I just want to vent a bit - I started seeing someone a few weeks ago. Old fling that I ran into through some friends that got rekindled, and I was excited that it seemed like more than just casual hookups this time. But there were some yellow flags I ignored that turned out to be red flags, and now I’m feeling frustrated and hurt.
Dude for real dropped the line that men are more “capable” and “logical” on me. That gender studies are “indoctrination.” I told him we should probably stop seeing each other if that’s really what he thinks. It wouldn’t be logical for me to keep seeing someone that thinks lesser of me, now, would it?
I’m grateful to have some guy friends that I turned to after I left, cuz I wanted to go into “fuck all men” mode, but I know it’s not true or helpful. Just like there are women out there that have internalized misogyny, there’s feminist men, enbies, etc. We’re all just people and we’re not monoliths beholden to differences in biology. This is just sexist, manosphere bullshit in particular
Anyway. I’m still feeling angry and wanted to put it out there for some support and solidarity. Anyone have a recent win they’d like to share or something?
ETA: Thank you so much for the conversation y’all! I’ve been trying to keep up but I gotta get some sleep. I’ll check in later but hope everyone has a good day. Keep up the empowerment! 💜
I don’t know where they get this idea that treating women as lesser is somehow attractive*. I had one once tell me that I was lucky to have a pretty face because my body would put most men off, and then he expected to get laid. Like, what? My dude that is not how any of this works.
But experiences like this help us learn to spot those red flags earlier. And frankly it can also be a self-esteem boost, like you clearly respect yourself enough to have kicked this guy to the curb and that’s something to feel great about! You know you’re worthy of better and that you didn’t bring this on yourself. Meanwhile he’s just got another in probably a long line of romantic failures that are entirely of his own doing.
Have to admit, and I don’t mean to pry, but I am SO curious how he responded when you laid it out logically for him like that.
Anyway, solidarity. So much solidarity.
* well ok, I do know. but it’s very very silly.
A lot of the PUA routine is about putting women down, so they think saying that sort of shit is cool.
Quite simply, men like this are not looking for a partner, they are looking for a servant they can fuck.
They have not progressed past adolescent dominance games.
Good on Op for walking away.
Amen to that.
Or they are just looking for a repository for their negative feelings. Their own personal dumping ground, if you will. It’s great that these men (and it’s not just men) expose themselves with flat footed negging early on.
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This reads like incel copypasta.
It is over the top but unfortunately i have seen it with my old friends and certainly coworkers. Especially the really lonely desperate women all flock to the louder, flamboyent type men. I think it is simply that they want someone who gives them attention, loudly. This way they feel loved and everyone knows that they are loved, unfortunately everyone else can see these men for what they are.
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One key to understanding the relationship success of coal-rolling MAGA idiots is that women are not automatically more intelligent, aware, mature or sensitive themselves. Some may find they’re unhappy with a partner like that but it’s just as likely they prefer it because they are the same way themselves.
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Yeah but those women tend to be just as terrible
Have you considered that you might suffer a bit of confirmation bias? Honest question, not trying to put you down. I just don’t see lots of those guys in relationships myself, and women in my area are pretty aware of their toxicity.
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You know what I see?
I’m married. 20 years. I do my best to be good to her and vice versa. All but one of our married friends are decent men and women that treat each other well. The one exception is a guy who was always a total dick and sloughed off his responsibilities as a dad and husband. Pretty sure he has some kind of anti social personality disorder. The divorce was and bitter. Fuck that asshole. They married really young.
Anyway. The point is, my anecdotal experience is very different from yours. Good healthy relationships aren’t possible with manosphere dickheads.
Yeah they might attract some women, the ones that have some big issues to work on. Nobody who has healthy self esteem is going to put up with that shit.
So what does that tell you about how well girls are treated growing up? There are way too many traumatized girls growing into traumatized women. I’ve read and heard so many stories of women having to sort themselves out so they can stop dating these shit bags.
The assholes may prey on vulnerable women but in the end those guys are going to be on their Nth failed marriage and bitter and never point the finger at themselves.
Meanwhile the relatively decent guys usually find someone and manage to build an actual life together with that person based on mutual respect and partnership. I’ve seen it over and over and over again.
Also every man likely has things to learn about regarding sexism. I did and I will always be learning more. I wished I had known in my teens what I know now. We are all steeped in this sexist, racist, competitive, exploitative culture and even if we don’t want it to, some of that poison infects lur own thinking. It’s inescapable. But it’s also something we can recognize and fight too.
Also, no, half the country isn’t assholes. Just less than half that actually vote. So maybe 1/3.
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I’m in suburbs in Colorado.
This doesn’t reflect my experience at all.
