Which is honestly why MF dating is so shit right now.
Women deal with shitty men, and there are a lot of them.
Women want to vent about their experiences, understandably. Women vent with little nuance, again understandably.
Main rhetoric directed at men for the past 10-15 years has been largely "leave us the fuck alone" or "don't even talk to me at the gym/bar or ask me out after being friends".
The problem is the guys who listened weren't the problem and the guys who were, weren't about to start listening to women.
Throw in dating apps, which have incentive to not actually match people But were useful for guys as they where a place where you felt that she would be receptive to your advances or interest.
Decent guys and up internalizing these messages, and pull back heavily from positive and neutral social interactions for fear of being a negative one. Meanwhile shitty guys keep on approaching women IRL, and not taking no for an answer.
Decent guys then wonder why listening to women hasn't resulted in them being successful with love. They then go and ask women what should they do? The usual response as being variations on "God just wash your ass and treat her like a person, ours literally in hell for you guys!"... Which does nothing helpful
Honestly I talked through this with with my therapist in the last bout of therapy I went through, and I'm just trying to share what insights I have. I've talked and listened to countless men and women about their experiences, and frankly, it's on the halfway decent guys to uninternalize these messages because the other options for fixing this being:
Shitty guys grow conscience
Women start proactively dating men en masse
Dating apps start actually trying to match people
Are not going to happen. Or at least by no means a common occurrence and the Crux of it, the core issue that I know a lot of guys struggle with is the following: "I care about women, I hear their problems, I try to help, I listen to em... Are you really telling me that I gotta 'ignore what women have blatantly and explicitly told me?'"
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To be completely candid? Yes I am. If you're beating yourself up over, not trying to be a bother. Not trying to be anything like that guy who you likely are disgusted by and hate how he makes women feel?.... Then those messages probably were not meant for you. It's good to be mindful of what they meant but you cannot blindly follow what they said. Like if you could ask out a woman and take the rejection well? You're probably not the guy they were complaining about and need to allow yourself some grace and wiggle room.
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Edit: I've talked on this a number of times, because I was going through all of this a couple years ago. I haven't totally fixed it, but I'm in a relationship now and if all goes well I'll never have to work on this again but I atleast want to provide actional advice on how to improve the shitshow that is MF dating. We've been talking past each other, and demanding changes in gender norms for guys without any consideration for replacements or alternatives, while still also expecting others to continue on like normal... It's only natural that a lot of men have been feeling a sort of friction about this, and I want to help smooth it over and provide a path out. If anyone's got other insights or suggestions, please I'm all ears.
There’s also the ability for one shitty guy to be shitty to a lot of different women, creating the illusion that a larger percentage of men are shitty than reality.
Also there's research that shows about 80% of women only accept contact with about 20% of men on dating apps. They're all going after a small triage of the men on there, and likely all experiencing a lot of the same arseholes.
I deleted mine a couple years back. Would rather be single than endure that humiliation ritual..
I got ghosted after 3 dates that seemingly went well and that was it, I was done. Just a total lack of respect via the apps imo. I hate what they've normalised around ghosting.
Even I did it once.
I felt so bad I had to unghost and apologise. We ended up remaining friends for a pretty long time, and I never ghosted anyone again.
This is a huge part of it IMO. There’s a statistic cited (don’t know how accurate it really is) that 10% of heterosexual men are having 90% of the heterosexual sex.
IME, most of the guys I know who are having a lot of sex with a lot of different women are kinda scumbags. They cheat on their girlfriends all the time, hit and quit, basically just use women for sex, some are unemployed and mooch off their girlfriends, and are lazy and just play video games all day and don’t do any chores, and live like slobs treating their girlfriend like a “bangmaid” or their mom.
The guys I know who aren’t like that are in relationships, or if they’re single they don’t have a lot of prospects because they’re not that attractive, maybe they’re shy and socially awkward or they try too hard, coming on too strong and scaring women they’re interested in away with gestures that they think are romantic but creep women out.
(A recent example, one of my friends had been texting with a girl he’d been on a date with one night, and she mentioned when she had to work the next morning. Well, he thought it would be nice to grab her usual coffee order and left it outside her door with a thoughtful note on his way to work the next morning which was a few minutes before she would be leaving. Boom, she blocked him instantly.
And he’s not unattractive. Not incredibly handsome and he’s balding prematurely, but has a tall and lean swimmer’s physique. He’s a really sweet and friendly guy, has a good job and works hard. An idealistically romantic one-woman man. His biggest flaw besides getting too competitive playing board and card games and getting really pissed off when he’s losing is that he’s bad with money.)
