By Morris Wambua

A quiet but relentless storm keeps brewing between men and women, a rift that feels ancient yet freshly deepened. I feel it in the news reports that bleed with tragedy, in stories of femicide that seem to come with a terrible regularity, stories of women lost to violence, struck down by men who once promised them love.

I feel it, too, in the eyes of men around me—friends, brothers, strangers on the street—bearing a kind of silent defeat, as if something essential has been taken from them, something they can't quite name.

It is an ache that is both collective and personal, a fracture in the bedrock of how we relate to each other, how we see each other, how we live with each other.

We are slipping from each other’s grasp, men and women, losing the common ground that once bound us, however imperfectly.

Now, instead of trust, there is suspicion.

Instead of warmth, there is a chill, a distance that feels insurmountable, even as we stand face to face.

We are strangers in familiar bodies, trapped between our desire for connection and a profound sense of alienation.

As I search for the source of this fracture, I think of roots grown rotten, walls built too high and too thick, love turned to resentment, and trust turned to fear.

How did we end up here, in this barren landscape, where the very fabric of our bond feels frayed to the point of breaking?

Perhaps it is not a single answer but a web of forces that have slowly, insidiously worn us down—a society that has hollowed out men’s sense of self, reduced women’s safety to a distant dream, and left us all wandering, half-lost and half-desperate, in search of meaning and connection.

A Disintegrating Foundation

There was once a time—however flawed—when men and women moved within the bounds of clear, if confining, roles. Men were expected to provide, to protect, to lead; women were expected to nurture, to support, to remain.

It was a system that came with its own deep injustices, particularly for women, but it was a system that held us in place, a structure that gave each gender a defined identity, however narrow and limiting.

There was a map, albeit imperfect, that told us who we were supposed to be in relation to each other. But today, that map is gone, shredded and scattered by the winds of modernity, leaving us adrift in a vast, uncertain landscape.

Men are told that they no longer need to be providers or protectors—that these roles are relics of a patriarchal past.

Women are told they no longer need to be bound by traditional expectations, that they can live and love on their own terms. And while this freedom should feel like a gift, it often feels like an
endless, aching search for something solid, something real.

We are left without the comfort of tradition but also without the tools to build something new,
something meaningful, something that sustains us in a world that seems intent on erasing our bonds.

This freedom has come with a cost, a price we didn’t anticipate.

We are no longer bound by rigid roles, but neither are we anchored in a sense of purpose or belonging.

Men, in particular, have felt this shift as a loss, a quiet erosion of their sense of place in the world. I see it in their faces—a kind of hollowed-out sadness, a resentment that simmers beneath the surface, unspoken yet palpable.

They feel, perhaps, that the world no longer has a need for them, that they are only valued insofar as they can perform, produce, provide. And what of their inner lives, their unspoken fears, their silent yearnings?

These things are swallowed whole, buried beneath the surface, where they fester and grow toxic.

The Chains of Money and the Mirage of Worth

It is strange, tragic, even, that we have come to measure a man’s worth by the weight of his wallet,the size of his paycheck.

In a world that often values image over substance, money has become the cold metric by which men are judged, and in that calculation, there is no room for kindness, for vulnerability, for the softer shades of humanity.

Many men have come to believe that their value is transactional, their dignity determined by their ability to accumulate, to compete, to climb. And yet, this chase for wealth, for validation through material success, is a hollow pursuit, one that leaves men feeling as though they are running on a wheel that turns but never arrives.

I have seen men worn down by this race, their faces etched with lines of worry, their spirits dulled by the relentless pressure to prove themselves.

They pour their lives into work that does not nourish them, but they do it because they believe—have been made to believe—that this is all they have to offer. And when they fail to reach the ever-shifting bar, when they find that money cannot fill the emptiness within them, that it cannot buy
love or meaning or peace, resentment sets in, bitter and cold.

This resentment often finds a target in the women around them—women who, in a cruel twist, have been cast as symbols of what they feel they cannot achieve.

