Michelle Wollaston On Why So Many Men Don’t Know How to Empathise with Women’s Pain

“Focus on Something Else, Hun”: Why So Many Men Don’t Know How to Empathise with Women’s Pain

This piece was born from the stories women have shared with us through DWC Magazine—moments that stay with you because they reveal something bigger than one relationship. These are stories of pain met with confusion, of love that misses the mark, and of partners who genuinely care but cannot seem to meet us where we are.

One reader wrote about her husband sitting beside her, watching television at full volume while she lay in pain. Another described being told to “focus on something else” as her body screamed for rest. These are not isolated incidents; they reflect a deeper disconnect we are only just beginning to name.

It often starts with something small, a well-meaning comment that lands like a slap. “Focus on something else, hun.” “Try not to think about it.” “Maybe you just need rest.” He is not trying to be cruel. In fact, he probably thinks he is helping. But in that moment—when your body is screaming and your nervous system is begging for understanding—what you hear instead is dismissal.

It is also important to acknowledge that this is not every man. Some partners are kind but clumsy—men who love deeply yet remain disconnected from the subtleties of what we need. That is who this piece speaks to. But there are also men whose behaviour crosses into deliberate disregard, manipulation, or cruelty. Those experiences are not healed through understanding; they are healed through boundaries, distance, and support. Both realities exist, and both deserve to be named.

We often write this kind of behaviour off as male insensitivity, but it is more layered than that. It is not simply a lack of care; it is conditioning. Most men were never taught the language of empathy. They grew up watching mothers who pushed through illness—who bled and birthed and burned themselves out without ever naming it. They absorbed the silence.

I am not innocent in that pattern either. I have role-modelled it myself—the quiet endurance, the instinct to keep going rather than explain what was really happening. Without realising it, I have projected that same image of self-sufficiency onto my own sons. It is confronting to acknowledge, but it is part of the story too: how these patterns continue, even through women who know better, until we finally bring them into the light.

The pattern begins quietly, long before adulthood. It starts in what our children see—how we manage our own exhaustion, how we talk about pain, how we model endurance. From there, the wider world reinforces it. Boys are still raised in systems that teach them to fix, not to feel; to act, not to sit in discomfort.

As they grow into men, that conditioning often hardens into an inability to read the room. It is not that they do not care; they simply cannot sense the subtleties women are naturally attuned to. Feminine energy reads the unsaid. It notices the temperature of the room, the sound of a breath, the instinct to lower the volume when someone is unwell. We do not need to be taught that—it is intuitive.

Masculine energy, on the other hand, often operates through doing rather than sensing. It struggles to move into the quiet, receptive space that empathy requires. So when a woman is in pain, a man might stay close but miss the point completely—like watching television at full volume beside her while she is trying to rest. To him, it is care through presence. To her, it is a disconnection wrapped in noise.

That gap between intention and attunement is where so many relationships falter. It does not excuse the behaviour, but it does explain it. And that distinction matters because when we understand it, we can stop interpreting every failed moment of empathy as proof of indifference.

We do not have to like it or accept it, but we can recognise that what is happening is not always malice; it is a missing skill set. It is the product of generations that taught men to stay disconnected from the rhythms of a woman’s body and their own capacity for emotional presence.

Understanding that allows us to soften the trigger. It helps us carry less of what is not actually happening—the belief that we are unworthy, overreacting, or impossible to love. We can hold men accountable while still holding the awareness that they were shaped by systems that left them unprepared for intimacy in its truest form: empathy through discomfort.

Perhaps that is where the real work begins—not in teaching men to fix us, but in inviting them to witness us. To be there when it is messy. To stay when they cannot fix the pain but can still hold the person in it.

For the Men Reading This

If you have ever been the one who did not know what to say, start here. Do not rush to make it better. Do not explain the pain away. Just stay.

Ask, “Do you want help, or do you just want me here?” Listen without needing to solve. Remember that presence is not passive; it is partnership.

When she is in pain, she does not need distraction; she needs validation. She needs to know her experience matters, that her body’s signals are real, and that she is not navigating them alone.

Empathy is not learned through grand gestures. It is built in the quiet moments, when you choose to stay present even when it is uncomfortable. That is how you become part of her healing, not another layer she has to heal from.