Masculinity, the emotional man, the man who needs me. My ability to take care of myself.

I have a visceral reaction to men needing care. Men needing me, or being soft. I hate it being there, but it is there. It is there, so I always will choose the calmest, most emotionally detached man in the room, and find him wildly attractive. 

wanting to be able to be a woman. to be with a man who is strong. but even then, i can barely relax, always looking for signs of weakness. and then, i want him to romance me, soften toward me, respond in softness. can only accept softness from a man i know will not fall apart on me. but those men are not soft, they will not fall apart because they do not experience the emotion that leads to both softness and sometimes falling apart. wanting both. wanting stability, wanting romance and emotional chaos. 

i am afraid of the emotional man. because i need to be strong. because she is standing in that room watching. because i can't be left by her, she holds my world together. loyalty. 

i am afraid of the emotional man, because i want him, but i feel like i have to choose between him and survival, and i know i don't need him. 

i am afraid of the emotional man because he is a luxury. he is in a tuxedo. he is a liability. he will drag me down, and then i will not be cared for, either. we will both be alone. Afraid if i start nurturing a man, it will not stop. it will bleed me dry, like a child.

I recoil from the emotional man because I do not trust him. Because it seems fake. But that is not my view - I am emotional, and I want emotion, want to trust it like I trust my own. I am smarter about emotions than about anything else, and it cripples me that I cannot talk emotions with men I am involved with, this thing that I am so good at.

Hating men needing me, hating them wanting care, like I hated my father for wanting me, mother - women who didn't want him. i wanted him to be strong, like mom - wanted him to move on, to show some spine. wanted him to play a masculine role, like she was. 

I need to be able to make choices with men that will actually get me closer to what I want, to what is good for me. That means I have to stop being afraid of emotional men, stop hating them, being ashamed of them, being angry and full of rage toward them. Because what I am feeling toward them is not about them. It is about being 13 and watching him act shamefully and then demand love for his actions, manipulating me by seeming pitiful.