Are men and women growing apart generally?

[Lifeisntbad]

Just had a chat with a friend about this. My male and female acquaintances sometimes (with some exceptions) seem so different in outlook that I wonder about this. Obviously they are different from each other as well.
In my immediate circle of 40 /50 somethings the women are generally resourceful independent sociable and open. Many (not all) of the men are depressed, with no enthusiasm, slightly isolated and in some cases a little bitter.
While in one way gender differences seem to be blurring which can only be a good thing, in other ways men and women seem increasingly on different paths, coming together perhaps for having children and then diverging again.

I'm single and in my mid 40s and can't even make male friends! So I do think there is some strange disconnect between the sexes.

As a woman my take is that I (and women?) want relationships based on respect and connection. I don't know what men want. Are all their needs sexual?

I'm not saying I want to go back to the 1800s when cads and bounders were shamed and chased out of town but we seem to have reached a point where men's 'needs' are just endless sex and novelty and they feel so entitled.
And women are working round the clock to keep their households clean and in order and work at work........

So true ifnot

I don't know if this will make any sense but I wonder if many men are retreating a bit from life and from interaction while they adapt to all the changes in the world. Granted some of the men that "inspired" my original message will probably never change, will still be going on about the "good old days" before immigrants and women's rights and stuff in ten years time while letting themselves go physically, losing touch with friends etc.
Maybe there are other men a few years younger who just need time to process everything and will turn out ok and be able to be equal and supportive friends lovers coworkers whatever when this process is over. It just seems now that there's a massive massive gulf between the genders and no guarantee it will ever close. I have to admit this makes me really sad sometimes.

I think they are when it comes to the generation you mention. Divorce rates are so high that there is a lot of pain and anger around. I think the fact the women and more likely to and up the main care gives post divorce means that they have to get to and build a new life. The men find themselves alone and so it make sense that more of them would appear to be worse off emotionally. It would likely be the other way round I it was more usual for men to end up with the children. So I don't think it has that much to do with gender more to do with circumstances. I do think genre roles has a huge part to play in the high divorce rates though.

I'm an early millennial (30) and I find it really hard to hide my shock/revulsion when I hear 40+ talking about thier home set up. Neither side seems to like thier partners. I have on occasion questioned this, blurted out 'Oh, why as you with them then?' And the get looks of confusion. They seem to think you either get to be in a relationship where your needs aren't met, or you have to be alone. My friends seem to have the view that it is totally possible to have relationships where both parties needs are met.

Given that make entitlement absolutely exists - you can see it in children's socialization from a very young age - i can understand that men might feel they are getting a worse deal in comparison to the past. Much like a dictator would feel after a nice to democracy.

In my network I see women and men waiting much longer to start a family, if at all. The 7 women I sit near at work currently have no intention to ever have children. The 4 men I sit near feel the same way. Their ages range from 22 to 34. But they all absolutely see the importance of having living and equal relationships.

I don't want children, partly because I don't want the burden of providing financially for them and my partner to fall on me, it seems really stressfull. Equally I really don't want to take time out of my career to raise the children either. They both sound like crapy options which would make us unhappy. Many of my friends agree.

So my point is, sure for your generation you might be growing apart. But I think for mine we are growing closer together while realising that much of the gender inequalities you face/faced can actually be led back to children. Take them out of the equation and things look brighter.

Sorry for the typos, I haven't put my lenses in yet.

They seem to think you either get to be in a relationship where your needs aren't met, or you have to be alone.

I'd add "and that being alone is terrible". Which I don't believe it is.

ah wingsofnylon! how much you seem to think has changed in only 15-20 years and you attribute it to different times? men who are, due to their DOB less inherently entitled or misogynist? or women who due to their date of birth are less inclined to accept more than 51% of the childcare or housework........
I read your post and call stage of life
That's were all my friends were at that age. It's not the date of birth or the epiphanies society has had or the advancements in equality that make your age group's conversations any different from my age group's conversations.. It's just the stage of life.

But, fwiw, all of my 44-48 (ish) female friends seem happy in their marriages and at work I only hear men 'joke' that they have to ask the boss at home if they're allowed out. That is cowardly of course. They should ask themselves if it's fair or reasonable and then make their decision based on that. I do hate the ''ask the boss'' nonsense when ''urr indoors'' is at home with three kids under ten.

I've certainly noticed this with my friends (mainly 40s). My female friends generally have busy, full lives. I only have one male friend, but he and the husbands of my female friends are, in the whole, pretty miserable. Most of them don't seem to have any interests and drink far too much. There's a few exceptions of course.

