One day, I came home from work and found my husband collapsed on the floor, his face contorted in pain. Feverish, pale, his breathing ragged. That image burned itself into my mind like a scar. I looked at him, and something old, buried deep inside me, cracked open. Something I didn’t even know was there. Fear wrapped around me like a cold, wet blanket.
My mind spun out of control, racing through scenarios. Some vague. Others too clear. Then, one thought took hold, obsessive and unrelenting: What if I lose him? What if he leaves, and I have to push through this vast, overwhelming world alone? No. He wasn’t allowed to. He, the man whose chest had held my fears, my winters. The one who had gathered the shattered pieces of me from my pillow in the mornings and loved me, without ever asking if I deserved it. For years. I had never imagined a world where he wasn’t there. He had always been my anchor, my calm, my certainty.
For a split second, I froze. My body went numb, my heartbeat slowed, my thoughts drowned in deafening silence.
I reached out to him. He tried to get up, but his arms failed him. And in that moment, for the first time, I truly saw him: not as the invincible rock I had always believed him to be, but as my hero who was, in the end, human. That maybe life weighed on him just as heavily as it did on me. That maybe he hurt just as much as I did. That maybe he carried the same crushing weight of false beliefs. Maybe he had taken on all our burdens. Another mission, another task, added to his endless list of things to do. Why had I assumed that his silence meant he had no burdens? When did I stop seeing into his heart? And that realisation hurt the most. The thought that I hadn’t noticed. Had my blindness pushed him to hide his pain from me? Had I made him believe he had to endure it alone? I realised then that I often hid my own pain from him too. And it hurt like hell.
I grabbed my phone and called for an ambulance. He protested fiercely. He had an important meeting the next day, things to do. He insisted he didn’t have time for nonsense, that he’d be fine, that he didn’t need a doctor.
“Haven’t you always said that men are wimps when it comes to physical pain?”
Was this what was happening? Even in agony, was he still trying to prove that he could endure anything? In that moment, I saw how deeply rooted these beliefs were. Had I caused this? Had my own words contributed to it? I thought about our male friends, boasting about how tough and resilient they were. I remembered myself, passionately challenging them, convinced that men couldn’t possibly understand real pain. I had always believed that women suffered more. That our pain was the only one that truly mattered.
Because we could measure it in contractions, in blood, in hours spent standing, in exhausting chores no one noticed. Because we break our bodies to bring life into the world. Because we drag ourselves out of bed at 3 a.m. when our child has a fever, no matter how exhausted we are. Because we don’t have the luxury of getting sick or resting. There’s too much to do, too many people depending on us. I had thought men had it easier. At least they could go to the bathroom without “toddler supervision”. At least they could eat a warm meal, with real utensils, without someone spilling it on their lap. At least they could go to the office and leave the chaos behind until evening.
We, women, learn to sacrifice our ambitions. Even when we have careers, we still carry the weight of running a household and raising children. We bear the invisible burden of care, of emotions, of daily exhaustion. But at least we have some permission, however small, to cry, to complain, to admit we’re struggling.
I had always known, but never truly voiced it, that men are denied emotional closeness, denied the freedom to show vulnerability. They suffer too. Just differently. They also carry invisible burdens.
They are also taught that their pain doesn’t matter. When we express pain, we’re told we’re exaggerating. When they don’t express it, they die on the floor.
A wave of guilt hit me, like a punch to the stomach. All those years I had believed my pain was heavier, more real, only for it to now come crashing back at me like knives. Watching him endure unbearable pain, I realised that, blinded by my own struggles, I had never truly seen his. That he had fought his battles in silence. That he had shown even greater courage. I felt like I had been blind in a room full of mirrors. Like I had spent my whole life looking through a dirty window, convinced I saw clearly.
But now, standing in front of him, on a hospital bed, I knew I had been deaf to his needs. I hadn’t known how to truly see him. And shame burned hotter than any wound. I saw, then, how we had been trapped in this silent war between men and women about who suffers more, who carries more, who does more, who proves more. A war where the price was life itself.
Pain is a constant presence in all our lives, men and women alike, but we rarely look it in the eyes. We bury it under responsibilities and forced smiles. We tell ourselves it’s normal, that it’s just life. And it is. But when pain spills over, when it can no longer be contained, it strikes us hard. And we are never ready. Maybe because no one ever taught us what to do with it. We are a generation of men and women collapsing on the inside, while keeping our backs straight, pretending we have it all together. We live with anxiety, but call it “stress.” We have panic attacks, but call it “just exhaustion.” We don’t ask for help, because no one ever taught us how. We were raised to carry burdens, to swallow our tears, to not be a bother. We were told we were strong. But that strength was translated into sacrifice. Into silence. Into enduring beyond the breaking point. In this absurd game of suffering, we forgot that neither of us was ever meant to win.
That night, in the hospital room, I watched my husband lying there, an IV in his arm, his eyes drained of life. He had come so close to the edge. And yet, he had stood firm. Without asking for anything. Without faltering. I had almost lost him just so he could prove how strong he was. I keep thinking about him, collapsed on the floor. And about how close he was to never getting up again. Not because he wasn’t strong enough. But because he had been taught that strength meant silence. That strength meant enduring alone. That strength meant never asking for help. How familiar.
He and I, two halves of the same truth. Two people, same fears. In this endless dance of power, where each of us tried to be stronger than the other, we forgot to simply be two people, showing up for each other, as we are. And yet, we loved each other that way, each hiding their wounds. Each protecting the other from their own pain.
But that night, at 2 a.m., in that brutal moment, I saw him more clearly than ever before. Not as an unshakable pillar, a man who “knows and does.” But as a person, my person, with all his fragility and truth. I don’t ever want to see him only as a steel wall again. And we promised each other that silence will never teach us how to love. We just want to be two people who can say: “This hurts.” Without fear that it makes us any less for each other.
Because, in the end, we both crave the same things:
To be seen.
To be heard.
To be appreciated.
To be accepted.
To be loved.
Without having to collapse on the floor to prove it.