I broke a woman's nose once
We were friends. She'd recently taken up boxing and had fallen completely in love with it. The discipline, the physicality, the mental grind of martial arts. She knew I'd been dedicated to the sport for years, so she invited me to train at her gym. We went hard together during class for about an hour. Afterward she asked me to spar, and reluctantly I said yes.
Something in my system haywires when I hit a woman. Even in a controlled gym setting, even with gloves, even when it's the whole point. Every punch I threw was soft, hesitant, apologetic. And she noticed it immediately. Women always notice. So she said, "You can hit me harder if you want. I can take it."
I didn't.
She got frustrated. "This always happens. Nobody takes me seriously. Everyone treats me like a girl no matter how hard I work or how much effort I put in." I asked her about 23 times if she was sure. She confirmed about 57 times that it was okay. And then we actually fought. She hit me with everything she had, and I matched her.
Then it happened. A punch square in the face. Blood everywhere.
I felt horrible. But as the shock settled, paper stuffed down her nose, tears on her cheeks, she gave me the biggest smile. "Thank you. I feel alive, and wonderful, and so happy to experience what this sport is really like, and what it means to be taken seriously."
I was relieved to hear that.
But never again.
Here's what I've sat with since:
I was scared, and thus I was protecting her from the experience she had specifically asked for and earned. She wanted to be met. But she couldn’t be met if I was afraid to hurt her. And it played out in all my relationships with women, where I hold back part of my truth, or avoid the tough conversation because I believed they couldn’t handle it.
But in reality they could, and I was just scared.
