I mean, you hit the nail on the head. Caring about women’s perspectives would require empathy: not just a preference against causing harm, but the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and consider, with curiosity rather than judgment, why they might think or act the way they do in a given situation. People in general and conservative men in particular just never learn that skill and don’t care to develop it. There are exceptions, of course there are, there are lots of them, but I’ve known so many who fake it - very effectively! - or simply change, that I try to keep an open mind but assume none of them really have it or will keep it if they do. Example: My last LTR was with a decidedly liberal man who was an awesome partner for years, and then morphed overnight into a conservative who wanted me to quit my job, wanted me to get rid of my car so I’d have to depend on him for transportation, and had nothing nice to say to me. I don’t know if he was always that way and hid it from me, or if he experienced an internal shift. Either way, what I learned from that is that none of us are static, we can change for the worse just as easily as we can change for the better, and behaving with integrity is the #1 most important thing but you can’t make anyone else do that.

Relationship dynamics are the hardest thing about being straight I think. Life has proven to me that truly trusting anyone (man, woman, or neither; left, right, or center; father, brother, or lover) is foolish, but especially the intersection of man and lover. I hope for the best and I try to act as if I expect the best if only for the sake of my mental health, but deep down I’m extremely cynical. My partner says he’d pick me over the baby if something bad happened to me in pregnancy and it’s nice of him to say that, but realistically, I have no expectation that that would pan out. Realistically, he’d probably watch a Jordan Peterson clip and have some epiphany that wives are replaceable but your own future child isn’t. Meanwhile, there are other people I love for whom I need to stick around. He says he’ll never expect me to quit my job and I appreciate that, but I’ve also heard that line before. So he won’t have my power of attorney, I’m going to be calling the shots on doctors and any other decision that involves my body, and even if it means divorce I will not give up working and maintaining an income. I’m on my own to protect my own safety and well-being throughout my life, and as far as I’m concerned anyone who tells me otherwise is lying, maybe even to themselves. It’s just sad that I’ll never be able to talk to my partner or anyone else except my therapist and internet strangers about what really goes on in my mind, and it’s not even because I particularly distrust him as an individual, I just don’t believe in trust as a concept anymore.