Love languages: How to understand your man

Many women think a man’s need for sex is how he expresses his love and his feelings for them.

Just as women want to feel intimately connected to their significant other, men have the same desires; they just have a different love language, which happens to be sex.

Stereotype that men don’t have feelings can be detrimental to relationships, but boys have been taught all their lives to not cry, to not feel or verbally express emotion.

Men have feelings just like women, but only express them where they feel safe, such as sporting events, where men tend to be affectionate and excited. Men may convert stereotypically feminine feelings, such as sadness or vulnerability, into feelings like anger or pride — feelings more socially acceptable for them to experience.

This is the reality that men experience growing up, causing many women to misinterpret a man’s intention towards her or leave her confused as to why he is not opening up, when it could simply be that they never learned how.

Men are taught at a young age in this society that they need to always be tough and that revealing sentimental emotion is seen as feminine. Sometimes men have trouble identifying their own emotions and are unable to understand why and how they are feeling a certain way.

It’s time to dig deeper into the minds of men and break the standard that we have set for them. Make it clear that you’re there for him and will listen to him express his feelings without immediate judgment. We can start by understanding how our words make him feel.