Who lowered the bar for men?

[datcherygrateful]

My friend and I were talking about how lots of men dating seem to put little effort in, and having just come back from visiting a museum and art gallery, I feel like we've drawn the short end of the stick when it comes to seeing many men and their effort.

She said that's just how men are these days- But I'm a bit baffled

Considering that men found time in the trenches to write a letter to their beloved, that artists would take ages to mix pigments to paint their muses, and some men built palaces for their beloved? Some conquered lands for their love.
Some travelled long distances on horseback in treacherous rain to meet up if only briefly. Books and poems, songs, music compositions all inspired by and made for their love.

Are we expecting too much or not enough these days?

Because it feels like if a man is online and doesn't message or call- that's acceptable by many
If he doesn't confirm plans or plan a date himself thoroughly- acceptable by many
If they don't gift, or romance you- accepted by many

The Internet lowered the bar for men.

Well the answer has to be women... women must be putting up with it/accepting it.

@whichwayisup If we collectively refused to accept this behaviour, will things change?
And why have we accepted it?

It's no different now. Don't romanticise the past. The good guys now don't write letters, they show up or send an email. There were always good guys and bad guys. Good people and not good people. It's just expressed differently now.

In days of yore men were prepared to make an effort because women were subservient to them.
Now that we are no longer prepared to serve their needs at the expense of our own there's no payoff (i.e no slave to be gained) and they are not motivated to make the effort.
Also online p0rn gives the impression that even men who look like potatoes can score a hot young woman.

I think men lowered the bar themselves to make their lives easier, knowing that women will pick up the slack.

Did you watch the Beckham documentary? Gary Neville said David would drive to London to just spend an hour with Victoria in their early days. I think everyone acknowledges that he's been unfaithful since. Romantic gestures aren't always backed up.

On the love song point, I always think of the Beautiful South's Song for Whoever.

No idea why people put up with the on line arseholes... Low self esteem... Desperation to have someone rather than no one. Who knows. But I don't see this as something new. Shit men have been around for ever. Chancers always been chancers.

@0sm0nthus
I see, but wouldn't it be the other way around?
If a woman is subservient, then she can't go anywhere, so she is at the mercy of men- why would a man be motivated to 'prove his love'?
Whereas now, seeing as they are not 'needed', they would want to chase and prove; put more effort in?

This sounds like research for an article? I would say the very question is flawed. The last twenty years of being excessively online have warped us all and brought about changes we don't yet understand. It's meaningless to blame one group or another. There have been shitty men forever, women have had no choice but to play along and enable them forever. Young women today are financially disadvantaged in a way we haven't seen for a couple of generations. The need to pool resources is down to decades of economic policy. So why not blame Thatcher?

In the past, men didn’t get sex unless they made an effort, as pre-marital sex was not acceptable in society, and children born out of wedlock were stigmatized as illegitimate. Unmarried mothers were ostracized. etc etc.

So men had to try pretty hard if they wanted to have sex, due to the potential consequences for women being so diabolical.

Also they didn’t have easy access to loads of women. Until mobile phones and the internet, communication wasn’t easy. You either had to send a letter and wait for a reply, or pick up the phone and actually talk. And that was after they’d plucked up the courage to ask for the woman’s details (you couldn’t just search for them online like you can now). So once they’d found a woman who liked them, they’d stick with her as it was too much effort to go through the whole potentially humiliating rigmarole again.

Also I agree with @Imgoingtobefree. For many women, going on a series of awful dates or being in a shitty relationship is preferable to being single, because at least someone wants them.

(I was a teenager in the 1980s. Oh the joy. If you didn’t have a boyfriend you were stigmatized as being unfanciable; if you had a boyfriend but didn’t have sex with him, you were frigid: if you had a boyfriend and had sex with him, you were a sl*g 🤦‍♀️ )

I genuinely don't know what you're talking about

"Considering that men found time in the trenches to write a letter to their beloved, that artists would take ages to mix pigments to paint their muses, and some men built palaces for their beloved? Some conquered lands for their love.
Some travelled long distances on horseback in treacherous rain to meet up if only briefly. Books and poems, songs, music compositions all inspired by and made for their love."

But that's not something just men should do, surely? Shouldn't women be romancing men too? The bar for men that they should be judged on is about decency and respect, not dramatic expressions of love?

