Sunday, July 06, 2025

๐–๐‡๐€๐“ ๐„๐•๐„๐‘๐˜ ๐–๐Ž๐Œ๐€๐ ๐๐„๐„๐ƒ๐’ ๐“๐Ž ๐Š๐๐Ž๐– ๐€๐๐Ž๐”๐“ ๐Œ๐„๐ ... ๐๐ฒ ๐™๐ž๐ง ๐๐ซ๐ž๐ฆ



WHAT EVERY WOMAN NEEDS 
TO KNOW ABOUT MEN

If He Could Say What He Really Felt, 
This Is What He’d Tell You …

By Zen Prem


Most men don’t want to be distant. He’s just never learned how to be close, without feeling like he’s about to emotionally shit the bed

Let’s get that out of the way first.

Most men weren’t raised to be emotionally available.
He was raised to be useful. To keep the wheels turning.
To shut up, get on with it, fix things, pay bills, don’t cry, don’t need, don’t break.

He was taught how to function. He was never taught how to feel.

So when you say: “Just tell me what you’re feeling…” you may as well be asking him to explain the mating patterns of deep-sea octopuses in Sanskrit.

It’s not that he’s unwilling. It’s that he was emotionally house-trained with shame. He grew up swallowing grief like it was chewing gum. He learned that softness equals weakness. That fear equals failure. That vulnerability equals exposure equals humiliation.

And then he meets women who say: “I just want you to open up…”. But here’s what that request sounds like in his heads: “Please hand me the keys to the one room inside you that’s never been safe. And I promise I won’t flinch.”

Except… you might. And you have.

And so has he.

Because when a man does open that door, when he lets himself be scared, raw, uncertain, … too many times, what meets him isn’t reverence. It’s rejection.

He’s suddenly “too much.”

Too messy.

Too emotional.

Not strong enough.

Not grounded enough.

Not man enough.

You want him cracked open, but still stoic. You want his tears, but art-directed. You want his fear, but only if it comes with a plan and a sexy voiceover.

But that’s not real. That’s a curated breakdown.
That’s Instagram-safe vulnerability. And most men don’t have access to that kind of tidy unravelling .

When a man starts to feel, really feel, it’s not beautiful at first. It’s awkward. It’s clumsy. It’s terrifying. It’s rage with no language. It’s grief that’s been fermenting for decades under a lid of “I’m fine.”

Because the male psyche is a warehouse full of unlabelled boxes. He doesn’t know what’s inside until one bursts open at the worst possible moment, usually halfway through a conversation about why he forgot to text back.

He’s not emotionally unavailable. He’s emotionally unsupervised.

He’s been left alone with his shame so long he’s started calling it “independence.” He’s scared shitless you’ll see through the faรงade and realize half the time he doesn’t know what he’s doing. In life. In love. In bed. In conversation.

But he also wants to show up. He wants to feel safe.

He wants to be that man, the one who can hold space without shutting down. But not if he has to perform our evolution to earn love. Because performing is exactly what broke him.

So if you really want to know the one thing every woman should understand about men… ?

He’s not scared of you. He’s scared of being seen, and left.

He’s scared that the second he let’s you into the soft, unfinished places, you’ll quietly pack your emotional bags and leave him with a look that says, “That’s it?”

And look, maybe men are emotionally constipated idiots sometimes. ( ok, most of the time) … But it’s not because we don’t care. It’s because no one ever taught us how to metabolize pain without violence, shame, or silence.

So here’s what I’ll say to the women reading this: I know it’s hard to love someone who doesn’t yet know how to love themselves. I know your nervous systems are exhausted from holding the emotional scaffolding of every relationship.

But he’s not your project. He’s not your redemption arc. He’s not here to complete your healing story.

We are men, trying. Fumbling. Waking up slower than you wanted us to. But waking up all the same.

And to the men reading this…?

Stop pretending you’re not scared. Stop outsourcing your emotional labor to women and calling it intimacy. Stop confusing stoicism with strength and silence with sovereignty.

Start doing the work. Not to impress her.

But to finally meet yourself.

You don’t heal by performing evolution. You heal by showing up when it’s fucked up and messy.

Because the truth is, every man has a moment where he must choose between safety and soul. Between performing and presence. Between the armor and the love he actually fucking wants.

And if he doesn’t choose presence…

He will never experience, and probably lose everything that ever mattered.

