Communicating to anxious perfectionists that they should be “extra careful” sounds like a bad idea.
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I think those are all really good questions!
To me, it seems kind of obvious that he wouldn’t do any of that if he’s following my advice. Those don’t sound like reasonable ways to treat friends.
But I think for a lot of guys, these are very likely. A lot of guys would be convinced they behave in a way that meets my guidelines, but then do a bunch of these things too.
Maybe one issue that I don’t think I mentioned explicitly is: many guys just can’t be good friends to women. It sucks and IMO it shouldn’t be true, but it is.
A lot of guys convince themselves they are a woman’s friend, but they aren’t really, because the friendship is in some fundamental way always hinging on the possibility of sex/romance. They have to keep that on the table forever or else it feels like a waste or something.
This might also be another case where queer people handle relationships better. When you have a friend group that is a mix of gay and bi and pan people, and a mix of genders, and poly people who might date multiple people at once, you basically have to be able to deal with possible instances of attraction and figure out ways to navigate that without everyone getting upset or being shitty to each other.
In that environment, friendships often exist for many years with the possibility of sex/romance (in the sense that people could potentially be attracted to each other, in a way that doesn’t come up with e.g. a friendship between hetero men) and it’s not a huge deal or impediment to the friendship. It’s also more common in those circles for people to remain friends even after breaking up. Because the friendship was genuine, not just an excuse for romance.
Yeah, it’s a bit rough.
On the other hand, I want to focus in on the specifics here:
The people in question are men who are anxious perfectionists and are considering trying to date women despite red flags such as a power imbalance. Right? Or did I change contexts by mistake during the discussion?
Assuming that’s accurate…
This might be prejudice on my part. But I think it might be okay for anxious perfectionist men to not try to date women in that situation. I think their anxiety and perfectionism could be real tangible problems that they should fix before attempting that.
I might be being unfair though. Genuinely not that confident about this.
That was my point though. I don’t see it as unfair to me because I don’t necessarily read it as targeting me/I read it as a possibility. Do you think I’m reading it wrong when a women says “all men are evil?”. I think she just has bad experiences with men and is just saying it generally. Maybe this has already come up (I haven’t followed too closely before) but are you as harsh(?, idk the word to use here) on men for saying “all women suck”? Or do you see it as some guys have just had shitty experiences with some women and are just generalizing?
But also lets say I do consider it saying something about me. Ok. I just read it and evaluate it and see if there’s truth in it. Idk. Like women are saying all men do this shitty thing. Ok. I think to myself, “Its possible I may be doing this shitty thing.” Idk. I don’t find it offensive because I think they have good reasons for why they’re saying it.
the reddit op said:
hashtag notallmen before the whining starts
thats fine as an acknowledgement of not saying all men? ig, but it seems shes saying that because of what I said earlier: women are saying all men but they don’t fully mean it.
as a side note: that comment seems to be making fun of the people who start getting offended when someone doesn’t say “notallmen”.
Mmm. That sounds reasonable. I don’t have much to add to what you said here.
That’s odd. I wonder how the rapist was treated? From Gemini:
In ancient Rome, rapists were punished with capital punishment, including death by beheading or being broken on the wheel, and confiscation of property.
I wonder what was the thought process behind those laws. Like was the women expected to fight against the rape? Maybe they were just indifferent.
Surprised to hear that sexual purity was a concern then too. I always thought it was a religious thing. I don’t see Rome as religious.
This reminded me of your article Attention to Detail :
Good attention to detail requires being good at figuring out which details are important, then paying attention to those details. It’s not about paying attention to any or all details (which wouldn’t work).
~yeah one thing I noticed is that a lot of my districts new store managers hire all have great people skills. my dm has even shared hes a sucker for “good” people. issue is: a lot of them suck.
If you want to get an idea of the importance of religion in (pre-christian) roman culture, look up the pontifex maximus, Saturnalia, lararia, and the death of Vercingetorix. There are plenty of other topics too, but that’s a pretty broad range. Historia Civilis on yt has a good series on Caesar if you’re interested, too. Maybe some other roman stuff, too.
r/TwoXChromosomes: My husband hit me during a fight about his hoarding. The preacher I trusted told me to self-reflect. Am I really responsible for this?
r/AmIOverreacting: AIO for the way I acted in my texts with my partner?
From the post (OP quoting her husband):
“If you don’t have enough money to get a bigger house, don’t give birth to two kids.”
This is not the worst thing in the post (by far), but something I thought was notable.
One thing I’ve been quite surprised by is how little some men seem to care about having kids. Like, not only do they not see it as a major goal in their own life, but not even as a major relationship goal. They treat it like it’s just a goal for their wife. He seems entirely uninterested in being a father.
