What Men Complain About Most in Women and Why

Let’s Talk About What Men Really Complain About, Lady

Let’s be honest, ladies – men and women love to complain about each other. It’s almost like a national pastime, isn’t it? I work with so many men, and if you just look at the surface, their relationship issues seem to be this never-ending laundry list of gripes about the women in their lives.

You’ve probably heard these before, or maybe felt the heavy energy of them directed right at you:

• She’s always complaining, criticizing, or nagging.
• She demands way too much from me.
• She’s just too emotional.
• She’s always changing her mind.
• She wants to control and change who I am.
• She’s totally unpredictable.

It sounds exhausting just reading it, right? But here is the thing, friend. When you look a little closer, you’ll notice that these complaints all share a common theme. A theme that screams one thing loud and clear:

Women are “Too Much”

Her frustration is too much. Her desires are too much. Her shame is too much. Her anger is too much. Her pain is too much.

This kind of feedback is so damaging because it encourages us to hide and repress our emotions. In the process, we try to become someone we think men want us to be. It results in two people hiding within themselves and silently blaming each other for the distance. It’s heartbreaking, really.

What men are really complaining about are emotions. It’s really a woman’s emotions that are deemed “too much.” Most of us ladies learned to express our emotions with fewer controls and filters than men were taught. Why? Because these emotions came with different labels for us than for them. Growing up, the emotions encouraged for girls were often shamed out of boys.

Studies have actually shown that up until the age of 4, boys and girls express emotions to a similar extent. Then, something shifts. Boys start to change. They learn to withhold emotions and repress their true feelings based on the lessons they’re taught by society: Don’t look sad, don’t cry, don’t be scared.

The Pressure Cooker Effect

This repression of feelings acts like a pressure cooker. The emotions build and build with no healthy release valve. This leads men to either repress their emotions even further – which leads to passive-aggressiveness, anxiety, depression, and stress – or they burst and express the one emotion that society says is acceptable: anger.

Because boys become uncomfortable expressing their own emotions, they struggle to deal with the fullness of emotional expression in other people, too. It’s hard to embrace something in another person that we repress so deeply in ourselves. When you express a strong emotion, it creates an emotional response in him. If he isn’t comfortable feeling, he isn’t going to like being put in a position where strong emotions are presented because of how uncomfortable it makes him feel inside.

Emotion = Energy

Here is the truth, lovely: When women are in their flow and expressing their emotions, it is actually a powerful gift for men to receive. Especially if the majority of these emotions are ones that men have learned to repress. For those of us connected to our bodies, feelings that flow through us feel totally normal. But for someone who lives inside their head, relying on logic and reason, it can feel like Armageddon has just descended.

When men experience strong emotions, they often revert to childhood habits to deal with them. They complain, run away, get angry, or try to “fix” the problem causing the emotion. Why? Because in all those scenarios, the woman’s emotions go away, and he doesn’t have to deal with the discomfort anymore.

A really useful way to understand this is looking at the masculine and feminine poles of relationship. In this framework, the feminine pole desires emotions, energy, and connection, whereas the masculine pole desires calmness, freedom, and completion. The feminine in you uses emotions to create connection, but the masculine in him wants it all to end so he can be still and rest.

I want to stress that these poles are not strictly “men” and “women.” Both energies are present in all of us, but to different extents. Men who identify more with the masculine pole will try to fix emotional problems or run away from them to reach that calmness they crave. They can’t control your emotional expression, so they try to make it stop. Sitting in difficult emotions and holding space is hard work if you haven’t learned how.

Men complain about this the most, but here are two things you can do today to help with this:

1. Both of you can learn to embrace his emotions

Think about the martial art Aikido. When someone pushes you, you pull them. When someone pulls you, you push them. You embrace and move with the energy instead of resisting it.

You can use a similar approach in your relationship, lady. When you embrace each other’s emotions, you are validating and accepting each other for who you really are. This involves accepting men for NOT showing emotion just as much as for the emotions they do express. It’s in this space of acceptance that men feel safe enough to develop trust and finally open up.

I know, it can be uncomfortable to embrace anything we deny in ourselves. But the more we can embrace emotions, the more we can accept them in others. Many of us say we want a man who is vulnerable, but when he starts getting emotional, what do you actually do? Do you hold space, or do you secretly judge him?

One of the main reasons men withhold their true emotions is they fear being judged and shamed by their women for being weak. The more you validate and accept him, the more safety you build. That is what takes a relationship to a whole new level.

2. Set boundaries so you don’t take responsibility for each other’s emotions

Things get messy in relationships, and sometims it can be hard to know what is yours and what is not. When our boundaries become weak, we take on other people’s stuff as if it’s our own. To be clear, boundaries are your ability to understand, communicate, and make a stand for how you want to be treated. They help you know where you end and someone else begins.

Failure to have robust boundaries looks like:

• I’m responsible for how my partner feels.
• I can’t be fully honest with my partner.
• I need my partner to make me happy.
• I feel persistent resentments towards my partner.
• I need to anticipate my partner’s needs constantly.
• I never say ‘no’ to my partner or share my own needs.
• I don’t feel as if my partner respects me.

In any relationship, there is 200% responsibility. Ideally, this is split equally. The problem arises when someone takes on too much (ie the co-dependent) or too little of the responsibility (ie the victim). Creating boundaries ensures you both take 100% of what’s yours – and no more.

When someone reacts a certain way, our ego loves to make it about us. Having boundaries helps us notice that tendency, and in that moment of awareness, we have a choice in how we respond.

Boundaries are huge because they essentially say, ‘If you want to be with me, this is how I want to be treated.’ And honestly? That is something every man and woman needs.