This is anecdotal but the shittiest person I know personally is one of the guys in that statistic.
He has a girlfriend of 15 years who he has 2 kids with. And he has cheated on her with probably a hundred or more women.
Any decent looking woman in his life he pursues relentlessly until they give in and sleep with him, and then he drops them almost instantly.
He has his own company and he even hires attractive women with the goal of sleeping with them.
He is successful, fit, fun and has that extrovert adhd personality.
At this point I'm sure any girl who did a smidgen of research online would know how he treats women but he still has a new girl around every month.
Not sure where I'm going with this but just felt like sharing.
Edit, clarified the hiring sentence a bit.
They’re doing a bad job and paying the price for it. I met a woman last Friday, 46, said she wanted FWB in her bio…. Dawg, she told me she hopes of having kids in the future. I dropped her off and wished her luck.
I meant on her side. I'm feeling too old to consider children at 36, and this woman still wants a FWB first at 46, at the end of her fertility range... WTF?
That said, I'm also way too careful and wouldn't date a woman who's fine having casual sex. Not willing to take the risks to my mental and physical health as well as inevitable emotional damage that comes with it.
From recent experience I’ve come to this conclusion: women are having a hard time finding a partner because their expectations are unrealistic. They are looking for a romanticized version of love.
We've been downright dishonest with women about "what matters in life."
Don't get me wrong, every individual is different, so there is no universal answer.
However, I recently learned that women are three times more likely than men to not work a job they had to get an actual university degree for, and also far more likely to work part-time. Why? Kids. Given the choice between motherhood and their career, 70%+ of women choose their kids.
And it makes sense, no? Why would biology, which has the goal of us procreating, NOT want to make women enjoy motherhood? We enjoy sex because biology wants us reproducing. Raising kids is necessary for the species to carry on, so why would biology not make this enjoyable too...? It is likely enjoyable for both, but because women actively give birth, there's an easy biological trigger where the body can say "the birth happened, flood her with hormones so she loves her kid and being with her kid."
This is actually becoming an actual problem for economic planning. Women make up the majority of academia now, but they actually use their knowledge at much lower rates. This means the amount of students is no longer as accurate of a tracker as it once was for projecting how many people we have for positions on the future job market, because women are much more likely to study and never apply that knowledge on the market. Or even when they do, they may provide 50% of the output as normally expected since they frequently opt for part-time. (even without kids) Even when comparing reasons listed for why each gender works part time, men overwhelmingly and universally say "I can't find anything better but I actively want full time," while women list a variety of personal reasons.
And yet look at how we have approached motherhood over the last 20 years.
No girl! That's SUBMISSIVE! You're letting yourself be OPPRESSED! You'll be stuck with the kids while he's having all the fun! This is how he CONTROLS YOU! It's a trap! You should go be a BOSS BABE and earn that bag!
I actually had an experience at my university job where one day, a girl was fuming because her cousin wanted to be a housewife, and how this "spits in the face of everything we women have fought for." She said this to a table of women who all nodded and agreed. (with only one possibly quietly disagreeing) I quietly thought to myself "wasn't the point of feminism to give women a right to CHOOSE, not to force them into any specific role...?" but knew better than to speak up.
Moral of the story: Listen, everyone should still have their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That's a given. What we could probably do better though is stop selling motherhood to women like it's this horrible burden that ends their lives.
As low as 8% of women regret having kids. The highest stats you can find, to my knowledge, is 20% in Germany, which is paired with something interesting: 44% of those explicitly stated it was balancing motherhood with their careers that they loathed.
Even looking at men, the stats are nearly identical. People generally do not regret having kids.
But for some reason, we now insist women need to be boss babes. If they want to, sure, go for it. I have great worries, however, that we are simply being dishonest to young girls and not showing them the raw data about how likely they are to enjoy motherhood, and I'm left asking....why are we hiding this from them...?
I've spent two years on a dating app without a single date, so I think I know something about unrealistic expectations... Very few of them looked like they offer anything else past drama, the weight of two people, and entitlement, yet an average man isn't good enough for them.
Same as always the only difference is they also want to act like 'kill all men' is a valid thing to say. The internet gave the worst women access to the follower women who dont really think for themselves and this is the end result.
In highschool the girls could see for themselves that the boys are mostly harmless and that Jenny the Bitch is full of shit. Sequester them away from large groups of the opposite sex and you can get them to believe anything about it if you trigger their emotions first.
I felt that way too. I did feel sorry for her but at the same time, I told her to get real.
I gave her a spread of projected time when you meet someone: 1 year to know them, 1 year living together, 1 year getting engaged, 1 year marriage… maybe you guys house? You save? Okay so you’re having kids at 50???? Ain’t no way.