This puts me off dating as I don't want to spend my time with a grumpy, middle aged bore. I much prefer the company of women.

when I hear 40+ talking about thier home set up. Neither side seems to like thier partners.
I'm not sure it's that they don't like their partners. More that, after 15 years of marriage, they are a bit more battle hardened!
I'm afraid I think what you describe is due to your stage of life too wings although I agree about children causing unhappiness in male/female relationships. The burdens of work and expectations are not spread equally-men with little kids feel put upon for being expected to constantly put others first, and women feel put upon for actually doing the lions share of the drudgery (plus work usually).
But you don't nessecarily have to forgo children. Just find a better way maybe?

Most of my friends (early 40’s) are in strong caring supportive marriages. I wouldn’t say either sex looks particularly happier than the other, although the trend seems to have been for the women to work part time and take more responsibility for the kids and the men are working full time and shouldering more responsibility for earning. A lot of them the men are feeling very stressed by work, many are dreaming of an opportunity to spend more time with their families but feel caught by the pressure of mortgages and in some cases school fees. Will be interesting to see what these relationships look like in another 10 years.

Agree with PinkTiger. Everyone is checking and rechecking their social media
Either that or playing playstation/ xbox/ computor games or entertained on the internet. We dont need seem tobseek out real life contact so much

IMO I think men don’t know what their role is anymore in relationships because women are quite capable of doing everything, good job, taking care of the children and home. I’m a single 45 year old with 2 children, divorced 8 years ago and just broke up from a 3 year relationship. Both men had an issue with my career as a Music teacher and both said I should give it up and work in an office, nothing wrong with working in an office but why give up my job that I worked hard at getting and keeping and love! They couldn’t cope with the fact I ran the house/finances/childcare etc practically without their help! I’ve decided I’m not bothered about having a partner in my life, I’d be lucky if I can find one who just wants to spend time with me as my life is now. Men can’t seem to cope with the fact that women can cope without them.

I agree with Bluegrass. Am a middle aged bloke and would gladly sign up for one of these relationships where the woman works her ass off so I can lie on the sofa flipping channels while slurping a lager.. if in fact they existed. Perhaps they do in some quarters but of about 15 middle class couples I know not one follows anything like this pattern. In most cases but not all the man has more responsibility for earning and the woman for the domestic sphere, a deal which the women seem happy with. In all cases they both work hard, the women wouldn't tolerate anything else and wouldn't welcome a reversal of roles. Some have interesting hobbies, some don't, some have become more right wing, others left.
Wings I too call stage of life. It wasn't that different when I was 30.

carolmusic, I avoided dating until I had a house and a job and a pension.

Dogfish, those relationships do exist I was in one for 7 years but he was the father of my kids. I don't think it's the kind of thing you can sign up for later in life, second time round when there are no joint kids! It's a trapped in this situation/role kind of deal isn't it? Who would put themselves in that menial situation at somebody else's financial mercy when they didn't have joint small dependents!?

I think in a lot of cases role reversal would be pointless because society doesn't make it easy for women to re-enter the workplace. I have done it but it has taken me ten years to get to the point where I dno't need to operate at a loss paying out in childcare. I'm not valued in the workplace. Youth is valued. I didn't have time for degrees and courses when I was 100% responsible for young dependents. I don't think it's fair to judge women who've been out of the workplace for not racing back in to it to earn 8.65 an hour when they have (more than 1?) dependents, childcare for whom would need to be factored in. Men who grumble about earning 60k a year might be judging women who have young kids for not earning minimum wage. So often it is utterly pointless.

But yeh, what women need is from the get go to avoid being cornered out of the workplace because of pregnancy, maternity leave, parental leave, lion's share of the childcare and housework.

I think that parenthood should become a state run thing. Women sign up to have a child and a certain rate of childbirth is required to maintain the population. You sign up for your child at a convenient stage of your life knowing that the childcare will be state run and organised and funded by the state because it's not right that women pay for childcare to perpetuate the species. Take the romance out of it. Take the notion of family out of it. Have a child when it suits you and then without the pressure of a biological clock, find a relationship that works.

Well, maybe I'm not middle class enough, but every mother I know works, most of them full time. As well as taking on the vast majority of the housework and child-organising.
The born again Tory men I referenced are either single or with women who also have well paid jobs. None of them have a stay at home wife. I know those set ups exist but it's not my experience.
And yy, you can't equate the effects of children and marriage on women and men. As a single parent having a child permanently fucked my career (to be expected ) but I'm not sure that with a man it would have been that different. Few men would accept the mother of their child going off for 2 weeks here and 4 weeks there and having to take the majority of the domestic responsibility.
And however much men might insist ( and they do seem to) that they work terribly hard and the women are all lounging in the beauty parlour, the fact is that study after study has found that middle aged women are statistically doing too much. Too much work, too much housework, childcare, pta, local politics, caring for elderly and disabled relatives and on and on.
Not me-I'm a lazy cow, but the majority are busy making the world go round and getting precisely no respect for it.

