Men vs Women: The Myth That Distorts the Conversation

There is a pattern in couple therapy that repeats itself: the person who initiates therapy is usually the woman. This isn’t because women are more emotionally attuned or more in touch with the pain—those are clichés that keep this whole discussion shallow. It is far simpler. Women are generally socialised to express and process their inner world through language. When something feels wrong, they tend to talk. And because therapy is a conversational process, it becomes the natural step: find someone who can help the two of you talk, especially when the partner isn’t engaging in the same way.

But this does not reflect deeper insight or superior emotional development. It reflects the simple fact that one person’s default mode of engagement fits neatly into the structure of therapy. And it sets up the problem: men—who often process internally, behaviourally, or privately—are quickly positioned as the “emotionally unavailable” or “less developed” partner. This is not only inaccurate, it is corrosive. It creates a hierarchy inside the relationship where one person’s style becomes the standard, and the other person’s style becomes the deficiency.

There is a persistent myth in therapy culture that talking about emotions equals emotional maturity. It doesn’t. Talking can be meaningful, but it can also be defensive, performative, controlling, or simply habitual. Some people talk endlessly without taking ownership of their behaviour. Others say very little and yet hold far more internal honesty. Men and women both avoid, defend, shut down, explain, dismiss, and protect themselves. Nobody has already “arrived.” Nobody is emotionally superior by virtue of talking more.

This is why the message “men just need to open up” misses the point. It reduces emotional maturity to verbal expression, and that is not how most people—especially many men—process their internal world. Verbal disclosure is only one pathway. Forcing someone into it does not create insight; it creates compliance, pressure, or resentment.

In couple therapy, I am never trying to get someone to talk more. I am trying to understand what is happening between them—the relational system that emerges from both partners’ histories, perceptions, injuries, patterns, and defensive strategies. You cannot understand a relationship by adding individual psychology plus individual psychology. Something happens in the space between two people that requires its own explanation, one that includes each partner’s internal world but is not reducible to either of them.

The deeper question—and the only one that matters across genders—is whether each person is willing to take responsibility for themselves. Not whether they can articulate their feelings fluently, but whether they are willing to look at what they feel, how they behave, and how they impact the person they live with. Ownership is not measured in sentences. It is measured in what someone does with their reactions, their patterns, their defensiveness, their avoidance, and their fear.

So if we are going to dismantle anything, let it be this: the myth that the person who speaks more is the one who understands more. The myth that emotional maturity lives in language. The myth that men must become more like women in order to be “better.” Men and women both have blind spots, both have protective patterns, both have histories shaping how they show up. And both need the same thing: a way of engaging that is grounded in responsibility rather than performance.

When you drop the myths, the work becomes clearer. It is not about fixing men or elevating women. It is not about deciding who is right or who is emotionally advanced. It is about meeting the individual in front of you—whoever they are—and helping them take ownership of their part of the relational system. That is the only place real change comes from.