I saw a post on Facebook that said: "Every woman wants freedom, not responsibility. They cry about toxic men. But never ask why good men left."

A woman asked: "Tell me what makes a good man without also describing a woman. I challenge you."

My reply was:

"A good man for one person may not be a good man for another.. for me, I start with an individual that is fair. Can give and can accept. Can sit with the feminine and accept it. Has a directed masculine force. Presence. Clarity. The capacity to hold something. The willingness to act without needing permission first. The ability to learn and adapt. That is a good man."

But that was my view.. It did not mean that it was the right view.

When someone says "good man" they almost always mean "good man for me." Wired to receive what I need. Calibrated to my particular hunger.

Which means "good man" is often not a description of him at all. It's a description of the gap she's trying to fill.

The Eve-type who needs security will call the steady provider a good man. The Amazon who needs an equal will call that same man suffocating. The Hetaira needs presence and attention. The Medial needs someone who won't flinch at depth. Same man. Four completely different verdicts.

This is why the original post collapses under its own weight. "Good men left" assumes there's a universal standard. There isn't. There's only fit. And fit requires two people who actually know what they are and what they need — which most people don't, because that's the work most people haven't done.

The man who left may have been exactly what someone else needed. The woman crying "toxic" may have been projecting a father wound onto a perfectly functional man. Or not. We don't know from the outside.

What we do know: the complaint is always loudest when the projection breaks. When the man stops being what she needed him to be in her head. That's not him failing. That's the story failing.

And that's where it gets genuinely uncomfortable. Because it means two people can be perfectly matched at one stage and completely wrong for each other a decade later. Not because anyone failed. Because they both grew. Or only one did.

Or they grew in different directions.

The 20-year-old woman who needs the steady anchor gets exactly that. Twenty years later she's outgrown the anchor and calls it a cage. The man who was genuinely good for her at 20 didn't change. She did. And now the verdict changes with her.

Or the reverse. The man who wasn't ready at 25 does the work, goes through the fire, comes out the other side with actual presence and clarity. But the woman beside him built her life around who he was before. Now he's a stranger in the house. The growth itself becomes the disruption.

This is what makes lifelong partnership genuinely hard. It's not finding the right person. It's two people managing to grow in ways that keep generating fit. That's rare. And mostly it's luck as much as intention.

The Jungian read on this is precise: individuation doesn't pause for the relationship. The psyche keeps moving. And if one person is moving and the other isn't, or they're moving toward incompatible things, the relationship becomes the container that has to stretch or break.

Most containers break.

Not because of toxicity. Not because anyone is a villain. Because growth is not a joint project. It's a solitary one that sometimes finds company for a while.