I have zero sympathy for these "depressed, isolated" men. They bring it all on themselves.

Maybe if they learned to treat us with an ounce of respect then they wouldn't be feeling like this. Fuck the lot of them.

IfNot in almost all the couples I mentioned the women work either part or full time, but in many cases the men have more responsibility for earning and work longer hours, possibly because they're a few years older so their careers were more established when the relationship started. Which in some cases was a key part of what they offered. I give both sides credit for having struck a deal that appears to work for them. Everyone complains of overwork sometimes but I wouldn't take them all at face value. No one is forced to do PTA or local politics and the reasons people do these things are mixed.

I have never yet met a bloke who said women are all lounging in the beauty parlour, and in fact my mates seem to spend far less time slagging off women than vice versa, but no doubt it happens. Both the lounging and the slagging.

My ex husband always thought I was just sat around watching tv all day when I had our first child, he didn’t seem to notice that when he came home the house was clean and tidy, his dinner was being made, miraculously all his shirts etc were washed and ironed etc etc etc, he would then expect his hot air ballooning clothes and equipment ready as he went out ballooning after work. During the summer he would be out every night and all day at weekends, when I asked him once if he could give it a miss just for one night, his response was, you knew this was my hobby when you met me. Never changed his responsibility when the kids came along. So I was practically a single parent anyway.

I think the opposite - that they are growing more alike in terms of personalities.
Perhaps as a result, more women are choosing to live separately to men.

I think it's mostly on here that women will admit how much more they're doing than is fair. Nobody wants to be accused of being a nag or a feminist or a bore in mixed company, nobody is going to announce to their friends that their husband is blind to the fact that they do 90% of the house work and they have to remind him ten times to do 10% and he teases her about nagging him and feels that he comes good in the end, doing 10% of the house work. Nobody wants to be that idiot that trusted a wrong un. No woman wants to admit that her husband doesn't value her as a woman or as a member of the team. So you will read a lot of truths on here that you won't hear in real life.

In my experience, just amongst my own different groups of friends, it tends to be an issue once children reach a certain age.

I have a lot of male friends who aren't happy in their relationships, who's partners are completely oblivious. They stay because they don't want to miss their children.

Once the children are of an age where they spend more time away from home than in it, the realisation of having spent so many years unhappy really hits. Meanwhile the female partners have had the life they wanted.
It's when most of my friends who have split have done so.

I used to work in a bar in the City. It was full of men working longer hours than their wives. .
Yeah, nobody is forced to do the pta or be the kids rugby club treasurer, or get FIL to his hospital appointment but someone has to, and that someone is usually a middle aged women.
And amen to the fact that women will be much more honest anonymously about their husbands and marriages.
Nobody wants to be accused of being a nag or a feminist or a bore in mixed company, nobody is going to announce to their friends that their husband is blind to the fact that they do 90% of the house work and they have to remind him ten times to do 10%
X 100

Nobody HAS to volunteer for pta or any other Committee. If you do, you've chosen to do it.

I've been wondering the same OP. Particularly recently where the sheer lack of care that men as a whole have shown women as a whole even whilst thinking they are doing their best to accommodate equality - it's made me personally, and many of my friends, far less interested in what men have to say in general.

There's just not much there for us, is there? I'm in my forties, over the hard hard childcare years where I had the usual struggles and what it boils down to is: men, do more. Consistently that was our issue, me and my peers. Men, do more at home without there needing to be a song and dance, and do more at work, actively and with good in your hearts, to challenge the status quo.

Now I have a husband who I love but I've kind of lost some respect for - he just can't open his eyes and see what's around him. He's a successful white middle class male with a certain accent and education and if he doesn't want to do something, well he's rarely had to compromise or put himself in anyone else's shoes and he's unlikely to start now. Women being abused right left and centre doesn't even interest him because he doesn't do it and has never seen it done. Well, thanks mate.

I feel like women are finding a way forward against really shitty odds and I'm proud to be part of that. I do know men who will speak out about issues affecting women but it's always with a kind of 'well, I'm not sure what I can do?' attitude.

I'm also really financially independent right now, against some odds because I'm female and have children, and I'm looking after myself because I want a good life when I retire. I see so many men who won't stop having a pint in the evenings or who won't even go for a walk because they just don't want to and it's their right to not do things they don't want to. It's frankly boring.

Men bore me. That's it. Their constant privilege bores the shit out of me. Tedious. Argh.

Sounds like you'd be much better off without your asshole husband, Tokyo.