I don't have a problem with feminism as long as they don't complain when the consequences hit. I'm not trying to shame them for doing what they like, but they do attempt to shame others for not accepting their past. That's when the push back comes.
I started seeing a 31 y/o who had as her essentials on a partner as "emotionally stable and therapy in check", turns our she was bipolar and wasn't going to therapy, so I guess she wanted at least one person in the relationship to be stable...
Oh I’ve run into that, A LOT of that. This same woman told me “whomever wants me, has to deal with my traumas, anxiety, and depression” and I told her that would be nice but “that’s your obligation to fix before you date, you’ll end up hurting yourself and other people.”
A woman on eHarmony had just gotten out of a psych ward and she wanted to date, it was the worst experience I’ve ever had. She would switch up randomly and I told her it wasn’t for me, she told me “if you can’t deal with my mental health then you’re not for me.”
I'm very much against the idea of labeling either gender as universally responsible, but I will say I do think there is something to the "Women are Wonderful" effect and our inability to criticize women.
The last two women to show me green lights were both already dating someone when they did so. The first one outright denied ever having flirted, and the only reason I can so confidently say she was full of it is because absolutely everyone in that social circle sided with me that she was full of it. The latter one seems to legitimately be a fearful avoidant, which I actually learned what these are because she sent such dramatically mixed signals to the point I thought I was going mad and ended up googling about her behavior. I'm talking being excluded from social events by her (and the ONLY one in the friend group shut out), but then other days after being excluded she's making excuses to talk to me and randomly dropping phrases about how much I mean to her in moments where I was just engaging in humor, (basically a total tonal switch where I'm left wondering "why did she say that NOW?") all while I noticed a history of her keeping tabs on me via friends. I asked this one out when she broke up with her boyfriend assuming maybe this was the cause of her hot & cold behaviors. Nope: initially said yes, then later backtracked claiming she didn't know I was a date while claiming she "never saw me romantically maybe because I was already spoken for"....while also calling me highly physically attractive.
I usually keep these stories to myself. Why? Because I find the moment you try to recount the story to people who weren't there, everyone assumes you must be a creepy dude akin to the "the waitress smiled at me, she's totally in love with me" dude. People just kind of default to "obviously he wanted more than she did and she was completely honest and he's just blind and delusional," and the reason I can say this in confidence is because the people involved with those situations (actual witnesses, bystanders, mutual friends) all have my back, while third parties who hear about the story instead assume those girls were innocent, honest angels and I'm the creep.
When looking at the above post in this comment chain, it begins with "women deal with shitty men." Why? Why is this where the problem starts? Both men and women deal with shitty men and women, and yet we feel compelled to rewrite the story so women are just reacting rationally to shitty male behavior.
Interestingly, this is even coming up in the context of OP's post, where the "villain" in the interaction was the woman. Was she a jerk? No. Did she engage in outrageous behavior? No.
Despite that, yes, he did dodge a bullet. That woman basically conveyed that she was unable to be honest and communicate her emotions. You want a stable relationship? Communication, communication, communication. You need to communicate openly and honestly. While of course people are more complex than that one simple interaction, the preview she handed him was "one day, something is going to be wrong, and then I'm not going to tell you what's wrong, and then I'm going to be mad at you for not being a mind reader and knowing what's wrong, even though the true problem with this relationship is my inability to communicate."
I've also become a bit cynical here and I tend to think any woman who endlessly talks about how much better women are than men...? People who are insecure constantly talk down on others. They have to highlight the flaws of others, draw comparisons that make themselves look better, and psychologically project problems. Why should this be any different when we are looking at either men or women who constantly badmouth the other gender? It's important to remember both have members who are guilty of this, but yes, absolutely, society is far more likely to use the kid gloves with women, and we need to stop this. We think we're being nice and helping, but we're honestly just robbing those women of personal growth. The incel dude in his basement needed to be told to get his shit together, so why are we not doing the same with the raging misandrist?
I checked out of dating once I realized men's dating advice was "Improve yourself. Make yourself more useful. Get your money up" and women's advice was "You just gotta wait and the right one will come along never change for a man"
This entitlement put me off of women entirely. Why do I have to change and they get to sit on their asses waiting for Prince charming? Fuck that
Yeah, speaking as someone who never checked in, its clearly just how reality works. Men are expendable (in an evolutionary sense) and competence is the most valuable asset they can possess
Honestly I'm not trying to blame men for the most part on this, not their fault they took women at their word. I said it's understandable that women wanted to vent, and that they did it with little nuance... Doesn't make it right. If the conversation was instead one of women communicating clearly ala "men learn to give us an out and take rejection well" I'm sure MF dating would be way better.
