good they are. Therefore, we don’t know how to act. And yeah, okay, some of that may be true. Lord knows I’ve done wrong plenty of times when I should have done right. But there is a difference between ignorance and inconsiderate. For the men out there who like me have acted one way, when we knew better and should have acted another way, we were being inconsiderate. We knew how to act, we just chose not to act that way.

But then there are the times when men don’t know how to act simply because we’re ignorant. This is something I know far too well, the feeling of not knowing what to say, what to do. These the times when men don’t know how to act.

When we really, really like a girl or when we’re falling in love with her. Those are the times I have seen men not know how to act. Those are the times when I didn’t know how to act.

A man doesn’t know how to act when for the first time, he sees the woman he absolutely want to be with. We don’t know how to explain the intangible feeling of being so sure about something all in a moment’s notice. We don’t know what to say, how to say it. We don’t know how to approach, and we don’t know how to step away. We don’t know how to act because we just met her, and all we have is a name, and it’s way too soon to say something like, “Look girl, I know this sounds crazy because we just met, but I need to see you tomorrow.”

Sometimes though, that moment of urgency doesn’t come so quickly into a man’s heart. Sometimes, it’s a slow build. Weeks, months can go by without that feeling, until one day we wake up and we realize this woman we’ve been frontin’ about is actually the woman we care most about. How to act when we know such a thing?

Someone please explain because in the meantime, we continue to not know how to act. We continue to act like men who don’t show emotions, men who don’t trip over the little things like that nagging feeling that this woman we have is actually the best woman for us. So we stall, continue to act like the individual man instead of the woman’s man, and think, we’ll figure it out later because that’s what real men do. They figure it out.

And this is why I say women get frustrated with men too quickly. They already know how to act and what to do. Not all women, but a lot of women, the vast majority I have met, were taught about love a long time ago, so when they feel it, they know how to act. Meanwhile, men were taught how to protect everything, including their heart, so we don’t know how to act when it comes time to let someone in. Sometimes we don’t do enough, and sometimes we do too much, both times we demonstrate an inability to know how to act.

Doing too much is when we start to hang out with her more than our boys. We talk to the girl everyday, and take a week to return our boy’s phone call. We begin to bring her along to things women were not invited to before and justify such actions by saying, “It’s cool, man. This girl is different.” See? We don’t know how to act.

Not doing enough is when we act the way we always did before we met her. We try to convince ourselves that if things didn’t work out, oh well. Wouldn’t be the first time. So we point her in the direction of our heart’s exit, and act like it’s cool for them to leave. But really, we’re acting like all people do when they don’t know what to do at all. With a closed mouth and an expressionless face, we just sit there and let her go.

These are the times when men don’t know how to act.

When we like a woman and she likes us back, and then eventually, we love the woman, and she loves us back. When she didn’t like us that much at all, she just wanted to get some and know she’s leaving before we tell her to leave. When the funds are lower than we thought before we went out on the date we promised to take her on. When something we know we can’t fix gets broken and she asks us if we can fix it. When we’re going in the wrong direction, but convinced we’re going in the right one despite what she tells us. When life catches us off guard and hurts us in a way we never saw coming right in front of her. When she decides to leave, and she comes back for the first time. When she decides to leave again, only to never come back at all. When we find the right one at the wrong time, or the wrong one at the right time…

When we first lay eyes on her and know we’re more than willing to go through all of these things with her, we don’t know how to tell her that. We don’t know how to act.