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96
The Oparinde Christianah
Student @ Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta
Student @ Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta
I Who Never Knew Men
<p>I found the title unsettling when I first saw and read the book. </p><p>“ Who Never Knew Men?”</p><p><br/></p><p>Because I don’t think most women meet men for the first time when they fall in love.</p><p>I think we meet them much earlier.<br/></p><p>Before introductions, dating. our first crush.</p><p>We meet them as kids and through warnings.<br/></p><p><br/></p><p>“Don’t stay out alone.” “Don’t talk to strangers” “Don’t trust every man.”</p><p>Before we know what love is, we know what danger is.<br/></p><p>Some women know men through the sound of an argument behind a closed door.<br/></p><p>Some know men through stories whispered between mothers and daughters.<br/></p><p>Some know men through absence. Through silence.</p><p>Through promises that never came home.<br/></p><p>We inherit men long before we encounter them.<br/></p><p>Then we grow up.<br/></p><p><br/></p><p>And someone kind appears. Someone patient. Someone gentle.</p><p>And suddenly we realize something terrifying. It is difficult to receive softness after spending years rehearsing survival.</p><p><br/></p><p>You keep waiting for kindness to become a trick. For consistency to become control. For affection to become debt.</p><p>Not even because he has done anything but because fear arrived first.</p><p><br/></p><p>Maybe that is why so many women say they want love but panic when it finally feels safe.<br/></p><p>Maybe the body remembers lessons the heart is trying to unlearn.<br/></p><p>I don’t think the opposite of never knowing men is dating one.<br/></p><p>I think it is meeting a human being without forcing him to carry the weight of every story that came before him.<br/></p><p><br/></p><p>And perhaps that journey begins somewhere quieter.</p><p>By admitting that some of us never really knew men.<br/></p><p>We only knew what the world taught us to expect from them.<br/></p><p>There is a difference.<br/></p><p><br/></p><p>Give men grace, they deserve it.</p>
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