A Mirror for Disowned Softness: He Couldn’t Bear to Look at Me

There are some men who can’t stand softness, especially in women. Not because they don’t crave it, but because they’ve spent their entire lives being punished for carrying it themselves.

They flinch when they see it.

They sneer when they feel it.

And if they love you? They destroy you because they hate the part of themselves that sees you as beautiful.

I didn’t know that at the time.

I just thought I was too much.

Too expressive. Too loving. Too open. Too warm.

Too silly. Too soft. Too intuitive. Too alive.

He never told me those things directly. He just… didn’t look at me. Or if he did, it was through a lens of judgment so thick I stopped trying to be seen at all.

What I now understand is this: I wasn’t too much. I was too honest for a man who lived his life performing.

He had carefully curated every detail of his appearance... hair, clothes, posture, presentation. But behind the curated shell was a kind of rigid, frightened cruelty. He couldn’t allow himself to be witnessed, not even in the smallest acts of emotional intimacy. He couldn’t take a compliment without deflecting. He couldn’t make eye contact during anything vulnerable. If I touched his hair, it was as if I’d broken a sacred rule.

I used to wonder: Why does he hate me for trying to love him?

And now I know.

He didn’t hate me.

He hated the version of himself he buried to survive.

And I became a mirror... one he had to smash.

There is a particular ache in becoming a mirror for disowned softness, especially when that mirror gets shattered just for reflecting light.

A Slice of Humble Pie

I spent years twisting myself into quieter and quieter versions, trying not to trigger his shame. I thought if I could just figure out the rules, he would soften. But there were no rules—only punishments. And none of them were mine to earn.

Reflection

Have you ever become a target—not because of something you did wrong, but because your light reminded someone else of what they gave up to survive?

How do you protect your softness in a world that often mislabels it as weakness?

Affirmation

My softness is not the threat. Their shame is not my burden. I release the guilt for being a mirror. I didn’t make them look away.

Thank you for reading. If this stirred something in you and you’d like to spend more time with this work, you can explore The Humble Pie 12 Steps and learn more about how I support people as a trauma recovery coach.