Why do women have no standards?

[deeter]

Yes, men and their actions are the fundamental problem. I'm not shifting blame. But why are so many women choosing abusive men that are red flags from the get go? I understand the practicalities of leaving a toxic, enmeshed situation is not easy. What can we teach our daughters to prevent this from reoccurring? Why are so many women afraid of being single?

So true. I agree that teen girls are given the "you need a career" mantra, but that schools are really poor generally when it comes to action rather than words, with poor career advice, poor subject options, not encouraging girls to do Maths and sciences and tech subjects etc. The words and the actions simply don't match! Even as young as primary schools, you get the message of "you can do anything you want to be", but it's empty words and when the reality sets in mid teens, that's when you get the disengagement with school and learning etc.

To people saying I'm victim blaming - to me, men will always be violent. It's in their nature. Yes we as a society should work towards eliminating male violence. But we should also arm women with the tools to avoid this violence. It's really not an either/or.

I don't think you're being unreasonable to ask this, I think it would be unreasonable to assume that women should do better without support or education but I don't think you're saying that.
As someone who has been "that woman" and is recovering here is what my observations are:

Many women are this way because of past trauma. They're more likely to fall for this if for example their own mother was with a controlling spouse as mine was. And my mother herself saw her mother live with the same...and her mother took her own life as a result of it. So you can see the generational "this is normal" happening. We seek what is comfortable to us, even if comfortable = painful.

Many women have been told that boys will be boys or "men are just like that" and to be honest men have had enormous privilege and some of them don't react well now that the playing field between the genders is being levelled and women can work/be successful.

Seeing red flags isn't easy if you're not familiar with them. If you weren't aware that people sucked you in via love bombing then slowly started to coercively control you then you would (as I did) spend your life believing that you were the issue because you are effectively brain washed and told you're crazy/there's something wrong with you.

Luckily social media and mainstream psychology is educating people about coercive control/narcissistic abuse/negging/love bombing and what seemingly innocuous red flags can look like and lead to which means people are better informed.

I think the curriculum should cover some aspect of this for sure but it doesn't.

I think people should be responsible for resolving their own trauma once they know it's there.

I think anyone shaming people who have gone through this with "why didn't you just leave" has no idea how malevolent and confusing these relationships are and should get educated on it - which to be fair there is no substitute for actually living it - i know because i said the same thing, then I went through it and now I have a completely different mindset and understanding of it.

Women do have standards. Usually the exact standards they grew up with.

Which is why my friend is with a stingy bloke who doesn't cook, and why I'm with a frugal nerdy man who is very kind and generous. I l a happy to say that I basically married my dad in many ways. And thank fuck for that.

I believe lots of young girls have very low self esteem. For lots of reasons. The media, societies projection of what a desirable woman looks like, parents particularly fathers not instilling in young girls that they are awesome and to know their worth. Some women, despite all of that come to know their worth. Some do, but not until later in life. And it's at that age in life when some women get frustrated with younger women, because they can see the mistakes they are making, but they've perhaps forgotten those feelings of insecurity.

Many parents can't even spot their own toxic relationships and their children who witness them, can grow up thinking it's normal.

I don't know what the solution is really.

Yes, we should all teach our kids to be decent, but clearly not all people grow up to be decent human beings.

So it's very much about being taught to spot red flags by those who can actually see them.

They love bomb you back in.

As a society we tend to excuse/deny/accept poor behaviour from boys/men while expecting girls to be kind/accomodating/polite etc. It's ingrained practically from birth and these messages continue throughout both girls' and boys' lives and can become very entrenched.

The work needs to happen to educate BOTH boys and girls about these attitudes and behaviours in order to make change happen.

I've lost count of the number of times on here or in real life I've heard a woman voicing an issue about her partner or DH and being told that the poor behaviour is at least not as bad as x or y.

And of course, when you try to challenge these stereotypes and attitudes, 9/10 you're labeled as a psycho feminist or some such thing.

I think women also need to give up confusing a 'brilliant dad', with a dad who loves his kids.

Brilliant dads treat their kid's mothers with kindness and respect, not selfishness, laziness and nastiness.

*Desperation (worse now most people cannot afford life on a single income).

*Materialism and the desperate need to keep up with the Joneses- feeds into number 1.

*Low self-esteem.

*Singleness is still treated like a disease - fuels desperation again.

*Upbringing skews your red-flag radar.

