What went wrong with men and what they see a relationship as?

[JaneFrances]

I'm well aware there are decent men. These aren't what I'm asking about.

Why do some men not want a healthy reciprocal loving relationship characterised by respect for each other, equality and having each others' backs? Why do they waste energy on controlling, bullying, gaslighting and abusive behaviour?

What is wrong with all the men complained about here? Wouldn't it be simpler to just be a worthwhile person?

Oh but we are. Unless we want to be married to alchoic, overweight diabetics with back problems and heart issues.

I agree. That is exactly what many men feel burdened by IMO.

Thanks for this, and to @BiologicalKitty. In my donkey's years of analysing relationships, in therapy and elsewhere, I'd never clocked this as a significant issue. I damn well should have, looking back at the number of times I've yelled "It's not a competition, you know, we're supposed to have each other's backs!"

Competitiveness is a factor in all human activity, I think, but I'd overlooked the depth of its influence - and men are more competitive than women, it's one of only two behavioural characteristics that can genuinely be ascribed to testosterone (the other is impulsiveness).

Couples often feel well-bonded when they're 'competing' together. Whether it's dinner parties, herb gardens, tastes in music, money or sport, we all navigate tides and eddies of social positioning. Joe & Jane might come away from Bill & Bea's party full of admiration for their barbecue setup, yet feel great about the fact that their children play musical instruments while B&B's kids only play the fool.

If J&J can't find enough ways to think themselves 'better' or equal to B&B, Joe's likely to take it harder than Jane ... and quite possibly blame her. Other reactions are available, including a recognition that garden parties aren't a zero-sum game, but I suspect that one requires an inner self-confidence that's in short supply.

In my dysfunctional relationships, I have acknowledged that I was often looking to get one up on my partner during rows and stand-offs. I've viewed this as a fault and couldn't quite understand it, as I'm only averagely competitive and certainly didn't wish to escalate the arguments. Were I to go back over them, I bet I'd find he was trying to boost himself by metaphorically destroying me, and that would be game over. My mistake was playing this 'game' instead of walking off the field the second time it happened.

I guess some of the conclusions are that Mr Evolved Masculinity only competes where it's appropriate, likes being on a team and sees his wife as co-pilot, and is relaxed enough to let everyday rivalries wash past him.

Having mixed a ridiculous number of metaphors, I'd like to thank MN for putting up with my ramble and for this useful bit of insight!

Yes, in summary women want emotional maturity and a team mate. Both of which I think "traditional men" struggle with as feelings aren't meant to happen to men and team mate assumes the woman is an equal party...

I blame their mothers 🤷🏼

Absolutely no idea I am afraid.

In 1976, Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph looked at the UK and saw an awful lot of people deciding they didn’t want to belong to an autocracy created by, and for the benefit of, old posh men. British people particularly women were rejecting old sources of “authority”, and demanding more progressive policies.

Thatcher and Joseph plotted to stop this progressive, communal, more female, collaborative model by tapping into men’s fragile egos and selfish instincts. They told everyone to stop thinking about each other and to focus on their own personal needs and desires. There was no such thing as society etc. A return to the law of the jungle, if you will.

And here we are, half a century later, a nation of peevish halfwits, macho, entitled man-children, shrieking harridans demanding special treatment, spoiled children and a deeply polarised and angry civil discourse. It’s predominantly men causing problems, but a lot of women have joined in.

Decades of being encouraged and rewarded for being selfish and immature have brought us to today. No wonder women can’t find decent men. They’ve been driven to the brink of extinction by political forces.

Thatcher!

Is there nothing she can't be blamed for?

Well I admire her steeliness but she does have a lot to answer for😬

One of my first boyfriends admitted that when he was desperate to last longer he would imagine her chopping carrots.

Worked for him!
And now every man reading this will think of that inadvertently going forwards 😉 Maybe she will be of use after all?

Even by MN standards this is unhinged.

I listened to this yesterday and a lot of the points raised on this thread featured:
Why are men so
angry at their partners?
https://zawn.substack.com/p/liberating-motherhood-episode-1-why?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1kLtFW3KuWayBObY7z1C_51kLL59CTE4OkvRXMfNMcz_KJDT_gdLVZ68U_aem_AbLg9_wWEH1TPZTrCTxvtJSRkCi57pYt5ACW0qI0mKcOclEFa74a-5t8b9mzJ3vnZTOyVCNnjcwS5Z_CdxOn4oIB

This thread has a fundamentally flawed title.

It implies they were ok in the past.

They weren't and have never been.

In Western liberal democracies they are getting away with less than they ever have. Hence the divorce rate.

You might do a bit of research before posting ad hominem insults…

This isn’t my personal thesis, it’s that of several separate academic teams led by eg Addison, Morgan, Marwick, Hay; it was the subject of two BBC documentaries in the noughties, and is now regarded as orthodoxy by most political historians. Dom Sandbrook covered it in his BBC4 documentary of the period in question.

Selfishness, expressed as the right to assert your individual rights above the needs of the community you’re part of, is both a strongly male - and core Conservative - belief system. The word most used is paternalist from the Latin root “pater”, father.

Have a read.

You’ll learn something.

