Where do they get the audacity!?

[Zucker]

There's a group of threads on here recently and my God the audacity of these men treating their partners like this. What's going on? I know we only read on here the awful men and people tend not to post when times are good but I can't get over the general lack of respect.

1.Husband wanted a break, slept with coworker, now wants to fix things...

2.Holiday ruined, husband ill and being a bit of a prat

3.DH Affair. How do I cope with family holiday?

4.Husband left at New Years and just turned up like nothing happened

5.Not invited to my boyfriends surprise birthday party

ah yes it’s always another woman’s fault. Some people just aren’t very nice. Men and women!

And it’s a changing of male peer pressure.
If enough men judged each other by how much of a man you are by being “traditionally” a provider and protector of your family. Rather than a legend for arse fucking a young hottie then things might improve.

Thats only the tip of the iceberg.

It's all the threads about tight mean arseholes that the OP's want to fix, as they are so desperate. Men who eat, stay and don't drive, and most want to move in when they fully establish how foolish the women are in accepting it.

Parallel universe.

Every time I read Mumsnet I thank God I'm single 😂

Similar to me @GreyCarpet. My DM had been brought up to believe the only thing she was worthy of was to marry a man, have kids and that's all. All her 3 sisters and 2 sisters in law were the same. Was it the era? Was it their family upbringing? Combination of both; I don't know.

As it was for her, it was always me who had to help with the household chores, never my 'D'B (golden-balls) so history repeated itself until I realised I could have a different opinion on things. And that was a very liberating and joyous moment. "I don't have to be like mum!" I was about 16 I think and that's when she struggled with our relationship because I wanted to live my life differently to what she had already mapped out for me (get a job in a bank, get a husband and settle down - nothing wrong with that, if that is what you want from life) and she thought that was me being disrespectful to the choices she had made in life. But she hadn't made those choices herself...the patriarchy had made them for her and she just followed them like a 'good little girl'. Possibly, I made her realise that she could have made different choices and she was resentful that I could live my life the way I wanted, not the way others told me because she'd never had the guts to say 'no'.

My DM is in utter disbelief that my DD19, who is at uni and living independently would want a career when 'she should be thinking of planning her white wedding in a church and having children!!!'. The other day she tutted and said 'these girls who think they can have it all; I don't know...' and rolled her eyes. She's nearly 80 now so there's no changing her. 🙄thankfully DD doesn't listen to a word and my DM knows that.

So for people who think it is normal because it the way they grew up were they living in some isolated island or someone and not see other people's families or on tv etc. ?

Male privilege and generational issues but also some women will put up with it as a doormat or be the willing affair partner/ marriage wrecker.

My Grandmother was wife number 1 of my Grandfather who also had a concubine, this was in China. It wasn’t outlawed till 1949, my Grandparents fled mainland China in the 1930’s as my Grandfather was a business man and supporter of the Nationalists and the communists stole everything but he kept his little concubine. It’s not long ago is it, shameful obviously. It’s the one good thing communism did.

I don't know who these people are now thinking it's normal when they are looking to settle and have kids, so let's say around the 30 year old mark.

I am 20 years older than that, Courtney Love is 60, for context, who are these 30 year olds accepting utterly dreadful lumps of men?

All the young women where I work have shit boyfriends, everyone. Drive badly, don’t do any housework, won’t do drop offs pick ups, no shopping cooking. Anything these are late twenties early thirties men.
My dad did more my ex did definitely more. It’s like we’re going backwards.

Yes and somehow it’s all the fault of the women 🙄

The girlfriends, mothers, wives, OW, all of them get the blame on Mumsnet as if the men themselves are helpless to control their own actions.

Surely women have a large part to play in that they raise men. Men don’t suddenly get to 20 and forget everything they have ever been shown and taught. They watch what their parents do don’t they?

No it’s not the fault of women that some men are complete arseholes however we are accountable for our own choices and there are some women who regardless of what a useless twat a man is, will still willingly enter a relationship with him.

