Pearl Jam - Better Man Lyrics Meaning

May 2024 · 3 minute read
anonymous

click a star to vote

Jan 23rd 2021 !⃝

It's funny how this song means so many different things to people and that most think it's about an abusive relationship. It likely is just that.

However, when I listen to it, I think of myself as a husband. After 35 year's my wife left me. Not because abuse or anything like that, she told me that I was a good man, husband, father and son. That it was not about me, she wanted to go her own way, without me.

I think she felt trapped by the fact we took a vow together and even though she didn't love me anymore, she couldn't leave because of that vow and that we were really all we knew. I lives were always together.

She felt trapped by a love she outgrew. Trapped by a man who still loved her and was a good man. I'm glad she finally choose to leave because her resentment toward me became abusive to me. The opposite of what 99% of people hear when they listen to this song.

It is very hard to be told you are a good man but I am leaving anyway. It never will make sense to me.

When I listen to it, I hear the women who wants out, and think if I were only a better man she might not have choose to throw me away.

I was the one who could not leave and was home waiting, wondering.

I have listened to it hundreds of times, to help me accept the loss. I know one thing that really brings it home to me, if I was not good enough I would want her to leave. And she did. I respect her choice, but I was left broken and abandoned and will always wonder why I was not a good enough man.

Another odd thing is my Mom loved my Dad and when he passed she would say "why should I be sad, I was married to the best man in the world for 63 years, I should be grateful."

I did everything he taught me, he was was a good man, I thought life for me would end like that for me. Leaving behind a wife who always thought I was the best man.

The thing that is funny is that in the context of my parents, I thought my Mom was always happpy because she could not have found a better man, because she found the best one for her.

Way back, then I would listen and think the same thing, there was no better man than my Dad. I would song along and think of that....

As much as her leaving me hurt, I would listen to it over and over knowing I would not want my wife to stay if she felt trapped. She did the right thing.

I'd rather live with the pain than the thought of her feeling trapped with me.

I wish her the best, and I try to forget all the great memories. They just hurt to much. Had I been the abusive man in the song I would understand her leaving.
Having been by her own account a good man has left me to always wonder what it was that changed the way she felt about me. Mabye she found a better man. I never asked.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7rcXRopqipqSav7G%2BxK2YraGfo8Bvr86mZqmdkae5brbApmabnaSpsrN5zJql