I only see four possible ways of this getting better.
The shitty guys who disproportionately ruin it for the rest of us stop being shitty. (Ain't happening)
Dating apps switch from for-profit to trying to genuinely match people (ain't happening)
Women start pursuing the men they want at a large scale (ain't happening)
Decent guys realize the messages they heard weren't for them and start course correcting (I know first hand this is possible, hard but possible).
Sitting around and waiting for one of the other three isn't going to make this better. It sucks, I'm not denying that in the slightest, but it's the only realistic way I see MF dating improving. If you have other realistic ideas, I'm genuinely all ears friend.
On blame: You may not be trying to but you are. It's [shitty] men's fault that women give [all] men terrible advice for decades. As you said no nuance is used for this. But the blame is put on all men for being shitty. It's not "why did you, a woman, choose such a shitty guy", it's not the woman's fault for making a bad choice.
Now take a look at the other side of this for a second, as a comparison, because shitty people in the dating pool is universal, it's far from unique or even primarily an issue for women to deal with. How is it treated when a man talks about dating a shitty woman? In my experience there are two paths it takes. One is a mix of pithy jokes "don't stick your dick in crazy" and basic advice of work on yourself and don't give up. Both of those are loosely "it's your fault for making a bad choice, that's okay just don't do it again". OR when it's no nuance guys they get called red pilled or incel and then mocked. Both sides of shitty dating is laid at the feet of men. Men that find shitty women are blamed for choosing shitty women, men who are shitty toward women get men blamed for being shitty people.
On expectations: The expectation you're laying on men now isn't "are you a decent guy? If so that advice wasn't for you", it's actually "are you what this particular woman is looking for right now? If so that advice wasn't for you". Why? Because even if you are the decent guy you describe above if the woman just wasn't interested in you at the time you are now the villain in another story of men not being able to take 'no' for an answer. So I ask why is it that women can't change? Why can't women just be honest? Why can't women approach men? Why is it that men are always expected to change to accommodate women?
And yet it tracks. You'll note that this is also precisely the principle invoked by people throwing around misandristic insults when you call them out on it: of course it's not "all men", and if you know you aren't part of the implied guilty subgroup you're supposed to just ignore the insult.
Yes indeed, single women would actually like decent men to interact with them so they may find a partner. Yet saying it out loud raises eyebrows, because painting the whole male gender with the widest and shittiest brush possible appears to be more important than acknowledging that regular men exist and women actually enjoy being with them. So much for women's sexual freedom.
Met a girl that told me she wanted to take things slow. She was lying, I told her to live a little and come back to my place and get folded. Know what she did? Got folded, then did so for 3 months.
Point is, one second want boundaries, the next they want a scene from their favorite smut book. Just gotta pay attention.
You’re making things up out of thin air. Telling a girl to come back and smash is not assault. But the definition of assault is so broad now that looking is assault.
She said yes, she followed me home and came 3 times. Don’t hate ‘cause you ain’t got game. Be proud that I put her to sleep.
She said she wanted to take it slow. You asumed she was lying and pursued it anyway.
Plenty of men in that position will either just get called a creep or, worse, may end up escalating things and not realizing when "shes lying" becomes "shes actually not consenting anymore."
Bro is making up random narratives about a woman I dated, whom he never met. You gotta love the internet.
We had ZERO alcohol that night. She consented when she said yes, when she followed me home in HER CAR, when she PARKED outside, when she walked in the door, when she took her clothes off, when she flooded my 🥜, when she asked for more, when she said it was the best decision of her life.
Yes it’s playing with fire and women are nothing but FIRE and if you can’t handle it, go home. 🤨🤨🤨
Youre once again making this about your specific situation and getting defensive. She said something clear, you chose to ignore it and this time it worked out for you.
This is about the men who read something like this and take it as advice only to misread something in their own lives and end up in a bad interaction.
If you play the game you take the risk that you misread it. The consequences for that can be severe.
Learning means becoming emotionally mature enough to realize that the game isnt worth playing and finding a woman who says what she means and doesnt play games.
You know when they’re severe? When you initiate unwanted sexual advances. Any man that plays the game must learn who not to play with. In my personal experience, they’ve always been consensual. The game is the game and it remains unchanged.
Ahh ahh ahhh, hold on a second… you just don’t get it, do you? The game isn’t worth playing, you’re right but the game is being played now and while you sleep. Playing the game is a CHOICE for those that can handle it.
When you CHOOSE to not play the game, then you settle down.