It is a corrosive cycle, one that turns unmet needs into anger, unacknowledged pain into aggression.

The very women who should be partners, allies, equals become objects of envy, of frustration, of blame. And in the darkest cases, this resentment turns to violence—a desperate, twisted attempt to reclaim a sense of power that was never truly lost, only misplaced.

The Quiet Poison of Emasculation

In our attempt to dismantle toxic forms of masculinity, we have, at times, swung too far, creating a culture that seems to reject masculinity itself.

We speak of "toxic masculinity" as if the problem is masculinity in its entirety, as if there is something inherently harmful in a man’s desire to lead, to strive, to protect. And so men are left adrift, told that the very qualities that once defined them are now suspect, even dangerous.

But masculinity, like femininity, is not a monolith.

It is a spectrum, a landscape of qualities that can be tender as well as strong, compassionate as well as assertive.

In rejecting these aspects of masculinity, we leave men without a path, without a framework for understanding who they are or who they could be.

We strip them of dignity without offering an alternative, leaving them to grapple with a kind of existential drift that is as disorienting as it is painful.

When men feel emasculated, it is not simply a loss of power; it is a loss of identity, a wound to the very core of who they are. And when identity is stripped away, what remains is often anger—a raw, unchecked rage that seeks expression in the most destructive ways.

When men are told that their masculinity is toxic, they are cast adrift with no sense of where they belong.

Some retreat into isolation, but others seek power in the only way they know how: through aggression, through control, through the assertion of dominance.

It is a tragic irony that, in seeking to free men from toxic norms, we have sometimes driven them towards darker expressions of masculinity, expressions that manifest in the ugliest forms of violence, in the unspeakable tragedy of femicide.

Rebuilding the Broken Bridge Between Us

There is no easy answer to the crisis that lies between men and women.

It is not a problem that can be solved with slogans or social media campaigns, nor can it be fixed by assigning blame.

What we need is a new language, a new way of seeing each other that does not reduce men to
their failures or women to their fears.

We need to build a bridge that can bear the weight of our shared pain, our shared hope, our shared humanity.

This bridge must be built on empathy, on a willingness to see each other’s wounds and to acknowledge each other’s struggles.

For women, safety is a basic right, one that is too often violated in a world that remains indifferent to their suffering. But safety cannot exist in a vacuum.

If we are to build a world where women are safe, where men are whole, where we are able to meet each other as equals, we must create spaces where men can find purpose that does not depend on domination, spaces where they can explore their humanity without shame.

What would it look like, I wonder, if we taught men that their worth is not bound to money or status, but to their ability to be compassionate, to be present, to be fully human?

What if we taught boys that vulnerability is not weakness, that strength can be quiet, that masculinity can be a force for good?

What if we gave men a way to define themselves that was rooted not in power over others, but in a shared sense of purpose, in a desire to connect and uplift?

Towards a Covenant of Respect and Grace

We stand, men and women, on opposite sides of a vast chasm, staring at each other with longing and mistrust. But I believe that if we reach across this chasm with open hearts, with hands unarmed and open, we might begin to build something new.

We might begin to forge a covenant of respect, a pact rooted not in domination or fear, but in love, in understanding, in a shared commitment to heal the wounds that divide us.

This covenant is not a simple task; it is a labor of generations, a work of love and patience. But it is a work worth doing, a bridge worth building, because what lies on the other side is a world where men
and women are not adversaries, but partners in the shared project of humanity.

A world where femicide is no longer a headline, where violence does not simmer beneath the surface, where men and women walk side by side, not as strangers but as allies, as friends, as lovers.

If we can build this bridge, if we can find our way back to each other, then perhaps we will not only save ourselves from the darkness between us, but create a light so bright it can illuminate the path
forward.

Perhaps, in the end, this bridge will be our greatest testament—a testament to our ability to find beauty in the ruins, to rebuild love from the ashes, to trust again in the fragile, miraculous bond that lies at the heart of what it means to be human.