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?

And don't forget the felling of entitlement. Every time an heterosexual man cheats there is an OW there that go with him. In the minority of cases OW wouldn't know he is in a relationship but in the majority of cases she knows.

Every time a man get away with bad behaviour, not necessarily bad abuses, there are people around him excusing his behaviour. His family, friends, other pals.
There are plenty of men and women who enable this patter because 'you know mens are like this' and the poor bloke is doing so much.

All of that is a pile of crap. Those men would be discarded for a relationship if the rest of us wouldn't just go along with it.
The incel phenomenon is a kind of new thing, but everyone knows their views and expectation in relationship are simply out of order.

Agree with this, we now have a generation of boys and young men coming from fatherless homes or divorced parents and might not know what a good relationship looks like,

I think for my ex he genuinely thinks his time is worth more than mine/a woman. Society supports this by it being mums called by school not dads for sick kids. Maternity leave is a %of salery so must be worth less than working out of home. Banter at work is sexist subliminally driving the message home.

Role models are in there. Good male role models were the ones who worked. Good dads played with their kids- played not educated/disciplined/bathed etc.

I think ex thinks and is told how amazing he is for not hitting woman. Letting his woman choose her career friends and clothes.

Double standards in parenting. Eg my ex will believe he's doing close to 50/50 because he doesn't see things like women/mums do- he's never cut the child's nails, bought shoes, needs telling what car seat to use etc etc because apparently he can't google some of that stuff he needs to ask a fucking woman and think the mental work does not exist for her.

Weaponised incompetence is taught to these men young. By their male role models and by women helping or doing it for them.

And pornhas done so much damage

You've misread what I said. Got it backwards, in fact. I said governments are colluding with the efforts to destroy women's rights.

ETA the only ones not bothering are those where women have few or no rights anyway.

I agree with pp about many men, and women, not having seen healthy relationships modelled to them whilst growing up.
The book “What Makes a Person: Secrets of our First 1000 Days” is a brilliant read about child development. It explains that up to approximately age 3 our brains are in a process of “trimming” unused neural pathways it deems unnecessary in that child’s given environment. For example, if as a baby/toddler you are not shown affection, your brain trims those pathways down as it’s trying to make you efficient and successful in your environment. If you’re exposed to anger and tension, the pathways linked to those are strengthened as your brain assumes those are more important for your specific survival in your habitat.
Human children, like all higher primates, are heavily reliant on observation based learning. With many boys severely lacking in male role models (no father involved, schools are vastly women teachers) there is a gaping void that can be filled by stereotypes and bad media. I think Big Brothers of America programs (like in the US) are a great idea.

I think the same applies for women. They have not grown up with positive male role models who value them as people, so normalise really shitty behaviour from their partner because 'that's what men are like'. You see it all the time on relationships.

A few months ago I had a conversation with a male friend about the distinction between platonic and romantic partnerships. The lines there were far more blurred to me than to him - he gave the example that there were just some things that you only shared with your SO. It's much more difficult for me to relate to this as a woman because it's socially acceptable to have very close platonic friends that you completely confide in.

This is really interesting and I heard similar from a woman who’d transitioned to living as a man. They said they were quite lonely as they were used to having close friendships with women, but they found that men just didn’t have these kinds of relationships with each other. I think it was also maybe harder to have close friendships with women whilst living as a man, the women maybe didn’t let their guard down in the same way.

Yes, because in days gone by, throughout history, men all treated their wives really, really well. That is why beating your wife or raping her was legal in most societies. There was simply no need for a law against it as it just never happened.

🙄

Your analysis I actually generally agree with, but I don’t think this can be linked to why so many men are shit partners, it’s always been common for men to be shit partners. In fact, men, as a population, are undoubtedly better partners than they have been throughout history, even if there is still a long way to go

You don’t need to have no father not to have a good role model. Many women will have fathers who were a bad role model. That maybe even has a more detrimental effect than no role model

Or we let people express themselves how they like

@21ZIGGY

"Or we let people express themselves how they like"

Ohhh, great idea, self-expression allowed definitely gets my vote

See I think threads like this come about because we DO want them. We want them as they pretend to be at the start of relationships - we know they can do that (acting nicely, respectfully, being kind and generous and interested). It's when they stop treating their partner as human beings that we get a useless lump of human.

They have allowed themselves to become obsessed with wanking, to the point they can't look at a woman without doing a weird version of The Manhattan Once Over. They've allowed themselves to get bogged down in looks, woman's size and whether they will let them continue to act like a little boy, rather than someone to grow with. A lot of them don't seem to think they need to grow at all. They want to be Peter Pan and just be selfish and never experience real life with any struggles to get to the next level.
They have allowed themselves to be intrinsically boring.