This quote (of the husband) is kind of puzzling too, like he’s treating the house as her responsibility (in addition to the kids). I’m not sure why this is — maybe the quote is substantively inaccurate but it sounds like they’ve been together for a while and he’s the father of both kids, maybe she owns the house and he’s insecure or something. In the update part she mentions being in a patriarchal asian country and being a divorce lawyer, so maybe she’s the breadwinner. One reason this is odd is that, the way it’s phrased, the wife would be responsible for him and his space, too. That implies that instead of “don’t give birth to two kids”, an equally valid ending would be “don’t marry an entitled man-child”.
As an aside, I feel like a major problem in society atm is late maturation. I didn’t think seriously about my future in my late teens/early 20s and my life could have been substantially different if I had. More and more this feels like the norm. It’s encouraged in many ways.
Do you know the genders of OP and the partner?
I assumed the partner putting together the nursery was female and OP was male but the comments are all referring to OP as she or they and her partner as he. I found some comments asking about it (no replies). Here someone references her profile having an age (55) which makes me think that her bio mentioned her gender too maybe, but 55 years old would be odd for being pregnant. Also saw one top level comment suggesting a lesbian relationship.
No. But it doesn’t matter that much, similar to how it doesn’t matter that much if the story is fiction. The comments/reactions mostly read the story one way and responded to that.
My first reading isn’t blaming her about money. Earning the money to buy a bigger house isn’t normally a woman’s sole responsibility, and even if it was this would still be weird.
I instead read it as something I think is common: putting responsibility for getting pregnant and having kids on the woman.
The sentence is still a bit odd and I didn’t look into it in detail but maybe this could explain it.
First, I want to acknowledge that I have a backlog of things to reply to. I haven’t replied to everything for a few different reasons. Partly I have just been busy with other things, but I’ve also had some issues with prioritizing which things to reply to, and also getting triggered by some things and taking breaks.
I would be curious what you’ve changed your mind about more specifically, since that could make a difference to what I prioritize replying to.
Regarding feeling like “the world is full of more and worse people” than you thought before – how do you mean that? Do you mean that you think that there are more bad men than you thought? (I am guessing that based on the content of the examples you are talking about.) If that is what you mean, wouldn’t that also mean that women are actually better than you thought?
Like, if women are complaining about men, or opting out of marriage and having children with men, or just being wary of men in general, those are things that could have seemed bad to you before. But if you look at it in the context of these women being commonly mistreated by men, that would make those behaviors more reasonable, so that would make the women more reasonable.
Yeah okay I see that now. Like, since it’s her fault for being pregnant, she’s therefore responsible for ensuring there is additional space above and beyond what they had. If she has significant income (possible for a divorce lawyer), then they might have somewhat separate finances too. If she earned significantly more, I would have expected her to make some comment about the toy-purchasing. Actually on that, since she didn’t really mention it financially, he might have enough disposable income on his own. That kinda makes sense, like he see’s his house contributions as for his toys, and her house contribution as for the kids.
Thanks for the update. I’m glad you’re still interested in discussing.
If it’s not too triggering and you remember, I am curious what I said that triggered you. I’d like to consider those things again in hindsight. I don’t want to impose if it’ll take much time, but if it’s quick and easy for you I’d appreciate it.
It is mostly still fuzzy, like more than anything I feel like my attitude has/is chang(ed/ing).
Some specific things that come to mind:
- No fault divorce
- Was kind of against it with a prejudice that female-associated[1] issues like fickleness and hypergamy were responsible for some of the large number of divorces that happen.
- [1]: I didn’t think they were exclusive to women, but more common
- Now I have more of a ‘problem is elsewhere’ view. It feels similar to my pre-redpill views, but I didn’t think about it much so maybe it’s wrong to say similar.
- Convincing arguments: many relationships (and men) are worse than I acknowledged. Also it’s better if the govt is less involved in relationships.
- Underlying opinion: I don’t like that people treat marriage frivolously / don’t take vows seriously. Maybe ‘till death do us part’ is too much, anyway, though.
- Was kind of against it with a prejudice that female-associated[1] issues like fickleness and hypergamy were responsible for some of the large number of divorces that happen.
- Sympathy and judgment around transgenderism
- I still don’t like transgenderism but feel like I should be a lot less judgmental about it.
- Along with that, I have stronger views against the government actively trying to control or suppress it. Still unsure about high level sports, but at lower levels I don’t think mixed sports are accepting enough to justify anything other than ‘it’s okay for anyone trans to play in women’s leagues’.