There’s a thread on here where a woman who has young children is dating a man who she knew before they started a relationship had been in prison and admitted assaulting another ex - and she’s now wondering why he treats her like shit.

Men are absolutely 💯 responsible and accountable for their behaviour but a woman who totally ignores glaring red flags from the start has to look at her own poor choices

You rightly assume that men are capable of controlling their own actions.

Of course they can.

Just as women can control their own actions.

Don't want to be lumbered with a useless misogynist? Don't marry one then.

@Projectme "My DM is in utter disbelief that my DD19, who is at uni and living independently would want a career when 'she should be thinking of planning her white wedding in a church and having children!!!'. The other day she tutted and said 'these girls who think they can have it all; I don't know...' and rolled her eyes. She's nearly 80 now so there's no changing her. 🙄thankfully DD doesn't listen to a word and my DM knows that."

Christ I had that, I was almost 20 and went out on a few dates with a guy I knew through my friend going out with his friend. He got really serious really quickly and my dad said I should hang on to this one like grim death and not let him go - I asked if he thought I should be settled by now and he said yes, I should.

The guy turned out to be an absolute tosser.

This is the really awful thing, why is this happening? There's some messaging somewhere getting to the young folks that is telling them this is the way.
The trad wife/alpha male social media trends recently surely can't have helped. Again though we can't just blame the internet, society seems to be changing somehow.

Over the last couple of decades or so, rigid gender stereotypes have become stricter and more entrenched.

There are various reasons for this.

Exactly

and the guy who told his wife he hoped she was the one with cancer ...

Men are taught they can walk around rating women’s body parts, flat out telling us where our looks fall short for their taste, as if they are the important arbiters of another person’s appearance. They’re taught that what they think matters the most- and when they speak, everyone else must listen.
they walk- from the age or birth- in a world that treats them as more valuable.
if any one of them woke up one day in a woman’s body, they’d be shocked at how they are treated. Even the good ones can’t see it, not really.

that’s where they get the audacity. They don’t even think about it. Treating others like they’re put here to serve their needs is the accepted way the patriarchy works.

the good men are ones who work hard to dismantle this and work on themselves.

if none of us would put up with this, it would change. If no woman ever stayed with a creep like this, he’d have to learn, wouldn’t he. But it takes self confidence to counteract the “good girl” training of - don’t make a scene, don’t be rude, people please at all costs. That stuff is deeply ingrained.

@Orangesinthebag What I find depressing is that for every man who cheats on a woman, deserts his kids, behaves like an arsehole over custody payments etc etc there is a woman willing to look past all of this and start a new relationship with them.

This never ceases to amaze me.

Sometimes I just feel like screaming "Raise the bar, raise the bar ! "

But I don’t feel like I need some sort of external incentive to behave like a decent human being, parent and partner.

As far as I’m aware (😬) nobody in my life is having to make a massive sustained effort to set boundaries with me / refuse to indulge my shit / apply rewards and sanctions to keep me from being a cheating scrounging lazy abusive scumbag.

I absolutely don’t believe that any of the shit men we hear about here would change their ways if properly ‘incentivised’. They just get worse when challenged. We need to focus on helping women LEAVE these unsalvageable arseholes, not berating them for their low standards and giving them the idea that if they only set firmer boundaries this wouldn’t be happening.

@VoltaireMittyDream "I absolutely don’t believe that any of the shit men we hear about here would change their ways if properly ‘incentivised’. They just get worse when challenged. We need to focus on helping women LEAVE these unsalvageable arseholes, not berating them for their low standards and giving them the idea that if they only set firmer boundaries this wouldn’t be happening"

This ^

I spent years being single in between husbands (first husband cheated and I divorced him). People kept telling me that "I'd never find anyone because I was too picky".
Dead right I was "picky" and anyone who didn't make the grade got dumped.

I'm now married to a good man who was worth waiting for.

VoltaireMittyDream

I agree.

It's not about incentivising men. Women aren't a public service for the betterment of men.

It's not our job to train them, monitor them, write them lists etc.