*Hypergamy teaches us to ignore the qualities of the man and focus on his ability to provide / encourages the acceptance of shitty behaviour- most threads here are ‘I can’t leave because he earns 10 times what I do and I could never afford the lifestyle he offers the children…

*Many people around you are likely in shut relationships too, so ignore or encourage you to stay - misery likes company.

*We still have different handbooks on raising girls vs boys, which encourages different sets of behaviours.

• We are teaching women to have careers and education, but still no training on what is acceptable behaviour.

*We as women have an issue with being accountable for our own choices. We may not always be responsible for what we attract, but by God we are responsible for what we continue to entertain.

*Abusers do not start on date 1, but over time they exhibit some behaviours that should have us running for the hills. unless they are truly psycho, they’re not that great at hiding; we just don’t want to see/believe.

*Yes, there is victim blaming, but some shit you just have to save yourself from; so…

Your life experience has led you to believe all men are dangerous and all women must learn to avoid that danger.

But not all men are dangerous and abusive. Research should be focused on what makes that difference. And that research will need to be enormous and far reaching. From the effects of poverty, to socialisation, to media, to pornography, to biology, to drugs and alcohol etc.

@GingerIsBest As a society we tend to excuse/deny/accept poor behaviour from boys/men

100%. I'm actually a twin and the double standards I grew up with were appalling. My brother was allowed to attend overnight house parties, date around etc. Whilst I had strict curfews. I remember once my dad ringing me almost hysterically as an 18yo cause I had decided to have dinner last minute with some old school friends I had run into. He even rang on of my friend's parents to check on me. My brother came home at 2am that night. Still infuriates me.

YANBU and not victim blaming!

Of course some women (and men) are in abusive relationships and it’s not their fault that they stay.

But most of the time they choose to stay and be treated like it, simply because they don’t want to be alone.

If I went and ran around the motorway, I cannot blame the cars for hitting me when I keep putting myself in that situation.

I don’t know many women who would be single and live alone.

If their relationship ends then they get straight on the dating sites and try and find someone else.

The thought of being alone to some women, is worse than being in a shit relationship.

It is of course low self esteem but I also think it comes from generations of women not wanting to be alone.

I remember my mum lying in a hospital bed because my dad had beaten her so bad and my grandma came in and was panicking saying she needed to ring him and apologise incase he finds someone else.
In my grandmas mind, it was better to be in a violent relationship than single.

My mum has never been single for more than a few weeks and the entire time she’s desperately trying to find another man.

I’m the opposite because of what I grew up with and I tell my DD that she must live alone and learn how to be alone so she doesn’t end up relying off a man.

Well plenty of women have very high standards.
I think there are many reasons why someone gets together with a bad man (or woman). Could be low self-esteem, a desperate need to be loved, focusing on the good characteristics rather than the bad (someone might be a dick but also be funny and popular so attractive in that sense), making excuses for someone's bad behaviours ("Oh well he had a horrible childhood" etc), believing that you can change/fix someone by loving them.
Don't underestimate the power of hormones! I think a lot of the time there can be intense sexual chemistry between people at the beginning. It's like a temporary madness which can blind you of their faults. Once that wears of you see them for who they really are.

I have 4 friends who think their husbands are useless but want to have several kids with the same dad, so are putting up with it. They’re right - the men are useless and always were, but kids was the priority for the women.

There’s no abuse, the men are ‘just’ rubbish partners, but I judge both parties if I’m honest because it just means kids growing up seeing men as useless and that being normalised.

I grew up in an abusive household and have been single my entire adult life. It’s expensive and sometimes lonely but that’s life. Ultimately too many people are having kids when they’re incapable of raising them with good expectations and boundaries, and school can’t correct that. As long as people can just have kids this will be a problem.

Is it low standards, or just the wrong standards? The dating culture (ugh) these days has such a hard focus on looks and economic prospects that long-term compatibility takes is almost irrelevant, and by the time these young women have figured out that they were applying the wrong criteria for their requirements...they either feel it's too late to correct the mistake and end up stuck with assholes, or single (often with children) and swearing that all men are low-life bastards

True. The only thing I’d add is that it works both ways. Many people are now expecting a perfect partner (and they’d better stay that way for X decades in terms of looks, earning power, personality) rather than realising that a relationship needs to be built. Of course, if you’re getting together with a selfish/superficial person whose only positive traits are their looks and/or salary, then good luck with that!

The people raising these women failed, basically, and maybe they were failed themselves, and on and on.