Because men are still looking at other men as competition. They want kudos from men, not women. If they share that they are human they think they lose kudos because that is the only thing men value - not being human enough to be hurt.

Men have created this toxic culture for themselves and get jealous and angry when they see women talking like human beings, studying why they as men act the way they do which is clearly so backwards given all that we know.

@GentlemanJohnny

As a bloke, I agree. Once the initial excitement has worn off, many men see a relationship as a burden

But not such a burden that they fuck off, instead of staying, getting the house, kids and dinner looked after, and going behind your back etc.

In fact, men, as a population, are undoubtedly better partners than they have been throughout history, even if there is still a long way to go

100% agree with this ... and it's 95% depressing!

I've got to say, countering the huge amount of critical thought failure on this thread, that women's improved rights and options are what's improving men's behaviour. Back in my idealistic 2nd wave feminist youth, I really thought men would see how feminism benefits them too, and they'd get on board before long.

Okay, that has happened - in some cases. On the more general scale, it seems women are gradually realising they've got more and better life choices than their predecessors and popular media suggested, so they're exercising their choices to accept less shit from lousy blokes. That prompts some more men to raise their game. Fortunately, the New Improved Men will have New Improved sons and there's reason to be hopeful for the next generation (as long as they manage not to be fooled by porn).

I hope women will keep 'raising their bar' until all the men have to get on board or resign themselves to wanking and complaining.

What we need is the male pill en masse to regulate their sex drive which dominates too much of the world.

I think men have always been the same. It's women that have changed and can now see men's shortfalls.

In my case I think my ex doesn't want to have to bother with someone else's emotional needs and is ultimately really lazy so doesn't want to have to work at things. He doesn't need affection or care or expression of love, or to talk about his feelings himself so doesn't see why it is important to others and doesn't care that it is.
He wants a relationship so he can be seen to be a family man by outsiders, and to be doing what everyone else does, but really just wants to do his hobbies and what he likes as much as he can. Obviously that's a bit of an issue in a relationship so he became emotionally and verbally abusive (sometimes physical) to maintain his version of the relationship eg not having to bother with the other person's irritating needs and meeting his own needs as much as he could. The positives for him were me doing the bulk of the housework, mental load, childcare and he basically said as much when we split. He wasn't interested in giving anything back to keep me happy in that arrangement, why would he when he could get what he wanted by bullying and being abusive which came more naturally to him.

And we are using the internet to link patterns of behaviour we have personally seen and the general global population. The internet has allowed women to finally see she is not "crazy" and understand the global gaslighting we have all known we were being subjected to. The internet is allowing women to come up with solutions, band together and grow in independence and with groups.

Men have used the internet to wank.

"They want sex, they want their washing done and they want a nice dinner but they ‘tolerate’ a relationship in order to have those things on tap"

This^ x 100.

From what I've seen most men are self centred, always put themselves first and they expect, and are fed the same by society, women to also put them first.

Men have failed to evolve and move forward at the same pace as women. After all why would they give up their privileges? They don't like, abs I think wonder how it happened, that women are putting themselves and their children first and now enjoy freedom and don't really need them if they aren't mature and are man child like. Their reaction, rather than see that this is something that benefits them, is to push back and moan and convince society that they are losing their role. And guess what it's all women's fault and we should be fixing it 🤷‍♀️

They want sex, they want their washing done and they want a nice dinner but they ‘tolerate’ a relationship in order to have those things on tap

To be fair, I'd quite like all that, too. I just can't afford the staff (and I'm single.)

I think the burden thing is true, and it actually reveals so so much about the disastrous psychology of this type of man.

what are they burdened by, in a relationship? Certainly not the bulk of domestic chores or child rearing. I don’t even buy that this type of man feels burdened by a pressure to provide. I think they feel burdened by not being able to do whatever the fuck they want at any second. They feel burdened by adult responsibility and the expectation of thought and care towards others.

women, generally, don’t feel burdened by relationships even when the useless man in question actually is a burden in the sense that he requires more emotional and domestic labour to have around than not.

i can’t prove or explain the above but it’s what I feel to be true.

A lot of women want children, but don't really want men

I think they'd want them if they were decent.

I completely agree with this argument – but would add that, to agree with it, you must first accept that men and women are different.

Testosterone and estrogen have very different effects. We are not blank slates.

Sometimes this discussion tends to be all about 'why can't men just be more like women?'