How Can I Help Him?

And the heartbreaking truth that sometimes you just can't.

Photo by Nathan McDine on Unsplash

It’s been a tragic week amongst my wider circle and while the story isn’t mine to share, the reflections and conversations that I’ve been part of over the past few days feel so potent and important that I couldn’t write about anything else. I wax lyrical about lots of things on this platform but the main thread is mostly focused on women’s identity and pursuit of happiness within a culture which often seems set up for our failure. Part of that encompasses gender roles and my, ahem, resentment of certain members of the opposite sex for their willingness to maintain the status quo and unwillingness (or incapacity) to share any kind of mental load.

It’s right that we address the manifold pressures piled on to women in the multiple roles they perform in the post modern age; in the same breath, there are challenges on the other side of the coin. Modern masculinity is fraught with its share of angst and amongst heterosexual couples operating in heteronormative patterns, there are patches of grass which quite clearly aren’t greener either side of the fence.