10 views
<h1 style="text-align: center;">When Sick with My Boys: The Different Care from Men and Women</h1> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://media.istockphoto.com/id/1223382857/photo/man-very-sick-in-bed.jpg?s=612x612&amp;w=0&amp;k=20&amp;c=6D3U_-9WW5Mg2haKv7shVfKOLt2ra5KtPKM8vIC4_0o=" alt="" width="800" /></p> <p>I wasn&rsquo;t prepared for the cold front that came blowing through D.C. and so, within hours of arriving in D.C., I felt my throat tighten up and the congestion getting out of control. What made things worse, I had no proper attire to keep me warm for the evenings. I had no coat, no jacket &mdash; at least not one that went with what I was wearing &mdash; so I just knew this cold I was starting to have was only going to get worse. Not because I lacked the wardrobe and the meds to fight it; not because I had to attend the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rally the next day, all day; not because I knew each night I was there, I was going to be out late, which meant a serious lack of rest; the biggest reason I knew my cold was going to get worse before it got better is because I was with my boys all weekend, and the last thing any of them was going to do was nurse me back to health.</p> <h2>The Bond with the Boys During Sickness</h2> <p>When I wrote last week about valuing and cherishing the role&nbsp;my boys play in my <a href="https://www.loveawake.com/free-online-dating/United-States/state-of-District-of-Columbia.html?gender=male">life since being single</a>, I hope I didn&rsquo;t come off as spiteful towards women. My boys truly do mean everything to me, and will always be in my life, so of course I will never let a woman come in between our bond, but it doesn&rsquo;t mean the two relationships &mdash; the one with my boys and the one with whatever woman I end up with &mdash; can&rsquo;t co-exist. I need both, for entirely different reasons, and it&rsquo;s something I learned over the weekend when I was sick.</p> <p>See, my boys are going to see the runny nose and just tell me to get a tissue. If they have a box of their own, they&rsquo;ll say I can get a couple, but they won&rsquo;t give me the whole box and buy another one for me before the end of the weekend. We&rsquo;ll pull up to McDonald&rsquo;s and they&rsquo;ll ask me if I want anything, knowing good and well the Hi-C Orange McDonald&rsquo;s serves does not qualify as my necessary dose of Vitamin C and I shouldn&rsquo;t be eating anything but soup. They&rsquo;ll wake me up when I&rsquo;m taking a nap so I can get ready to roll out with them, and if I ask to borrow a jacket, they&rsquo;ll assess if it&rsquo;s one of the ones they wanted to wear before they say yes. They will hear me coughing, blowing my nose, and talking in a raspy voice, and still say, &ldquo;Man, come to his happy hour, there&rsquo;s mad girls up in here.&rdquo;</p> <p>To balance friendships and romance, see this <a href="https://blog.loveawake.com/2024/09/19/10-lessons-i-learned-while-being-purposefully-single/" rel="dofollow">reflection on purposeful singlehood</a>.&nbsp;</p> <h2>Distinct Care Differences: Men vs. Women</h2> <p>If any of this is reading like some attack on my boys, understand this is far from it. I know exactly how my boys are, and I love them all of the same. Matter of fact, if any of them did anything different from the things I just described, I would be so shocked, I would ask them if they were sick. We&rsquo;re men, for better or for worse, and unless we&rsquo;re in some life-threatening situation, we tell each other to &ldquo;man up&rdquo;. Hell, I don&rsquo;t think I even asked any of my boys if they had some tissue.</p> <p>We don&rsquo;t do things <a href="https://www.loveawake.com/free-online-dating/United-States/state-of-District-of-Columbia.html?gender=female">single women</a> do for us when we get sick. A man isn&rsquo;t giving another man his scarf, but a woman will take hers off and give it to him. A man isn&rsquo;t putting his hands on another man&rsquo;s forehead to see if he has a fever, so much as he&rsquo;s saying, &ldquo;Damn, you really do sound sick.&rdquo;. A man isn&rsquo;t bringing him the best chicken soup in town, so much as he&rsquo;s talking about the chicken soup his mom used to make. These are things only a woman will do for a man. These are things only a man can expect a woman to do. We care about our boys as much as we do the most important people in our life, but we know better than to think they&rsquo;ll take care of us when we&rsquo;re sick because we think they&rsquo;ll suck at it.</p> <p>For advice on maintaining emotional health, check this <a href="https://blog.loveawake.com/2025/05/19/yes-no-how-indecision-affects-relationships/" rel="dofollow">article on how indecision affects relationships</a>.</p> <h2>Women&rsquo;s Role in Care and Comfort</h2> <p>Women, on the other hand, don&rsquo;t suck at taking care of a man when he&rsquo;s sick. Women are great at taking care of a man when he&rsquo;s sick because they make him feel like it&rsquo;s okay to be sick. They say what he has has been going around a lot lately, and instead of saying &ldquo;Man up&rdquo; they say &ldquo;Lay down.&rdquo; Like his boys know how to have his back when a fight is about to go down, his woman knows how to have his back when his lung sounds like it&rsquo;s about to be coughed up.</p> <p>Any man out there will say a life without his male friends is empty, but if he&rsquo;s honest, he will admit a life without a female friend is not a healthy one to live.</p> <p>For insights on nurturing healthy relationships and self-care, consider this <a href="https://blog.loveawake.com/2024/12/11/how-to-build-a-lasting-relationship-beyond-ideal-proposals/" rel="dofollow">guide on building lasting relationships beyond ideal expectations</a>.&nbsp;</p>