To ask are all men selfish?

[Gre8scott]

I notice a trend in my friends stories of the men in their lifes and how most of then are selfish. Even if they are family men and they dont spend all day in the pub (per covid 19)
They still do things like make everyone go in the garden cos they want to be outside.
Golf on a Saturday cos they've been working all week although wife had been with baby
Pushed themselves at work will wife has stepped back to have family
Just have a bath even if family need something
Are all men like that

Yes he has a hobby - too outing to say what - but it involves a bike but he always puts us first.

Hunting people on mountain bike!

My husband isn't selfish. I've had exes who were, which is why they are exes and my husband is my husband.

Gre8scott

This is what I love about mumsnet ........ arseholes

this

My husband can be a selfish prick. So can I.

99% of the time we both try to consider other people (not just our spouse) and act in the best possible way. 1% of time were selfish dicks. We’re human and have flaws. In some relationships, one side is more selfish than other. Sometimes that’s a man (assuming a heterosexual relationship), sometimes that’s a woman.

What are you trying to accomplish with this thread op?

The OP already answered this at 18:33:

"Ita so easy to start an arguement on here"

No, they aren't.

The fact mine is, and too many man I know are doesn't make me say they are, because it is a generalisation.

Part of the problem is that people like to focus on complaining about bad things but don't think to mention or count their blessings about the good things.

For example: the stories I could tell you about my MIL.... are not ones that most people would be interested in hearing, because she's a lovely, normal, kind person - like the vast majority of MILs and other people in general.

"Freddie Starr ate my hamster!!!" is a big sensational headline that everybody wants to read and remembers forever; "Freddie Starr fed my hamster and gave it a run out whilst he changed its bedding before making us all a lovely lasagne and doing our hoovering" not so much.

Yes the men in my life are selfish.

DH wants me to pay for groceries from my salary not joint account because he says he doesn’t eat my cooking.

He bought his family Christmas presents but nothing for me.

And yet I’m in expected to be a great housewife and work full time.

I need to leave him.

My brother is refusing to buy groceries for my mum even though he lives with her and she is self-isolating. So I went out whilst sick to buy food.

Ex was a dick who used women for narcissistic supply until he married a woman 9 years younger than him who fit his criteria.

I’m angry at years wasted on selfish men and looking forward to being single and NC with idiot family members.

I needed to get that off my chest, thanks OP!

Mine is definitely not selfish.
He risked his life to donate half of his liver to our son and he is currently running the whole house and wfh while me and our youngest are isolated in a single room with suspected coronavirus.

You and your circle just made remarkably unfortunate choices, OP. (Coincidence?)

Next time, don’t just grab a random in a nightclub like you were playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey.

HTH.

Society (or people!) have different expectations of men and women. We absorb those expectations to a greater or lesser extent, or sometimes we rebel against them. My DH got huge amounts of praise from acquaintances for taking our children on outings that I had done dozens of times without comment. Whenever I've heard people pass comment on the home of a hetero couple, it is never a reflection on the man! I feel guilt if I ever need to have my needs met and it impacts on the rest of the family, he doesn't have that. Society condones and rewards men for selfish behaviour / putting themselves first. It isn't encouraged in girls.
Years back I looked at some linguistics research. On a conversation between 1 man and 1 woman, the woman was perceived to be deminating the conversation if she spoke for as much as a third of the conversation. It isn't a bias people held deliberately or conciously.
In teaching studies, boys get a lot more teacher attention than girls. Those children assume that is the way that the world is meant to be. It's hard to break the cycle.

Good post @Love51. I agree.

Sadly the ‘HTH’ brigade won’t engage brain.

Wow that's some chip you have on your shoulder there. You are suffering from confirmation bias I'm afraid. You've known selfish men, your friends have known them too, therefore all men are selfish. I've known many selfish women, as have friends and family. Does that mean that all women are selfish? Of course not. You need to grow up.

@Gre8scott Yeah no one here thinks that you have a man. Maybe if you did, you wouldn't be so unbelievably bitter.

None of that is untrue, @Love51, but it is perfectly possible to become aware of this kind of gendered conditioning and fight it. That’s one of the things feminism has been pointing out for generations.

I grew up with a mother who fed the men and boys first and most, who automatically defers to men, who married the first man who asked her and never said ‘Actually, no. I’m not fine with living with and acting as a skivvy for your father and uncles the second we get back from honeymoon’. She’s never made a decision in her life, had a job after marriage, her own money or a bank account, owned any property, or had any friendships.

Needless to say I, and my sisters made very different choices. It’s possible to change your own conditioning.

@MonkeyDishwasher

@Gre8scott Yeah no one here thinks that you have a man. Maybe if you did, you wouldn't be so unbelievably bitter.

‘Have a man’? What are you, a surrendered wife?

Excellent post @Love51

On paper exdh wasn’t selfish, he changed nappies, cooked meals, washed clothes. Years ago I’d have been on this thread making all the NAMALT excuses.

The mental load however was all on me. I have yet to meet a couple where it isn’t the mother who ends up in that role whether she works or not. It wasn’t until things got really tough that I could see how selfish he was. He still cooked and cleaned, but anything to do with the children beyond the physical keeping them fed and in clean clothes he couldn’t do. Same with pets as well (but without the clean clothes stuff).

It took a long time to realise how selfish he was being, because like so many women I’ve been conditioned to see a man’s efforts as amazing for really quite mediocre behaviour.

Through several difficult years he retained his expensive hobby, and many times prioritised it over his family. His life remained pretty much the same whilst I was driven to near breakdown.

Now I can see it I can’t unsee it, and I recognise similar patterns in most couples I meet.

In my experience I think you're right OP. However my experience clearly isn't universal so I have to believe these mythical unselfish men are out there!

@Highonpotandused I have literally not one clue what you are rabitting on about?! Also the OP used the phrase, 'have a man', I was quoting... can you not read like?

@AngstyAnnie Mythical indeed. It really saddens me, that just because of personal bad experiences, that you are willing to write off an entire gender. I feel sorry for you actually, because it is really rather a pathetic attitude.

@MonkeyDishwasher

So you think your comment ‘Yeah no one here thinks that you have a man. Maybe if you did, you wouldn't be so unbelievably bitter’ is acceptable? Op asked a reasonable question and you were nasty in response.

@Highonpotandused Yes I do think it was a reasonable comment and no her question was not reasonable. She deserved a 'nasty' response for asking such an infantile and pathetic question. She was clearly just trying to be provocative. Just because you've known bad men, doesn't mean that all men are bad. I mean I've met you now, and I still don't think that all women are hateful and bitter.