"He’s Kind to Me"

Tuesday, April 22, 2025

soft denial, asymmetric desire, and the myth of the gentle boyfriend

In the digital wilderness of contemporary intimacy, a recurring scene unfolds.
A woman — attractive, articulate, self-possessed — posts a video with her boyfriend. He is, according to prevailing norms, visibly “unattractive.”
The comment section ignites. Some mock. Others defend. The woman, if she responds, often repeats the same line: “He treats me well. That’s what matters.”

It appears tender. Mature. Grounded.
But something trembles beneath the surface. A discomfort no one addresses directly.
Not the woman. Not the commenters. Not even the defenders.
What remains unspoken is the structural asymmetry that conditions the very formation of this couple — and the story it tells about what women must accept, and what men are allowed to become.

1. The kindness mask
When a man lacking conventional beauty is accepted as a partner by a beautiful woman, society immediately assumes depth on her part.
“She must see something in him,” they say.
“She looks like someone who would never settle — so he must be special.”
And sometimes, he is. But often, he has simply mastered the mask of harmlessness.

He isn’t threatening. He doesn’t yell. He makes jokes. He calls her beautiful.
And so the world claps. “See? Not all men are toxic.”

But his presence in the relationship is often strategic — not consciously malicious, but structurally inherited.
He has learned that possessing a beautiful, gentle woman is a form of male status.
He doesn’t see her interiority. He sees what her image grants him in the eyes of others.

2. The defensive woman
The woman who says “he’s kind to me” isn’t necessarily lying.
But she is often defending something fragile — not love, but safety.
What she is actually saying is: “He doesn’t harm me, therefore I must be lucky.”
The bar is so low, the absence of violence becomes equivalent to joy.

This is not happiness. This is strategic minimization. And the tragedy is: she may truly believe it.
Because the conditioning runs deep.
Because she was taught to feel grateful when a man refrains from cruelty.

3. The watchers
The other women in the comments — those who say “not everything is about looks,” or “as long as he’s sweet, that’s enough” — are not speaking from freedom.
They are speaking from adaptation.

They know, consciously or not, that structural desire does not function symmetrically.
That they cannot afford to demand beauty, recognition, or emotional awakening from a man.
So they settle. Or they romanticize the settling of others, hoping it will soften their own descent.

4. The real violence
The real violence is not in the comments.
It’s in the silence around the structure itself — the one that teaches women to lower the threshold of aliveness,
and teaches men to perform just enough softness to pass as decent.

And in that murky space, a dangerous narrative flourishes:
That as long as a man is “nice,” he deserves love.
That as long as he isn’t cruel, he must be good.

But true goodness requires more than absence of harm.
It requires presence. Recognition. Mutual transformation.
It requires the very thing this entire arrangement was built to avoid:
equality in desire.