the behaviour of most men

[notevensurprised]

I’m in my 50s.

Almost all important and non important men in my life, have disappointed me in catastrophic ways. Some directly treating me badly. Some indirectly by treating people I love badly.

I’m at the stage where the scales have fallen from my eyes. Not just fallen, but disappeared into a black hole. I know this happens for many women in perimenopause. I know we suddenly look up and around at this age and we are absolutely done with tolerating bad behaviour.

Some of my own personal stories relating to bad behaviour from men relate to verbal and physical abuse, financial and economic abuse, infidelity and cheating, inequality within the home in terms of chores and life admin, inequality in the workplace and in salaries.

I am just so done.

I’ve been devastated by the actions of my own DF, my own DH, ex BFs, uncles, cousins, friends.

There was one remaining man who I held in high esteem my entire life. BIL of decades. The brother I never had. I learnt recently he has cheated for years. When my DSIS told me, it was just like the last remaining shred of… I can’t even think of the word…. died within me.

It could not be more shocking in terms of who he appears to be from the outside. And yet I am numb.

The world seems to be run and controlled by lunatic men at the moment and this is just the icing on the cake.

This final revelation means I have zero belief in the goodness of any man any longer. I was holding on to it by a shred anyway.

AIBU to feel that the majority of men are cheating, abusive, lazy, weak willed, insecure, selfish, overpaid, mediocre, disrespectful fools?

At what point does it become you not them?
Yes there are arsehole men and yes you might choose one or even two along the way. But for all the men in your life to be rubbish takes dome doing.
Perhaps look at the root cause of why you are attracting these type of men.

Yes, agreed. But unfortunately you can massively damage someone without raping/murdering/sexually assaulting them. Have a look at the Stately Homes thread. Many, many utterly awful mothers out there and it doesn’t need to be anywhere near as extreme as sexual violence to cause real harm. And, “Sherlock”, want to take a guess as to which is more common??

How, exactly, does one attract a “rubbish” father? Or Uncle or brother? Or any other relative?

I didn’t choose my cousin, my grandfather, my classmates or my maths tutor thank you very much.

So the men who present as decent humans are actually bad men just masking/biding their time?
Thankfully my real life circle is very different.

I’ve got one of those too, so yay me! However, let’s not play the what is worse game in that way, mainly because there are plenty of victims of both sides on this site.

You are totally right. It’s my fault that my BIL who doesn’t even live in the same country
as me, has been shagging young Thai prostitutes for years. That’s a me problem and something I must work on.

Equally, the fact my auntie’s husband shagged his secretary in, oh I don’t know, 1980, when I was about 5, I brought on myself too.

etc etc

Agree

NAMALT

I’m not a victim, thank you. I am however unfortunately well aware of how shitty both men and women can be, and pretending it’s “just” men doesn’t help anyone.

@wheredidallthejobsgo I don’t think it is ‘just men’. I think it is the majority of men (70-80%} and a minority of women (20%)

That’s very sad for you; genuinely. I suspect deep down you know you’re talking shite. It’s maybe 80 percent of the men you know. But the vast majority of men are good decent people as are the vast majority of women.

i do genuinely feel very sorry for you, you’ve clearly spiralled hard and had some bad experiences, I hope life gets better.

NAMALT and “women do it too” doesn’t either.

"something died in me". That struck a chord. 24 Dec 2023 is the day that happened to me. It was a process coming to terms with it because it completely altered my world view.

I think we were all sold a lie over time. That to be in a relationship with a man is the goal of life. Before my generation women were more financially dependent - first on their parents - and then a husband. It has taken time but women are slowly realising that this mythical romantic relationship goal is a mirage and one that is great for men, but holds women back. I truly believe that women are stronger than men mentally and morally, it just takes until you are older to see that.

The one defining thing in my life is I like things to be fair. So my sense of disquiet around men started early. I saw my dad hit my mum. I made myself dumb myself down to fit in with wider family dynamics to allow men to feel superior, I kept quiet at work when I saw lazy male arses get promoted because they were in the pub crowd. The disquiet was always there, that there was an unfairness in the way females were meant to live their lives. Now I am older, I see men at best as an annoyance, at worse as being completely basic and revolting.