I don't care if crap men are incentivised to be better or not. I'm just not willing to date them.

When I was 39, I dated a 41 year old man for around 5 months. I've rarely got past 6 months with anyone tbh. And for those 5 months it was great. We were so in tune with each other and so compatible in many ways. And then he made a derogatory comment on a night out about a complete stranger - a woman in her 60s - mocking her appearance. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her. She just had the audacity to leave the house without make up looking like a woman in her 60s without any care or thought for how men she didn't know might view her.

We obviously didn't live together so I have no idea what he was like as a co-habiting partner but that comment told me everything I needed to know about how he viewed women in general. So I ended it.

He was very upset, my closest friend thought I was crazy and I was sad about it myself tbh. But I'm also not prepared to tolerate anything that doesn't sit right with me.

My friend and I actually fell out over it because she was so insistent that I should just tell him what I expected, explain why his comment was a problem for me, etc. And I was insistent that he was 41 years old and, if he hadn't worked out by now that women age and its not our job to look beautiful for the benefit of complete strangers, then I wasn't going to waste time teaching him that.

I dated someone else for a similar amount of time a few years later who was bothered his adult daughter had posted a photo of us together on SM and the woman he'd dated for 6 months and broken up with more than a year earlier might have seen it and been upset by it. So I ended it. Not because I'm jealous but because I'm worth more than someone who for whom I'm not their priority.

You get what you accept.

And if you accept someone who disrespects women in general and you specifically, that's what you'll get.

If you accept someone who has cheated in the early days, that's what you'll get.

If you accept someone who is happy for you to take on the mental load, that's what you'll get.

And it's why I also wonder why so many women are looking for a 'gentleman' or who ask if chivalry is dead (it should be!) Because if you get yourself a man who always insists on opening doors for you, walking on the roadside of the pavement for you, paying for you etc then what you've got yourself is a man who upholds 'traditional values' and who will expect the same of you.

I'm now married to a good man who was worth waiting for.

Yes, I'm now engaged to a good man who was worth waiting for.

Is he perfect? No. Am I? No. No one is. Does he respect me as an equal partner? Absolutely.

I'm going to try and keep this succinct.

There's a lot posted on these sorts of threads about how men are socialised to be entitled.

There's also a lot about how women can't be expected to want more because we are equally socialised into trying to make relationships work and accepting men as they are.

Both of those things are true.

But the problem for me is this.

Women just expect men to rise above this socialisation and see that it is wrong and to treat their partner and do better.

But some use the same argument of socialisation to absolve all women of any responsibility in doing the same.

Either we're all victims of our socialisation or we all have the capacity to rise above it.

When my son was in 6th form, he came home one day with a tale of how he and his friends were going out that night and one of the boys was complaining he couldn't wear his favourite shirt because his mum hadn't washed it in time and wouldn't have time to iron it before they went out. All of the other boys took the piss because he still expected his mum to do his laundry/ironing aand didn't know how to do it himself.

Since leaving home, he has had three flatmates. Two women and his current one is male. He told me he specifically wanted to live with his female friends not because he wanted a woman to look after him or clean and tidy but because "too many men are crap and don't know how to look after themselves." He wanted an equal flatmate and not one who'd leave everything to him.

He describes his current flatmate as a work in progress. He's a 'lovely bloke' but admits himself that his mum did everything for him until he left home at 26 and, unfortunately, my son is now the one asking him, "Is that where X belongs?" And 'training' him. He sees that as his duty to his flatmate's future wife. Apparently, he's getting better...

My point is that whatever the rest of society says, it does start at home and if we want men to be better and women to expect better, we have to instill that at home.

My daughter dated a boy when she first started university and was really put off by the fact his parents had done everything for him - taken responsibility for him completing his UCAS form, sorting his accommodation, helping him with applying for student finance because she did all of that herself.

She said so many conversations started with, "My mum..." and she just had a real sense of this is who you are and you're always going to be looking for a woman to look after you.

She's now with a man who grew up in a respectful and egalitarian household and he is, at 20, a pretty good example of a capable adult.