I found the title unsettling when I first saw and read the book. 

“ Who Never Knew Men?”

Because I don’t think most women meet men for the first time when they fall in love.

I think we meet them much earlier.

Before introductions, dating. our first crush.

We meet them as kids and through warnings.

“Don’t stay out alone.” “Don’t talk to strangers” “Don’t trust every man.”

Before we know what love is, we know what danger is.

Some women know men through the sound of an argument behind a closed door.

Some know men through stories whispered between mothers and daughters.

Some know men through absence. Through silence.

Through promises that never came home.

We inherit men long before we encounter them.

Then we grow up.

And someone kind appears. Someone patient. Someone gentle.

And suddenly we realize something terrifying. It is difficult to receive softness after spending years rehearsing survival.

You keep waiting for kindness to become a trick. For consistency to become control. For affection to become debt.

Not even because he has done anything but because fear arrived first.

Maybe that is why so many women say they want love but panic when it finally feels safe.

Maybe the body remembers lessons the heart is trying to unlearn.

I don’t think the opposite of never knowing men is dating one.

I think it is meeting a human being without forcing him to carry the weight of every story that came before him.

And perhaps that journey begins somewhere quieter.

By admitting that some of us never really knew men.

We only knew what the world taught us to expect from them.

There is a difference.

Give men grace, they deserve it.