I have felt objectified by men. At the time, I didn’t necessarily recognize it as objectification. But now that I’m older, I realize that’s exactly what they were doing. It wasn’t necessarily sexual objectification—not overtly, anyway. I’ve never felt expressly objectified in a sexual manner by someone I know. But objectification of women can come in a much more subtle form, too; a form that is much more hidden and much more ingrained, to the point that most men don’t recognize they’re doing it. Sometimes, the woman may not label it as such, either. But it’s still reducing a woman to an object to please a man, even if only emotionally.

This objectification happens when a man projects all of the things he wants in a woman onto her. He spends time “getting to know her,” but perhaps he takes the details of the woman’s life and personality, and simply fills in the missing parts of the woman in his head, just enough to make her real. He’s not truly seeing this woman for who she is, simply seeing all the good parts of her and ignoring anything that doesn’t fit in with his ideal. Because he’s spent so much time thinking about his ideal woman, the details of that woman are subconsciously merged with those of the real woman in front of him.

By no means are the men who do this “bad men.” They can be very decent men with no ill-will. And most of the time, this man is probably very sincere and genuine, and may even treat the woman very well. That’s why this form of objectification is so sinister; it’s very hard to spot. It’s easy to label a man as a womanizer if he only thinks of women as objects of sexual pleasure. But it’s almost impossible to recognize when a man is seeing you as a completely different person because he’s superimposed his dream woman onto you. And this is objectification because since he’s seeing you as his “ideal” woman, he’s not truly invested in you as a person, and is instead glazing past the realities of who you are so that he can more easily feel emotionally fulfilled.

I have lived this reality more than once in relationships. I have felt that, although the man thought that he “knew” me, he actually didn’t at all. It’s not that he didn’t try, but it’s that he didn’t truly listen and develop an image of me as a full person. Sometimes his vision of me would shine through in something he said, and it would make me feel almost dehumanized because this person who I had committed so much of my time and energy and emotions to didn’t even truly know me, and instead was willing me to be some ideal version of myself. That who I truly am wasn’t “good enough.” Instead of truly appreciating who I am, his expectations were way too high to live up to. No woman can live up to a man’s “dream woman” that lives in his head.

In no way am I saying all men do this. And I’m not saying that the men who do this do it all the time, or even that they mean to do it. I don’t believe that they have any bad intent, or wish to hurt women. But it’s a subtle way of making the woman less than who she is—she is only “allowed” to have good parts of herself, because any raw and unpolished parts of her don’t fit with their ideal. Her true self is not “good enough” to compete with the image the man has in his head, and it can truly make her feel inferior and insecure if this thinking ever rears its head in the relationship.

Don’t get me wrong: women do this to men, too. Any time someone allows himself or herself to only get to know someone at a surface level and “fill in the gaps” with their own ideas, they are guilty of objectifying someone for their own emotional pleasure. It is not, by any means, a solely man-to-woman issue. I also don’t want to come across as demonizing men and acting as if women are victims. Neither is true; however, my point in this article is that objectification of women by no means only happens in a sexual context. And, as a woman, I have felt objectified for a man’s emotional fulfillment so that he didn’t have to go through the difficult, tiresome work it takes to truly get to know a person’s soul. So please, allow your vision of someone to be shaped only by their real personalities and characteristics and flaws and quirks, and fight against the reflex to fill in the gaps yourself. Intentionally try to appreciate people for every detail of who they truly are—dirt and scars and all.