Nor mine. I’ve had a lot of women talk to me about their relationship goals, perhaps because I’m gay so they know I’m a disinterested third party. I’ve never had anyone confide in me that they like the company of abusive assholes. Quite the contrary, in fact.
What I have noticed are a lot of guys who think they’re nice to women, but really aren’t. I’ve also seen men who project a completely fabricated persona to women, acting polite and caring, but being the most vicious untrustworthy backstabbers in the room – e.g., being extremely polite and civil to the woman, but then telling me they can’t wait to get into her pants, etc., the moment she’s out of earshot.
This, especially the first part, seems relevant. Like “I tip the starbucks girl every time why won’t she go out with me?” is a sad, common, energy. (Because she’s at work my dude. She has to be nice to you.)
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Exactly my experience though from the other kind of gay perspective. I’ll also add, a lot of the women who like assholes are abuse victims already. When you’re an abuse victim the early stages of abuse are comfortable and familiar. Add in things like love bombing and the thing with assholes often bring far more comfortable making moves
I want to stress for anyone finding themselves in this pattern, healing is possible and there are often free or low cost services, especially with telehealth now more widely available and experts weighing in on social media
I am an abuse victim, but I’ve had therapy on and off and have been in school for psych the last few years, throwing myself into understanding through as many outlets as possible. I may have fallen for this shit ten years ago. Now look at me slappin this shit down 😤
And communities like this are so important, too! Building support groups so you aren’t isolated and being gaslit into further trauma.
Yeah I really second this. Being polyamorous and knowing most of my relationships won’t be lifelong I try to leave every partner better than I found her. I had an ex that was uncomfortable with the lack of abuse and sometimes lashed out over it, it was hard and contributed to the death of the relationship but she was healing, it was just a slow process. I’m currently in a long term relationship with a woman who grew up in an abusive household and married an abusive man as a teenager. But she’s currently married to a kind and wonderful man and she seems to think I’m also very good for her.
And then there’s me, I have cptsd from my childhood but am happily married to someone who treats me right. Any reader who thinks they’re alone probably knows people who once were in this cycle and found their way out long enough ago that you don’t even realize they were there. And you aren’t beyond healing, nobody is.
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It’s interesting, I’m sure you’re right that this does work on some people and I have no evidence to suggest you’re lying about having personally seen it a lot. But as with other commenters, this just isn’t my experience at all. Thinking about my straight female friends, I can’t recall anyone going for a guy who even remotely resembles this. And thinking about my straight male friends, obviously none of them are like this at all otherwise they wouldn’t be my friends.
For what it’s worth, I grew up super working class poor (dad worked down a coal mine) and a lot of my oldest friends are still in similar situations. Nowadays I also know a lot of quite well off middle class folks. But neither group would put up with this kind of behaviour from partners / friends / themselves. Whatever the difference is with your friend group, I don’t think it’s that.
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I’ve seen it. Not in that rigidness but I’ve seen a lot of women cling to idiots for too long (sometimes bizarre stories). There’s some truth to that post.
I’m not going to speak about humans because that’s too contentious. But anthropology has lots of study of primate partner selection and genetic outcomes. Were they measure based on reproductive success. If you look at the genetic data, you’ll see that there is a bimodal approach to sexual selection in primates.
The old trope is: males maximize the reproductive success by having a diverse set of partners, and investing in only a few. Females maximize the reproductive success by having relatively few partners and maximizing investment in a few offspring. But in both scenarios diversifying the genetic material gives you a higher probability of a successful outcome. Interestingly in primates teste size is directly related to the promiscuity of the species. So bonobos have very large testes, and orangutan’s relatively small testes. Because they have less sperm competition.
If this kind of research interest you, I highly recommend taking a look at an anthropology primate sexual selection course, or at least the reading for one.
So where people get into a lot of contentious trouble is humans have opinions, and the research done on primates does not necessarily correlate with the behavior of humans, and it’s easy to take some research and make broad sweeping generalizations about behavior and etc.
So this is where applying the bimodal sexual incentives, the manosphere latched on and said, it maximizes the reproductive success of a female to find a stable social partner, but to get diverse hybridized genes from short-term sexual partners. i.e. the abd boy attraction is due to this bimodal sexual preference. I have no idea if this actually applies to humans, it’s an interesting theory, but no research ethics board is ever going to allow for a study on this.