Men can play the part of good humans very well, but a lot of masking goes on. A lot of the smug comments about the male members of their family being fabulous humans is the females wanting it to be so, the reality is likely to be very different. Of course there are going to be absolutely wonderful males out there, unselfish, loyal, moral, capable of loving others more than themselves, but they are rare. Women don’t get a free pass, they of course can be horrible and selfish, but in the main we are just bumbling along not causing any harm to anybody - you cannot say the same for men.

Yabu - but I understand it. I have a difficult relationship with my Dad. Pretty much every relationship ive had has come waving red flags but thats because of my past. Its been the same for my dsis. It would be easy to say its because all men are bad but we have both had counselling recently and have realised we have been attracting these men into our lives. These type of men seek out certain types of women, who they can get away with certain behaviour. Not weak women but kind hearted, forgiving women with certain blindspots due to past history. By working on myself I am.now better able to see toxic traits but it is hard. The men that are good for me are a bit boring at times - im.drawn to excitement which also brings danger and pain, but its hard to break lifelong habits.

So I understand how its possible to feel how you do, but you are wrong. There are good men in the world but, and I say this gently, yabu

But it's not "most men". You may have been unlucky, OP, but my experience is nothing like yours, and I am a similar age. Pretty much all the men in my life are decent people.
It's 'some men".... and let's not forget that "some women" behave badly too.
You can't stereotype 50% of the population just because of your experience with a very small 'sample group'.

It’s not just the men in ‘my life’. For example, let’s randomly take the husbands of my three school parent acquaintances. One won’t let her have any access to funds or even know what he earns and controls all money. One is an alcoholic who now they’ve split won’t pay CMS despite earning £200K and is hiding assets. One spends every weekend fishing leaving her to deal with the kids alone. It’s not just ‘me’ being unlucky. Everywhere I look at other people - it’s the men in THEIR lives too.

💯 this. I work with lots of really good men and because of the nature of my job there are plenty of them. I’m incredibly relieved by that because the men in my own life are pretty shit in extreme ways from CSA to deeply misogynistic cover ups of same.

I have come to the conclusion that men have a serious issue to have to start addressing within their sex, the scale of abuse of women and children is absolutely extreme and it stems hugely from them, but the women around them do enable their behaviours so I’ve definitely recalibrated my opinions on people and the capacity of normal everyday people to do really bad things.

I do think women are socialised and inherently biologically need to operate more cohesively and cooperatively as a survival mechanism so their behaviour is nowhere near at the level of male abusive behaviour but they have the capacity for psychological warfare which can be extremely harmful.

Well, not in my life. You have your anecdotal view, that's fine, but I can also have mine.

"AIBU to feel that the majority of men are cheating, abusive, lazy, weak willed, insecure, selfish, overpaid, mediocre, disrespectful fools?"
Your post is one of the most unreasonable AIBU I have ever read tbh. My sons are none of these things. However, one has just split with his girlfriend who is all of these things apart from being overpaid. She has absolutely broken him. Works both ways.

Peoplr are over focusing on defending this by insinuating women are to blame by attracting the wrong sort of men. The men I’ve been romantically linked to are only a tiny percentage of the men I am talking about here. I’m not remotely concerned that I attracted the wrong men. It’s not me. It’s them and the society we all live in that encourages systemic male privilege, advantage and bad behaviour. It’s a mistake to over focus on the men we sleep with. I’m talking about all the men we see and interact and know about around us in every context.

You can’t say that and have no way of knowing that. The only way in which you know your sons is though the very narrow lens of being their mother. My ex’s mother thinks her son is wonderful. To this day she has no idea he visits prostitutes. Or a myriad of other terrible things he is. Men don’t go around showing their bad sides to their mothers.

So these are people you only know from a distance meaning that if you’re surveying every man you know exists then the scope
is much broader and if you saw it from a neutral place you’d see that it’s not actually the majority of men that behave like that
i think what you’re experiencing is a combination of ‘is you look for it you’ll find it’, your predisposition to noticing this behaviour based on past experiences by the sounds of it and also your pattern of relating means that unless you do lots of work to understand and unpick your past and your behaviours we get drawn to familiar types of people and way of relating to them

You’ve nailed it. My thoughts exactly.

Jesus wept. Is it any wonder men get away with so much bad behaviour. I don’t go looking for anything. The crime stats speak for themselves. The number of men in positions of power speak for themselves. The numbers can’t be disputed.