I'd imagine, because compared with the total freedom and lack of compromise of the single life..it is. Add to this the chores and restrictions of children, the diversion of finances to the dull stuff, and its fairly easy to understand. And something that I'd be very surprised if no women felt either. Certainly, MN doesn't lack for threads from women who have have found they 'hate their life' or harking back to their glory days when young and free.
The difference I think is that women are more conditioned to put up and shut up, put their children first, to conflate creating happiness for others with personal happiness, and generally get on with it. Not to mention, no one asks us, do they? Thread after thread discussing and speculating about what men want, why they do this and that. You don't find men having comparable discussions about women. It's just assumed we are content. Which is probably why some men struggle so much to accept women rejecting relationships altogether. And why men are so shocked and nonplussed when their wives leave them.

Tripe. Not all the country's problems are down to Thatcher (with, or without, Keith Joseph).

You are deluding yourself.

"Selfishness, expressed as the right to assert your individual rights above the needs of the community you’re part of, is both a strongly male - and core Conservative - belief system."

And yet it was women who voted for Thatcher in greater numbers than men...

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/making-thatchers-britain/thatcher-and-the-womens-vote/560EF63F0FD4FE2F3A45735327F482CB

"Throughout Margaret Thatcher’s term as Prime Minister, women continued to prefer the Conservative Party to Labour in greater numbers than their male counterparts."

As for Thatcher's comments on society:

"I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’ ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.

… [It] is, I think, one of the tragedies in which many of the benefits we give, which were meant to reassure people that if they were sick or ill there was a safety net and there was help, that many of the benefits which were meant to help people who were unfortunate … [t]hat was the objective, but somehow there are some people who have been manipulating the system … when people come and say: ‘But what is the point of working? I can get as much on the dole!’"

That quote seems as relevant today as it did back then - probably more so.

This famous speech also seems relevant, @ThisOldThang, 41 years on:

I warn you that you will have pain–when healing and relief depend upon payment.
I warn you that you will have ignorance–when talents are untended and wits are wasted, when learning is a privilege and not a right.
I warn you that you will have poverty–when pensions slip and benefits are whittled away by a government that won’t pay in an economy that can’t pay.
I warn you that you will be cold–when fuel charges are used as a tax system that the rich don’t notice and the poor can’t afford.
I warn you that you must not expect work–when many cannot spend, more will not be able to earn. When they don’t earn, they don’t spend. When they don’t spend, work dies.
I warn you not to go into the streets alone after dark or into the streets in large crowds of protest in the light.
I warn you that you will be quiet–when the curfew of fear and the gibbet of unemployment make you obedient.
I warn you that you will have defence of a sort–with a risk and at a price that passes all understanding.
I warn you that you will be home-bound–when fares and transport bills kill leisure and lock you up.
I warn you that you will borrow less–when credit, loans, mortgages and easy payments are refused to people on your melting income.

– I warn you not to be ordinary
– I warn you not to be young
– I warn you not to fall ill
– I warn you not to get old.

You had a boyfriend who made an effort to last longer!😲

The happiest women I know are single.

Have they been in LTR/married and if they wanted, have kids?
And have, or at least had options in the past?

There’s big difference if they never been in a relationship / on a date and want but didn’t get to have chidren.

Very good point.

Garlick who wrote those words?

I actually think young women still want relationships with men.
Even though we have birth control, sterilisation (although the options for women are very restricted), less stigma in remaining childfree, less stigma in being single. Women are still having children in roughly the same numbers. Ie approx only 20% of women have never had a child by the age of 45. This has not changed. You would think it was o the increase but it’s not.
Ir seams the pressure to be a mother and settle down us still there.
I don’t know of vast numbers if women who use sperm donors and chose to be a single parent either.
I think it’s older women, those who already have dcs and have been in a relationship, who are rejecting men.
I’m married but can categorically say that if anything happened to dh I would not be looking for another partner. No way. I put this down to not wanting/being able to have any more children and I’m no longer that bothered about having sex.
I would rather be on my own than tolerate what’s out there.
I think in the past it was very difficult for men to gain access to lots of sex without being married.
Getting pregnant whilst unmarried was a big no no for women.
I have had lots of older relatives who ‘had to get married.’
Quite often the narrative was that these women should be grateful to the men for marrying them.
Society isn’t like that now.
What has happen though, is a lot of men shack up with a woman, get access to free sex on tap, a domestic at home, free childcare and then do not want to marry the woman. Why should they? What benefit is it to them? You see a lot if threads on here with women moaning about this.
Often the couple will split up and both parents go on to have dcs with other partners.
The cycle begins again.

Most, in my experience, are either divorced or have tried being in relationships and eventually given up. They just got to a point where life on their own was much more appealing. To be honest, I think if you surveyed married/cohabiting women, many would quietly admit they'd rather live on their own, but feel for various reasons that's off the table.

"I’m married but can categorically say that if anything happened to dh I would not be looking for another partner. "

I'm a man, but I completely agree.

We've got two young kids and I'd be focussing on them and certainly not on my love life. When things such as life assurance are factored it, we'd be mortgage free with all the security and freedom that brings. I certainly wouldn't ever want to place that security at risk via marriage or their mental health at risk by moving Mummy Mk2 into the house.

Yep, thought so.

And what it comes to women in relationship/married and dreaming about being single, it’s easier to dream that when you do have companion and someone who loves you.
It’s very unlikely they know what it’s like to actually be on your own for long time.
How other’s treat you, how lonely it is, no security, talking to a toaster because there’s no one else there, dealing woth being aick alone, no kne cares about you….etc.

And what all that does to one’s well being.

And add to that, mussing out kids / grandkids of course.