"I never said that," he said softly. I closed my eyes. He would do this sometimes, insist that he hadn't said words I was sure I'd heard, and it always made me feel like I had gone insane. I knew he'd said it. I'd even responded with, "You can't mean that," and then he'd repeated it. But I felt so tired. It had been hard enough to start the conversation. Hard enough to walk around the streets crying for hours. Maybe I really did misunderstand him somehow; I've been over those moments in my head a million times, and I don't know anymore. Maybe I misunderstood. Or maybe he was falling into a classic pattern of emotional abusers. Maybe he insisted that I was hallucinating in order to confuse me out of protesting: abusers do these things because they work. What I do know for sure is that when he halted the conversation with a flat denial, I couldn't bring myself to even try to talk about it again. Couldn't bring myself to resume the conversation. But I also couldn't bring myself to break up with someone I loved so much. We talked about other things instead. And, of course, nothing about our sex life changed at all. When my best friend called me the next day to check in, I said, "Well, he says that he didn't say what I thought he did.” Her silence echoed with disbelief. "Maybe I just... didn't understand what he actually meant," I said, but my words sounded weak even to my own ears. "Maybe," she said doubtfully, but she didn't press the issue. Even after that fight, I continued dating that man for a long time. I look back now and I can't imagine how I did it. ok V. Men's Perspective The gendered societal pressures that affect men are worth discussing, and worth analyzing, and I often do just that. There is undeniable pressure on men to "perform" sexually, for example. I try to have sympathy for men who feel this pressure -- but it is difficult sometimes, because its major effect on my life has been to silence me. To make me feel as though I couldn't ask for anything sexu