The Quiet Refusals That Shape Love
On Literature, Misogyny, and Why Generosity Matters in Love
A few months ago, a close friend gave me Claire Keegan’s So Late in the Day for my birthday - a quiet, haunting book that lingers long after you close it, making you look again at the smallest gestures in a relationship.
The story follows Cathal as his thoughts drift toward a relationship he could have built a life around, had he acted differently. Keegan’s focus isn’t on the decision to marry, but everything that surrounds it: the pauses, the silences, the small cruelties, the almost invisible power plays that accumulate between two people who once only wanted to love each other.
She brings to the surface the shadows of intimacy: the quiet expectations, the inherited beliefs, the habits both partners carry with them, and everything that remains unspoken about our fears of vulnerability and commitment.
The Weight of the Unsaid
What strikes me most is Keegan’s attention to what’s unsaid - the withheld words, the quiet bitterness between men and women who might once have imagined love but ended up negotiating power instead. She shows what happens when a man confuses control for commitment, and when a woman senses that something is deeply off in what’s being offered.
At its core, So Late in the Day is a book about misogyny: not its brutal, visible forms, but the subtle, everyday ways it shapes how men and women relate, the behaviors - or the absence of certain behaviors - that are hard to spot but can serve as immense red flags.
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“It’s Simply About Not Giving”
“‘Do you know you’ve never even thanked me for one dinner I have made here, or bought any groceries - or made even one breakfast for me?’
‘Did I not order your dinner tonight and pay for it? Did I not buy all those cherries for your fancy tart? And haven’t I helped you here all day, moving all your stuff?’
‘Did you help - or just watch?’ she asked. ‘And that night you bought the cherries at Lidl, you told me they cost more than six euros.’
‘So?’
‘You know what is at the heart of misogyny? When it comes down to it?’
‘So I’m a misogynist now?’
‘It’s simply about not giving,’ she said. ‘Whether it’s believing you should not give us the vote or not give help with the dishes — it’s all clitched onto the same wagon.’
‘Hitched,’ Cathal said.
‘What?’
‘It’s not “clitched,”’ he said. ‘It’s “hitched.”’
‘You see?’ she said. ‘Isn’t this just more of it? You knew exactly what I meant — but you cannot even give me this much.’”1
That line - it’s simply about not giving - stayed with me, because misogyny, in its most ordinary form, is precisely that: a refusal to offer time, care, acknowledgment, or help. A belief that giving diminishes you.
The smallest dismissals, the quiet resentments, the constant corrections - “it’s not clitched, it’s hitched” - are not neutral gestures. These are ways of asserting power by withholding it.
When Fiction Meets Reality
That refusal isn’t limited to fiction. Every woman I know carries stories of not being believed, not being heard, not being allowed to take up space. And sometimes, what begins as emotional withholding grows into outright violence.
To bring this closer to home - my home - in Romania today, this is painfully real.
2025 has been a brutal year for women. We are living through a moment shaped by rising right-wing extremism and aggressive populism, where public discourse has become openly hostile to women. Professors have abused their students; unlicensed therapists, their clients; priests, the women who trusted them. Husbands or ex-partners killed the mother of their children.
And the justice system - instead of offering protection - was busy protecting its own privileges. Police officers hid their own - or their fellows’ - incompetence and blamed the victims rather than the offenders.
Fifty-one women have been killed by men this year, most of them by partners.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Back in September, when I first started researching for this article, the number was 46. Another 43 survived attempted murders.
On average, a man tried to kill a woman every three days2.
This is why we had to fight for the word femicide to enter our laws.
These numbers are unbearable, but they represent only the visible edge of something deeper: the quiet normalization of disrespect — the everyday ways we diminish, interrupt, and invalidate women long before violence enters the room.
What Love Should (and Shouldn’t) Look Like
The work ahead isn’t only about changing laws, though that matters deeply. It’s about unlearning the belief that withholding keeps us safe. Real strength lies in generosity - not the sentimental kind, but the kind that demands attention, patience, and accountability. The kind that refuses to look away.
As I write this, I know I’m surrounded by men who contradict the story of emotional repression - my partner, my father, friends who are big enough, brave enough, to give affection and space. I grew up with role models who taught me that strength has nothing to do with domination: my father showed me that resilience can be quiet and steady, and my partner reminds me every day that hard work, discipline, and care are the truest forms of strength.
These are the kind of lessons I hope to pass on to my son: to be secure enough to give, and to measure his worth by how he cares, not how he dominates. In an era where the Tate brothers have a cult following and where movies like Adolescence hold up a mirror to all of us, we have to remember that the opposite of misogyny might not be equality - it might simply be generosity.
My friend - one of the most generous people I know - gave me So Late in the Day as an invaluable reminder of what love shouldn’t look like. She invited me to notice - to pay attention to tone, to small gestures, to what’s withheld and what’s given. It was one of the countless ways she reminded me that love, at its best, is expansive. That sometimes the difference between love and control lies in something as simple - and as radical - as the decision to give.
And with the risk of sounding like John Lennon - nothing wrong with that; he did speak to millions - I’d like to imagine a world where men and women meet each other with generosity, where respect replaces fear, and where listening, believing, and showing up become quiet acts of resistance. It starts with us.
If this resonated, share it — a small act of generosity that helps it find others. Generosity spreads.
So Late in the Day, Claire Keegan, ed. Faber, pp. 34-35.
Snoop.ro did a map keeping track of the number of deaths: http://snoop.ro/harta-femicid#Saptesprezece
"I’d like to imagine a world where men and women meet each other with generosity, where respect replaces fear, and where listening, believing, and showing up become quiet acts of resistance. It starts with us". So beautiful wish.