A Man Standing Before the Women of the World: The Third Path Out of Gendered Exhaustion

By Feras Awad

For half a century, the world has been rewriting the relationship between men and women. Laws were rewritten, movements rose and fell, identities expanded and collided, and what began as a moral quest for dignity gradually turned into one of the most polarized debates of our modern age. Over time, men and women stopped facing each other as human beings and began standing as representatives of two opposing histories, each convinced that the other side holds the blame for an ancient wound. What was once a partnership became a negotiation-;- what was once an instinctive unity became a field of psychological and ideological tension.

I write as a man - not as a defender of patriarchy, nor as an opponent of feminism, nor as a candidate for moral purification - but as a human being who sees the complexity behind both sides. I look at women and see the triumphs they have achieved, the opportunities they fought for, and the courage with which they pushed against structures that underestimated their minds and their bodies. Yet I also see the exhaustion in their eyes, a form of loneliness that cannot be spoken without being misunderstood. Strength, as the world now asks of women, comes with a cost the world rarely acknowledges.

At the same time, I look at men and recognize an emotional silence that has grown deeper through the decades. Men were told they must be strong but not too strong, present but not imposing, emotional but in a way that does not disturb the narrative. A generation of men learned to fear their own presence, not because they intended harm, but because they no longer understood what society expected from them. In the attempt to correct the injustices of the past, a new kind of imbalance emerged: men became emotionally voiceless, and their inner wounds became invisible in the broader gender discourse. The world forgot that men, too, suffer, break, collapse silently, and often do not know how to articulate their pain.

Between these two exhausted worlds—women carrying everything and men burying everything - something sacred broke. We gained rights, but we lost each other. Women rose to independence, but often without companionship that felt safe. Men stepped back from old forms of dominance, but many disappeared emotionally altogether. Families fractured. Children grew up without the daily presence of a father´-or-a mother. Intimacy turned into a risk, and honesty turned into a negotiation. The emotional landscape between men and women became an unstable bridge no one knows how to cross.

This is precisely why I speak of what I call the Third Path. It is not a middle ground, not a compromise that forces both sides to give up half of who they are, and not an ideological structure that imposes a new hierarchy. It is a way of seeing the human relationship itself as something deeper than politics and more essential than cultural arguments. It is a return to the basic truth that men and women were never meant to be adversaries. They were designed to complement each other emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually—not to replace, suppress,´-or-outcompete one another.

When I say I stand before the women of the world, I do not speak from a place of authority. I do not seek to claim space over you´-or-beneath you, but in front of you, where one human being can speak openly to another. I do not fear your independence. I do not resent your ambition. I do not see your success as a threat. But I also refuse to shrink so that you may feel safe, because genuine safety comes not from the absence of men, but from the presence of men who are emotionally mature and grounded. The fear of men cannot build a future any more than the dominance of men ever could.

What I want - what many men want - is simple: to walk beside women without suspicion and without the weight of inherited guilt. A relationship that is not defined by who wins, but by who understands. A connection where a woman is allowed to be powerful without being forced into hardness, and where a man is allowed to be strong without being punished for his own strength. Where freedom is shared, not weaponized. Where vulnerability is an act of courage, not a gendered flaw.

I speak also from a region often misunderstood - the Arab world. It is not a paradise of gender harmony, nor is it free from patriarchal challenges. But it still holds something precious: warmth, relational closeness, and the idea that family and emotional presence matter deeply. While the West raced toward individualism, the East held tightly to the idea that human connection is not optional. I do not offer this as a moral superiority but as a cultural reminder that perhaps the world needs not more ideology, but more humanity. Not more theories about gender, but more ways of living together without fear.

The Third Path is, ultimately, a call to rebuild connection. It recognizes that equality without connection becomes emptiness, that freedom without companionship becomes loneliness, and that independence without relationship becomes incomplete. It is a recognition that the greatest victories of modern gender movements have come with unintended consequences: fragmented homes, emotional isolation, and a generation that knows everything about empowerment but little about intimacy.

This essay is not a call to return to old roles´-or-to glorify the past. It is not a dismissal of feminist achievements´-or-a defense of masculine authority. It is a simple invitation: let us rediscover how to meet each other again. Let us stop fighting battles that have no winners and start building relationships where both sides can breathe, speak, and stand without fear. The future does not belong to men alone´-or-women alone. It belongs to the relationship between them.

Woman of the world, I do not want to stand above you. I do not want to stand below you. I want to stand before you, as a man who sees you, respects you, and believes we can build something better than what ideology has left us. Your strength does not diminish me. My presence does not threaten you. Between us, there is more possibility than conflict, more humanity than ideology, more future than past.

This is not a call to return to what was.
It is a call to return to each other.

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