Confident women lost men

[wildmountainheather]

All around me I have been noticing this phenomenon. All the women I know are confident and getting more so in middle age, making contacts, managing through sometimes difficult circumstances, generally happy but many of the men are lost. Some of them admittedly entirely through their own making, affairs ending relationships etc, others just seemingly totally ground down by hating their jobs, drinking too much, utterly miserable. Makes me fear for DS future. Anyone else seeing anything like this?

[ridemesideways]

Yes. Obvs more complex than this, but I think much of it stems from how we raise boys.

[theshameofitall]

i think a lot of it stems from men's dysfunctional behaviour being enabled by women in married life/their mothers/partnerships until the women final get fed up, do some work on themselves and leave the men who are completely lost because they have never done work on themselves

[wildmountainheather]

Funnily enough some of what seems to make a man seem functional/dysfunctional comes through in the attitude to housework. Seems so prosaic but the lost men can't seem to keep a house which is possibly why those that can or can keep on top of basic housework seem relatively attractive.

[velourvoyageur]

Maybe it's because women are not raised to be as confident as men. So they come to the independent conclusion that they are strong/interesting/intelligent through their own achievements. Men may realise once they start getting older that they're not as invincible as they've commonly been told they are growing up. Their pride is shaky because it's come from other people, whereas women acquire it through their own efforts, so it's more concrete.
Just a theory with no research to back it up!

My uncle explained his midlife crisis to me like this: you fall into a job in your 20s, you're successful and carried away by your success, then in your 40s you wonder if it's really what you want to be doing for the next 20 years & wonder if you wasted your youth etc. Think I'm missing something out. Btw he hasn't had an affair & he's a devoted husband and father so no need to draw inferences from 'midlife crisis'

[velourvoyageur]

sort of like, women start to realise that they're much more than what's expected of them - men have to come down when their bubble bursts a bit

[suzannecaravaggio]

Contrary to the stereotype of the happy bachelor and the miserable spinster I suspect it is actually the case that woman are more likely to flourish when living independently
whereas men flounder and go feral?

[DrDreReturns]

These sort of men sound like they'd be rubbish partners. If they can't keep a nice home on their own they won't do it if there's a woman around.

[TheNaze73]

I think, it's a very individual thing. Don't think you can tar all men & women with the same brush here. They'll be men & women in this envelope who'd have been twats at 20. I've got a lot of female friends in their 50's doing the Benidorm & Friday night thing giving it the I don't need a bloke thing yet, the moment they meet someone, you don't see them for months & they drop their friends, so clearly the whole miss independent thing was a facade & they were just man hunting, which they readily admit to