OP you are not coming across well at all. You sound like and ex smoker pouring scorn on someone who hasn’t been able to give up smoking or a person who’s managed to lose 5 stone and looks down at those who have not

Personality, drive, self awareness, mental health, fears alongside life experiences all shape us and no two journeys are the same.

if you really want to know why, listen to what people are telling you.

Men don't start out being abusive on the first date, they gradually get the woman to become emotionally/financially dependent and then the control can start.

My dad was the most charming man you could every hope to meet but once my parents had a home together the violence started but he'd emotionally controlling long before, self esteem, confidence, isolation, violence.... my mum had no where to go, she was ashamed, had lost friends but in the end she told her parents who took us all in.... not every woman has this option.

I think some posters on here haven't a clue including the OP.

Instead of putting the blame on women, maybe ask why we are raising (some) boys to be such cunts in the first place.

I don't really like your vibe op. It feels like you are looking down on women that you see as not being as strong as you? I had a horrifically emotionally abusive childhood, I was never loved, never hugged, never anything. It's human nature to want to feel loved. I met dh at 17 and fortunately for me he wasn't a wrong 'un but I can't say for sure that I would have fled if he was. It felt so lovely to be loved by dh, to be loved by someone for the first time in my life. Maybe I would have put up with shit too to feel that feeling, I don't know.

As I have grown I have finally gotten some self-belief and confidence but it wasn't my fault that I didn't have that when I was young, I was a product of abuse, it changes your brain to be told that you are shit at everything, to grow up without love. If you managed to be a self-assured young woman having gone through that, genuinely good for you but don't look down on the people who believed they were what their parents showed them they were. For me it is still there in the back of mind, I don't think it will ever fully leave me no matter what the rational side of my brain says.

@Unithorn So? OP hasn't said that it doesn't.

OPs post is all about woman's standards. Surely people need better standards, every person who accepts these relationships from the get go, rather than just women who accept them. Anyways.

I'm so sorry to read about your father's behaviour OP. How awful for a grown man to treat his child in such a way.

What you say really resonates with me. I left an engagement at the age of 28, to the consternation of my aunts, because I knew deep down it wasn't the right relationship for me and the thought of bringing children into it was something I instinctively recoiled from. I too have always felt it is better to be single than with the wrong person, and I too was really particular about who I let in because my own father was absent and incapable. I think the fact my father wasn't around meant I wasn't afraid of being alone - it wasn't my ideal scenario, but it wasn't the end of the world either. I guess it depends on how different people react to absence or trauma, and also on the complications of life. If you are without resources or a job or the ability to earn much money, and have a couple of young children in tow, walking away can take on a very different complexion.

I was lucky, in that I ended up meeting the love of my life, and we have one DC with one on the way. For me, my DH is the best of men and I have a huge amount of respect and admiration for him. With my ex, I felt like I was trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. With the benefit of hindsight, it was never going to be the relationship I wanted, and I shudder to think how things would have been had we had children. It would have been such a sad home environment for them, because of the fact their parents were fundamentally incompatible.

You are right to listen to your instincts. The most important decision a woman makes (if she wants to have children) is who she has them with, and if she wants to have a partner, who that person is. Wishing you the best of luck.

Absolutely agree - it's the definition of "perfect" that seems to be skewed (at least to my married-for-23-years eyes). I do keep an eye on the dating scene (articles/videos/etc) - not because I ever want to be there again, but purely because I think it's good to keep up with what younger people feel is important in life in order to relate to younger generations.

The heavy emphasis for women choosing guys appears to be on looks and economic prospects, driven by dating sites where women are in the driving seat, but the massive assumption is that the guys they pick will remain the same in the ways they like and automatically change the things they don't, and that's how relationships work. There's absolutely no acknowledgement of the fact that relationships are incomprehensibly daft and unrealistic to begin with, difficult in the middle and eventually become rock-solid when you've grown through sharing important parts of your life together.

@Topsyturvy33 You sound like and ex smoker pouring scorn on someone who hasn’t been able to give up smoking or a person who’s managed to lose 5 stone and looks down at those who have not.

Think you are projecting slightly.

I've shared my experiences cause I'm genuinely curious why I have gone to one extreme (i.e not accepting any bad behaviour from partners) and others growing up under very similar conditions have replicated their own terrible upbringings. Men who shout repulse me and assume this would be the case for other DV survivors.

I was hoping that this thread could discuss practical ways to equip girls against male abuse.

Guess it's much easier to tear me down.

I'm not looking down on women at all. That's extremely unfair.

Many posts have actually been eye opening in their explanations.