- Convincing arguments: enforcement is near impossible without making life worse for cis-women (especially if someone wants to make life harder for some specific cis-woman). Discrimination against trans people is real and is a problem in mixed leagues, even in casual settings, and this is lessened when they play with women. It’s harder for m2f than f2m to pass and avoid this via affirmation based treatment (whether this treatment is good or not is beside the point since it’s common either way).
- Validity of some complaints from women / feminism and the extent of ongoing problems for women and discrimination against women
- Complaints like those about men and widely held attitudes, medical discrimination, not being taken seriously, suppressed autonomy via treating husband as primary spouse for important decisions, asymmetry of external treatment of goals (husband vs wife).
- Mostly convinced by 1st hand accounts and things @Elliot has been sharing.
I’ve also reflected a bit on my own long term relationship goals. I think I wanted society to be a particular way (or wanted some easy solutions to improving societal attitudes) because that would make it easier for me (to find someone and have a good long term relationship) and that the world would be better in general. I’m not sure that either follows, though. The pickier I want to be the less society matters since I’m already looking for someone rare and she’d probably be nonconforming in a bunch of ways, anyway. Some societal attitudes today (female empowerment stuff, particularly around education) make it easier for me, too, which I didn’t consider much. But then again the nonconformity might nullify that. Whether it would make society better is a different issue, but with a lower opinion of men I don’t think that really follows.
There’s more I think but I don’t have the time right now to write more on that. I’m happy to summarize my views on any particular topic if you have topics in mind.
I meant both that a greater proportion of people have problematic ideas than I thought (so they’re not as rare), and also that of those people, the average badness is worse than I thought it was. “More and worse” is not great phrasing in hindsight. Adding in implied words, I meant ‘more [worse people] and worse [worse] people’.
I am not sure I think any more highly of women generally, but maybe have more sympathy for some reactions or situations. It’s hard to say, though. I see women as less responsible for some common issues / behaviors. So in that sense yeah I guess I see women as better than I thought. My confidence in those kind of judgements has decreased.
Unfortunately, pushing people to take marriage vows (or romance) more seriously can serve as an enabler for abusive men.
Also, lots of people already take it very seriously. Even when people have multiple divorces, they may have taken marriage seriously every time and tried very hard but failed anyway.
Have you met many people who treated their own marriage frivolously? I haven’t.
I’m not sure why you say nullify. I think modern society has a lot more non-conformists, especially women, than it used to. That seems helpful for you. Like if way fewer autistic or otherwise non-conforming women are put in institutions or called witches, that’s good news.
We touched on divorce a few times earlier in this thread but it was not treated as a major topic of discussion.
How far have your views shifted at this point?
I think that the statistic that women initiate a majority of divorces makes sense. I think it is totally expected based on standard common relationship dynamics. I think that it reflects worse on men than on women. And I do not think that it means women are responsible for a majority of relationships ending. I think that is a common thing people take away from that statistic, but they are making an error.
How does all of that sound to you? I can further unpack this if it would be helpful/welcome, but don’t want to bombard you.
Yeah. I don’t want people to be pushed into it, I guess if anything I want them to want it more. In some ways I think younger people have become more nihilistic which bleeds into their relationships and I don’t like that.
And good point. Most (all?) of the people I know well who’ve been married for a while (so, older people generally) have taken it seriously. Friends my age who are getting married are taking it seriously. It’s hard to tell if that will continue though, since these marriages are younger. Maybe that’s all besides the point, though, in that they do still take them seriously.
It seems like it’s very much an impression of broader society that I’m resisting, rather than what I actually observe.
Nullify in the sense that women going through higher education is a conforming thing (and has its own downsides) and someone nonconformist would make the societal education factor irrelevant. So it still exists but doesn’t really matter. I couldn’t think of a better word than ‘nullify’. ‘Make that irrelevant’ might have been clearer.
IDK. In some ways not a lot of ideas have changed, just how I resolve them.
I already had some conflicting ideas about no fault divorce.
Example: why should I be worried about my wife leaving if she shares my ideas about marriage, family, etc. She wouldn’t without talking to me unless I became really bad (and if that were to happen I think she should leave). If we did discuss it and say we just had grown to not gel very well, why would I want to stay in that relationship, or make her stay, or for her to feel obligated to stay, etc? I wouldn’t. So in what realistic future would I actually be benefitted by more invasive divorce laws or vow-enforcement? Probably none that I want to be in.
Extending this now based on what Elliot said: but in lots of futures where there are stricter divorce laws, things overall might be worse even if my relationship isn’t effected. So I wouldn’t really want to be in one of those, anyway.
Not sure I agree, but also not sure it matters.
I agree with this. It’s not incompatible with it, but there’s no explanatory link, and the statistic alone doesn’t imply one.
You’re welcome to unpack more if you want, but I think we’re on similar pages now.