How you think of men when you are young is not how you experience them as you grow older. At least that is what my experience has been like. You grow up thinking these are the people who will give you the fairytale love, and then you grow up, and you realize you will spend your whole life trying to protect yourself from them.

Here are a few things I have learned about them with growth.

The growth of the manosphere across Africa and the world has revealed men in unimaginable ways.

Just like their forefathers, they still hold on to the rhetoric that we are not as human as they are. They still expect us to bow to their authority; this isn't something I imagined when I was younger.

We grew up with these boys. We received the same education despite all the inequalities that exist in the world. How can they still be so retrogressive? 

The thing about men is that they will expect you to be well-read but not more than them. They will expect you to have a job but they will not be comfortable with the idea of you out-earning them. If you do they will spend most of their time trying to cut you down to size because they have been conditioned since birth to be the superior gender.

They cannot stand a woman who threatens what they believe should be their position in the world. It is in their nature to want to be the head of the home, the manly man that everyone looks up to, and the final authority within a household. 

Gender roles for women aren't dead but chivalry is wholly gone. You have to have your cash when you are going out with a man because you do not know which day you will meet the one who will ask for two separate bills or who will disappear when they bring a bill. 

Several women have slept in the cells for not being able to settle a club bill and you would not want to be a statistic.

In my younger years as a young feminist, I seriously thought that there could be a point where men and women would listen to each other. 

I tried for so long to explain my point of view until I realized that I exist in this world with men who have already taken a stand that prevents them from trying to understand our struggles.

Some will listen but you will not always be heard. Many are times when you will find yourself singing to an audience that is so far removed from your reality and anything you have to say.

The movies we watched while we were younger represented a very different kind of man from the kind that we have to deal with today in the dating world. 

The fantasy of love is usually so shocking when you experience it in real life because the men in real life are not anything like the ones we read in books or experience in movies.

These cheat, lie, and they sleep through the night when you are a new mother dealing with a crying baby.

Cheating is probably the one relationship struggle that is a constant for most relationships.

Songs are made out of it and movies are written about it because it is a reality shared by a lot of people.

They will cheat on you when you are pregnant. They will cheat on you when your body changes because of motherhood, and they will cheat on you because they feel like it. 

It is never your fault. They do not do that well in monogamy.

Deadbeats are a common phenomenon; and as data shows, most men abandon their wives when diagnosed with terminal illnesses.

Staying through challenging situations is not their thing. They will jump ship and reappear after 30 years.

Read More: Marriage Lessons From Michelle Obama