Look, you might not like this one. Something in it will sting. You might even be tempted to argue with me.
Because it’s anti-internet to say that women need to be more supportive of men right now. The cultural script tells us to call them out, dissect their failures, hold them accountable. And maybe there’s truth in that.
But some of us still have men we love. Sons. Fathers. Lovers. Men we actually want to support, not because they’ve earned it with perfection, but because our connection to them matters.
So look around—not online, not in the comments section, not in the viral threads. Look around in the real world.
When you’re in line at the grocery store, or walking through the park, or driving home from work—notice the men.
Not the ones trolling you online. The ones carrying kids.
The ones unloading boxes.
The ones staring into space after a long shift, their shoulders tight, their jaws locked, their words swallowed back down.
Here’s the truth: men are being measured against machines now.
Against AI capitalist robots that never stop, never falter, never feel.
And men know they can’t win that fight. Their nervous systems know it too. You can see it in their shoulders, their jaws, the way they swallow their words. In their doom scrolls.
So they turn to women—not for mothering, not for endless praise—but for something machines can’t give them. Presence. Breath. A body that meets theirs and says: you are more than output.
Why It’s Hard to Give
Giving that kind of support is hard. Because this anti-human place we’re all living in takes so much from us too.
We’re expected to be invincible—working, managing, mothering, healing, supporting, planning, monitoring—without ever breaking. And when we try to meet men (or anyone) from that place of depletion, the support doesn’t come out clean.
We slip into instructing. Correcting. Managing. We start to sound like his mom instead of his partner.
And even when we’re saying the right words, our shadow emotions are screaming underneath them.
The Difference Between Head and Body
If you try to fill that role from your head, it becomes performance.
But if you meet him from your body—your breath, your warmth, your actual felt admiration—you give him something rare.
And that doesn’t mean shrinking yourself or shelving feminism or quitting your job.
It means practicing the art of seeing him as human, without abandoning yourself.
Admire his effort without rescuing him.
Let him carry weight without punishing him when he drops it.
Offer warmth without turning it into obligation.
Because when a man feels valuable in your presence—not for what he produces but for who he is—something softens. He remembers he’s a body too.
And that ripple doesn’t just change him. It changes the relationship.
Wholeness, Not Invincibility
This isn’t about being unbreakable. In fact, that’s the trap.
The woman who never complains, who does everything alone, who avoids relationship all together, who always “has it handled”—she looks strong, but inside she is tired, resentful, and unseen.
Not broken, but not whole.
The truth is: the only way to give real, embodied support is to stop pretending you don’t need any yourself. To let the shadow—your anger, your jealousy, your grief—be part of the picture.
Because when you stop performing wholeness, and start living it, you give something no machine ever can: a love that is alive, not mechanical.
And that, to me, is feminism at its most embodied.
Not proving we can do everything, but reclaiming the right not to.
I write primarily to support my small business, christinaelaine.com
I am a somatic coach, writer, and curriculum creator writing about the interior life of modern relating, weekly on Medium & Substack. I also host interviews on YouTube.