Interestingly there were species of birds that were thought to be monogamous, but with the advent of cheap genetic testing, proved that the bird species followed this bimodal sexual model even though they had a nominal social partner. Super interesting data
Where are you picking up that kind of lingo for human interactions, friend? Maybe it’s just a quirk of yours, but I only ever see this kind of language from incels and incel circles, and it’s not just the “mate” line, but the whole of your post
So I’ll opine. You’re seeing something that’s confirming to a preconceived notion. Not gonna say there are no women who don’t like their bad boys or actually toxic people–god knows I know some of those women–but it is hardly the standard, and your anecdotal accounts mean you’re subject to things like social class and circles, culture, and region. Besides that, it could still be plainly untrue what you see, but its possible you are only even registering the women who fit this idea. There could be 20 women in happy, healthy relationships, but you’re not thinking about them. You’re only considering the woman in a toxic relationship, and when you try and recall the dynamics you know, only thos come to mind
This is fairly common mindset for incels, red-pillers, that whole group. They’ll talk about how easy it is for women to have sex, but it’s because their idea of women is already “something to have sex in”, so they’re not open to the idea that there are plenty of women who do struggle with dating
And besides that, who are you to judge the men they’re with? You say they’ll avoid 10 awesome dudes for [cavalcade of generic reactionary insults], but are those 10 dudes really awesome? You’re not dating them, nor do you have a woman’s lived experience to watch out for certain yellow or red flags that those men may clearly be displaying. Alternatively, maybe what makes an awesome dude to you is not actually what makes them awesome to women. Maybe the guys you’re calling bad boys aren’t as bad as you think, is what I’m saying
Or yeah, maybe you’ve just seen and know a bunch of women who have made some poor choices. For whatever reason, it does happen, after all. Women are not immune to subscribing to ideas of toxic masculinity, and we can be vicious about it. We shouldn’t, but we can
Juts try and make sure that whatever spaces you’re occupying, especially the kind you’re picking up that incel jargon from, you think critically about what they’re saying. It is so incredibly easy to get sucked into the manosphere
Oh, that line I gave him about logic was one of the last things I said as I finished picking up my stuff to walk out the door. I followed up with “it’s been fun - good luck.” He had just kept digging in and I told him I’m not taking it upon myself to educate him. He can read a book or two about it
Thank you for sharing your experience, though it fucking sucks. You’re right that I do feel empowered for recognizing my worth. Just hate that it’s coming from mistreatment, you know? Here’s to finding empowerment through healthy means and healthy partners 💜
Fuck yeah lol you’re a badass. I would stammer something about needing to go and think of all that in the shower later.
To be fair, it started the night before and I stayed up journaling on my phone for a while after he fell asleep 😅
Good on you for walking.
As a guy who has seen several women friends fall for the “I can change him” mindset, well done. It is not your job to fix the world view of a person who does not want to.
I remember an old joke:
“How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?”
‘One, but the light bulb has got to want to change.’
I know it sucks right now but at least he showed his cards early and you didn’t have to waste too much time on him.
I love the joke, thank you. I’m feeling excited to move on:)
I’m curious what the yellow flags were. Did he lead you into the weird misogyny like systematically, trying to ease you into accepting it? If you remember anything he said where it might have suggested he had these feelings, I’d love to hear it.
And before you feel bad or anything like that, we’ve ALL ignored yellow flags when we think something might go somewhere and we’re into it. It’s like biological lol
Ok this turned into a novel, so buckle up I guess lol. Yeah, there was a lot said over the month that I pushed back on. There’s nuance to it though, right? It’s not like the manosphere content is built entirely on lies. Like, one of the first things that stuck out to me is him saying that when men lean into their masculinity then women can embrace their femininity. That can be true for some couples, but it’s obviously not universal and is more often fluid.
He talked about his sister a few times, a psych major that I didn’t know identifies as non-binary until he showed me their Facebook page by chance and I saw their pronouns listed. But he didn’t care. He said they were “radicalized” after they went to college.
Another one: “choices have consequences” when discussing abortion, even though he did agree it should be available, it’s just “morally gray” for him. His ex had one and he said he thought she secretly wanted him to push her to keep it. They broke up shortly after.
Anyway, most of the rest of it was just sprinkled in, and culminated in the conversation yesterday. It actually started the night before, I got upset and wanted to shut down the conversation cuz it was all really building up, but we repaired, went to hang out with our friend, and it wasn’t until later it hit me he’d said that thing about men traditionally being the head of the household because they’re more capable “if you look at the results.” I dwelled on it forever after he fell asleep, journaled about it on my phone and had my responses ready the next morning.
Wow. Well I’m sure he’ll make some woman soooo happy one day (I mean, “woman happy,” so cooking, cleaning, churning out progeny, etc.)
So funny that he didn’t see the logic at hiding his misogynistic world view. The point, i guess, was not to school you on logic but to test how much crap you’d put up with.
I hope he actually took a moment or two of self reflection and understands that he himself was not displaying much logic in the relationship. Who knows, maybe he’ll even question one or two of his misogynistic beliefs.
I’m sorry you had to put up with that but at least you’ve learned what to look out for.
Hear, hear! I read your other replies and am glad you’re feeling motivated to keep going. It’s hard sometimes, but it’s worth it when you find the right person.