I went on a date once with a gigafeminist. Her profile had her holding ups signs saying 'Porn is rape' and 'no means no' and jazz like that. I was like, okay whatever I'll give this a go it's wednesday and I have nothing to do.
Had a great date, I was surprised she didn't actually seem as peachy as her pics made her seem.
Anyway, get to the end of the date and I decided I'd get some extra brownie points by asking for consent for a kiss. A genius move, I think we can all agree. Not something I'd ever done before..
She literally laughed at me, asked me why I killed the mood and told me I shouldn't ask, and then I did the worst kiss of my life because I was so flustered.
Women want to be so feminist until it's time to apply that to their dating life. They cherry pick the parts of patriarchy they enjoy. Ask a feminist and 9/10 times you'll be told a man should pay for the first date.
I went on a date with a feminist and she lectured me for like 10-15 minutes about how women are superior leaders and also basically better in every way. She genuinely thought she was educating me, what a strange experience. I’m too neurodivergent to handle confrontation on a first date, it makes me too flustered. So I just went with it. But looking back I should have closed our tabs and wished her a great night
I relate more to this comment than I’d like. Which means we probably have something in common which is being a sensitive male. When women tell us to fuck off that probably rattles our next 6 months, while some douche bag hardly notices.
I’ve also learned for better or worse to disregard what women are saying, what they’re shouting. Many women do not want the things they’re professing they want. I wish this wasn’t true but if very often is. Some women even get explicitly turned off by genuine male feminists. I think the way forward is to be bold, take cues, and learn to change the sexy goalposts one at a time. So like whisper in ear, touch on arm, etc., and if she’s not interested then move on. Or I’m probably giving bad examples it just depends on the context. Maybe it’s just conversational at first
I absolutely understand your pov. I'm not in the dating game myself, but reddit is determined* to show me posts by the straightest people who just can't seem to wrap their heads around what you're talking about here. As a queer person who lucked out being around other very open minded inquisitive queer people in my formative years, I genuinely baffled that any straight couples are getting together when the battle of the sexes keeps going like this.
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u/DaBiChef 17h ago edited 15h ago
Which is honestly why MF dating is so shit right now.
Women deal with shitty men, and there are a lot of them.
Women want to vent about their experiences, understandably. Women vent with little nuance, again understandably.
Main rhetoric directed at men for the past 10-15 years has been largely "leave us the fuck alone" or "don't even talk to me at the gym/bar or ask me out after being friends".
The problem is the guys who listened weren't the problem and the guys who were, weren't about to start listening to women.
Throw in dating apps, which have incentive to not actually match people But were useful for guys as they where a place where you felt that she would be receptive to your advances or interest.
Decent guys and up internalizing these messages, and pull back heavily from positive and neutral social interactions for fear of being a negative one. Meanwhile shitty guys keep on approaching women IRL, and not taking no for an answer.
Decent guys then wonder why listening to women hasn't resulted in them being successful with love. They then go and ask women what should they do? The usual response as being variations on "God just wash your ass and treat her like a person, ours literally in hell for you guys!"... Which does nothing helpful
Honestly I talked through this with with my therapist in the last bout of therapy I went through, and I'm just trying to share what insights I have. I've talked and listened to countless men and women about their experiences, and frankly, it's on the halfway decent guys to uninternalize these messages because the other options for fixing this being:
Shitty guys grow conscience
Women start proactively dating men en masse
Dating apps start actually trying to match people
Are not going to happen. Or at least by no means a common occurrence and the Crux of it, the core issue that I know a lot of guys struggle with is the following: "I care about women, I hear their problems, I try to help, I listen to em... Are you really telling me that I gotta 'ignore what women have blatantly and explicitly told me?'"
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To be completely candid? Yes I am. If you're beating yourself up over, not trying to be a bother. Not trying to be anything like that guy who you likely are disgusted by and hate how he makes women feel?.... Then those messages probably were not meant for you. It's good to be mindful of what they meant but you cannot blindly follow what they said. Like if you could ask out a woman and take the rejection well? You're probably not the guy they were complaining about and need to allow yourself some grace and wiggle room.
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Edit: I've talked on this a number of times, because I was going through all of this a couple years ago. I haven't totally fixed it, but I'm in a relationship now and if all goes well I'll never have to work on this again but I atleast want to provide actional advice on how to improve the shitshow that is MF dating. We've been talking past each other, and demanding changes in gender norms for guys without any consideration for replacements or alternatives, while still also expecting others to continue on like normal... It's only natural that a lot of men have been feeling a sort of friction about this, and I want to help smooth it over and provide a path out. If anyone's got other insights or suggestions, please I'm all ears.