Talking to my son about relationships, it doesn't seem that women appear to be putting much effort into romance either. I'm not talking about sex or dressing up, but ways of showing they're important to each other, putting an emotional effort in, bringing thought and imagination and consideration to what you do together. That's not just one person's role.

There seems to be a race to the bottom in terms of waiting for the other person to show they're invested, to avoid looking like they're 'love-bombing' or being too keen or needy. Obviously, there's just dickheads too, but 'romance' has changed, not all women want grand romantic gestures, not all men see that as just being their role, or that men even have to do that first.

Never done it, but I suspect that OLD hasn't helped, cos your next option is just a click away, so why, for either sex, invest too much when either of you can just walk away, or view your commitment as a red flag?

In the old days when you had to literally meet someone IRL, face to face, just to start dating or even broach the possibility of it, there was already an investment and difficulty in doing that, a commitment, a risk, that you were already in a place to go full-in. Now it's a swipe right (left, no idea!), that it makes connections less emotional and maybe even disposable.

Who knows, I'm a million miles from it, but thems my guesses.

Yes women were at the mercy of men (in days of yore) the reason the man needed to prove his love was that he is competing with other men to access the free labor of any given woman.
Women and their free labor were seen as a commodity and men had to compete with each other for access to that commodity.
Now that women have more agency and freedom (in particular the ability to earn their own money) they no longer need to invest their time and effort in a man in the hope that he will (in return) provide for them.

Men might have named their ships after their loved one and written love letters home but still raped and pillaged other women as they conquered new lands. I think that you are romanticizing the past.

The Internet means that it’s easy to find a replacement if the current one doesn’t work out how you want. Some women are just after sex rather than a proper relationship too so I can see why men would try and hunt down casual encounters with that kind of woman too.

The Internet means that it’s easy to find a replacement if the current one doesn’t work out how you want
I don't think it really is that easy for men to find a replacement, men benefit far more than women do from being in a relationship women are increasingly realizing this and not wanting to have full relationships with men.

I was a teenager in the 1980s. Oh the joy. If you didn’t have a boyfriend you were stigmatized as being unfanciable; if you had a boyfriend but didn’t have sex with him, you were frigid: if you had a boyfriend and had sex with him, you were a slg 🤦‍♀️ )*

Brilliant.

Some travelled long distances on horseback in treacherous rain to meet up if only briefly.

For our first date, my husband drove 4 hours after work just to meet me.

I honestly find men very kind and make alot of effort to make my life comfortable. I'm 37 now and that's been my view since I started dating at 18.

Just bad luck OP?

Don't forget that men often were paid to marry their beloved. Dowries also known as a healthy bank balance or big family money these days; will call all Cocklodgers. Once they're in, it's too late, or it was back then.

Women were seen as prize possessions. An accessory to a man's success and a beacon of their fertility.

Men especially the upper classes (lower as well circumstances dependent) needed an heir to inherit. Preferably male.

As for modern day women, we simply accept what we're given. There's still so much stigma around dating and relationships. Rules and dos and don'ts. Don't text too often or even first, don't double text, look your best, don't expect him to immediately answer you, only send x amount of texts per day. Don't appear to needy, don't be to open, and the list goes on. And, if you don't follow the rules or are too picky you're doomed to be forever single.

Even on here, I've seen so many posts telling an op to lower their expectations. The most recent being around celebrating valentines or mothers day ( no need to restart that argument - just pointing it out)

Why should we have low expectations?

Im not sure why you're picking random rare examples of men's behaviour in the past and making out it was average.

It wasn't.

Plenty of men treated women like absolute shite, in every possible way, in the past.

They haven't changed, just now it's even worse cause they're internet porn sick and have sex cam workers and sex workers available at a click.

And as someone said, decent men were decent in the past, there's still decent now.

Unfortunately there isn't an oversupply of decent men.

Men didn't actually give a shit about the women they painted, they saw them as objects.

There have always been good and bad men but anyone respectable in my Mothers younger days so the 1930/40’s was not having sex out of wedlock. Men may have made more of an effort not because they were nice but because it was the only way they could get sex.

Posts about porn, subservience, self esteem, the internet are also all part of this. It’s multi factorial.

The bar had been lowered a long time before the internet appeared for the masses.

I'm not a moron I promise

Too* x two