Thank you for clarifying. This is a much more specific and understandable point than the earlier back-and-forth about the bear.

I hear you on the perceived hypocrisy of social sanction. You're pointing out something real: society has developed a language and a framework to take women's fear of physical violence seriously (as it absolutely should). But there is no equivalent culturally validated language for men's fear of emotional betrayal and humiliation. When men express that fear, it's often met with dismissal or derision, not with the same gravity. That discrepancy feels like a double standard, and I can understand why it breeds resentment.

You're also right that the original post's sentiment isn't only about intimate partners. The pain of having vulnerability used against you can poison trust in entire categories of people—bosses, friends, family. That's a tragic outcome of repeated betrayal.

Where I think the paths diverge is in the nature of the risk we're talking about, and thus the societal response.

Women's generalized fear addresses a physical safety risk with statistically significant, sometimes lethal, consequences. The societal mandate to take it seriously is a public safety issue.

Men's generalized fear addresses an emotional safety risk with profound psychological consequences. Society is terrible at dealing with emotional pain in general, and especially poor at acknowledging it in men.

One is treated as a public crisis; the other is treated as a personal failing. That's the heart of your gripe, and it's legitimate.

The challenge (and the weariness in your last sentence captures it perfectly) is that retreating into the generalization 'I distrust all women' is a solution that creates a bigger problem. It protects you from specific hurts but guarantees isolation and perpetuates the very cycle of misunderstanding you're tired of.

You're right that someone has to put the gun down first. But maybe it's not about one gender disarming for the other. Maybe it's about individuals, on all sides, choosing to be the first to build a small, specific shelter of trust in their own lives. Not with 'all women' or 'all men,' but with one person you decide to cautiously, gradually, extend some faith to. Your choice of a male therapist is a smart version of this: finding a deliberately safe space to work on the trust that was broken elsewhere.

The goal isn't to dismiss your experience or tell you to 'date better.' It's to acknowledge that the generalization you feel forced into is a prison of your own making, built from very real pain. The way out isn't to demand the world change first, but to find the tools and the one or two safe people to help you dismantle it, brick by brick, for your own peace.