Zen Prem

Coauthor of Beyond Bullshit To Bliss 
with Samantha Spiro

Thursday, July 03, 2025

๐Ž๐ง ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐๐š๐ญ๐ฎ๐ซ๐ž ๐จ๐Ÿ ๐’๐œ๐ข๐ž๐ง๐ญ๐ข๐Ÿ๐ข๐œ ๐‘๐ž๐ฌ๐ž๐š๐ซ๐œ๐ก ...


"Research studies have shown ...". How many times have we heard that phrase narrated like an imprimatur for whatever the F is being stated as verified fact.

There's research, then there's research. Be skeptical. Just because it's "research" don't mean it's true. But, what is true anyway? There's aren't words for that ... anyway.

One type of study is to find out what's what so that we can glean some understanding about how things work. Take atomic energy. [PLEASE!] A prime example of how knowing how things work can be used for good, or ill. These days the conversation is over whether nation states in order to not be fucked over —Muammar Gaddafi is spinning in his grave — need to have an atomic bomb, or two, in the cupboard. What could possibly go wrong? Especially since we're fortunate to not have a single soup-brained nincompoop at any level of governance on the geopolitical world scene. [As if.]

Then there's "pure" research. Just looking into stuff to see what we find; what's there. Open ended. I don't know the percentages between the number of "applied" versus "pure" research studies, but you can be sure there's a lot of latter in the works and looking for funding. 

Researchers, they want to research. Whether any one of them is wise enough to be self-aware enough to research into themselves why they are disposed to wanna look into things anyway ... well, who knows.

So what's with Hippo farts? And the carpenter level? The story goes that this is an offshoot of the classic "pure" research study to determine how many wrinkles in a Bull's ass. The lab joke goes, "Bend over, let me count". Don't laugh. Who knows. It just may be that the number and pattern of wrinkles in a Bull's ass may have significant implications, ramifications, and applications in who knows what and wherefore in so many areas of Human activity. That's "pure" research, you never know.

So what about the flaming Hippo. Well, the study is essentially about how the number and pattern of wrinkles is a large beast's tuchus has effects on the many various aspects of effluent "windage". Why anyone would want to delve into this stinky mess ... well, depends on researcher inclinations and preferences. "Anal retentive"? Who knows. A lot of history is no doubt a result of such conditioned determinants. 

Let's not over state the complications of conducting such a study. The Monkeys? Well, they're the least complicating factor in what would otherwise be the necessity to strap that dumb beast to a contraption which as we know from our understanding of scientific process would be a hugely complicating factor and color the research unduly owing to the layers of input due to the apparatus itself.

From there, the world is your Oyster. The many permutations of measurements: volume, intensity, direction, duration, olfaction, heat — Did you hear the one about the guy who farts in church ... he must sit in own pew. — flame color, environmental impact(s) ... to name just a few.

Then there's the other variables: Animal sex — among the beasts of the world, seems there are only two ... still — age, indigenous locale, diet, health ... and, of course, the number and patterns of those wrinkles. 

As you can see such a study, while seemingly besides any point any reasonable person would want to make, can keep a researcher in lunch money for quite some time. This is not to say that it's all about the money. Like they say at Chase Bank, "Hey, it's just money!". Maybe for some out there. But mostly about, as we've mentioned, just looking into things. 

Even if it's looking into things from the behint of a Hippopotamus.  









Wednesday, July 02, 2025

๐“๐ซ๐ฎ๐ž ๐ˆ๐ง๐ฌ๐ข๐ ๐ก๐ญ ...




๐“๐ก๐ž ๐†๐ข๐ซ๐ฅ ๐ˆ๐ง ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐…๐ซ๐ž๐ง๐œ๐ก ๐๐ฅ๐ฎ๐ž ๐•๐ž๐ฅ๐จ๐ฎ๐ซ ๐“๐ž๐ซ๐ซ๐ฒ๐œ๐ฅ๐จ๐ญ๐ก ๐๐ข๐ค๐ข๐ง๐ข ...

One Summer in our early days together at Rockaway Beach I stood waist deep in the ocean and watched as the rolling waves lifted her up, and too her blue velour terrycloth bikini.

Velour terrycloth is very loosely soft when wet; like tissue paper. It clung close to her body, and with each wave she had to adjust it to keep from being exposed. 

So modest. So sexy.

A moment so vividly remembered after so many years, and so many waves ... upon waves. And, all kinds. As you can imagine. Many gentle and regularly recurring. Others more so. And some, crashing.