Credit: u/manchesterMan0098
Uhm, having someone care for you is not a “pathological mother figure”.
People need this. Men need this. Asking for care is the most normal thing a person can do.
And then if something is actually wrong, there is a therapist.
Even people who have put the work into therapy need a loving attachment figure. It’s healthy to be open and vulnerable when you need it.
Why don’t they go ask for care from other men and stop exploiting women for it?
Why do you consider such relationships inherently exploitative? Healthy relationships include women caring about men, and vice versa, in various ways.
Besides, cultural norms and stereotypes commonly prevent men from seeking emotional support and being vulnerable around other men. While it can be said that some men have built this system to begin with, those are not necessarily the same men who struggle from it, and this conflict is hard to resolve. Also, romantic relationships commonly offer the highest level of openness about someone’s feelings, and most couples are hetero, hence, women interacting with men.
I think the point being made is that often women are called upon to do emotional labour by men who are often only acquaintances who look at them as resources that should be on the cultural hook to dispense emotional intimacy. A lot of women are fed up with the gendered nature of that expectation because you have a lot of men taking of that resource but not seeing it as being something they should actively be doing too and that their lack of reciprocation and participation in that space is a problem.
The fact that cultural norms prevent men from seeking solace from other men is a problem not just because it’s root lies in a lot of homophobia but because it creates both a category of gendered work for women and isolates men from their peers. Women are often pressured into that role which means if they don’t want to perform that function for any reason they can meet resistance as that emotional intimacy can be treated or assumed as being mandatory.
Nor is it a good idea to lay all your problems at the feet of an intimate partner regardless of gender. They have a lot of investment in you generally and it is easier to talk with them but they are generally ill equipped to shoulder all of your problems because they lack emotional distance to set you right if you are going astray. They often have other investments in you as well which means they cannot always tell it to you straight because if you disagree or react poorly they might lose you or jeopardize life goals and plans.
Being approachable and available to provide support should be a genderless issue with neither automatic expectation of providing or expected coldness laid at the feet of anyone.
Sure, here I strongly agree, and I have no idea who could downvote such a statement.
It’s just that this conversation took quite a weird tangent (as in “men exploit women, why don’t you fuck off”), and I felt I should set it straight with my last comment.
Supporting your partner should absolutely be a genderless thing, and it’s not right to just leave it out to women. Women need and deserve just as much gentle care and support as men; failing to recognize that will not lead to any good.
I was mostly speaking out against the original response on the screenshot, but the original post from that same screenshot isn’t right or fair to anyone, either. Women should not be forced into the psychological support role.
All the battles you fought that day? Unless you are on the front line in Ukraine you should be able to find a more chill lifestyle.
“I dont need therapy, I just need to have a woman that reminds me of my mother and will fuck me”
Ok? So what’s your point?
Everyone can benefit from a therapist and everyone can benefit from a loving, caring partner.
Who knew?
It definitely does not need to be one or the other. Oftentimes therapy could help in the relationship department considerably. Deep hurt is hard to get through alone, yet I hope more and more people understand there is help out there.
If relationships are a two way street, and one person is hurting enough to affect their role within it all there should be no shame in reaching out in that way. It could help a lot. It’s a shame there’s still so much stigma around therapy.I dont think that stigma is going to get any better any time soon (at least in the US). The past year has given me significantly less trust that anything medical remains private; i have no trust that things said in confidence will not be weaponized against me by the current government. There have already been cases of states demanding medical records for pregnancy, abortion, and transgender records, and texas actually got their hands on some records IIRC.
My therapist says she takes a bare minimum of notes because she understands the fear people have of private info getting leaked. Maybe someone worried about that could ask about their notes process during the therapist-finding stage.
I was implying that both are beneficials.
Oh yeah me too. I agree with everything you said, was just adding on my bit :)
I can’t comprehend what I read today. Sorry
No no, could’ve been how I worded it haha. It’s all gravy.
Wait wait wait… You’re telling me people need love? Pfft I don’t believe it.
I can guarantee there are at least a few people out there who don’t actually need love in adulthood to live happy and fulfilling lives.
How do you figure that?
Because there are always exceptions.
Always.
There is a well-known study about this: All You Need Is Love (Martin et al., 1967)
I don’t think the OP in the screenshot is describing a loving partnership though - the emotional support described is very much one sided.
There is no reason to assume that
Not when they see relationships as transactional
I choose a loving, varying therapist.
“all the battles he fought that day”
jesus, stop romanticizing having to deal with life dude. guess what, everyone does.
what are the odds that this guy lost his shit at the man vs bear question.
Obviously the man is better than the bear - all he wants from the woman in the woods is for her to live a life of servitude to him as his psuedo mommy, wife, child producer and lover, because he has epic Viking battles he has to deal with…. of taking the trash to the curb, and waiting in traffic to get to work, because therapy is too expensive, or feminine?
Lmao
That part got me too. All the battles? Your fucking tps reports are battles? The person at dunkin got your order wrong, is that another battle for the day?
This is that meme where the shriveled up dude says “Stop giving me your toughest battles” and Jesus just replies with something like “you literally just have to put the shopping cart back when you’re done”
Men can always care for each other and stop expecting women to do all the work.
Yeah this is something I’ve been trying to walk the talk about.
I joined an adults sports league and have a few friends I call almost daily on rotation (whether they want it or not lol) and I’ve started feeling a lot more fulfilled and less anxious.
Most of those friends expect my calls now, and I get questioned if I can’t make it to a practice or game. It feels good to have your presence desired, whether it’s in a romantic or platonic relationship. There’s an epidemic of men who think that that void can only be filled with a lover.
I wish everyone would follow your example
“Stop expecting women to do all the work.” All the work?
So men should be expected to do the (actual) work and the emotional work?
So what good are women? Baby ovens?
You incels are so weird.
Lol. If you only knew.
I could explain you, but your wouldn’t understand
Or we can just produce fewer of them.
Women: “I want a guy in touch with his feelings.”
Men: “I want a woman I can share my feelings with.”
Internet people: “Women aren’t your mommy, go see a therapist with your dumb feelings.”
Me, too moron to interact with human: “Hello kitty, wanna watch King Of the Hill again? Me too, I’ll get the blanket.”
The guy in the screenshot is not in touch with his feelings.
Yeah, in touch with your feelings != dumping your feelings out of a firehose at a partner who’s expected to just soak them all up once a week, then pretending they don’t exist the rest of the time.
I also suspect that by intimacy in this case the first guy means bangmaid
It’s a gradient, but this particular case is distasteful because the man is expecting his partner to do literally free therapy, rather than work with a professional. It’s more akin to treating your partner as an emotional dumping ground than opening up.
If this is happening in the context of a more equitable relationship, where they both take turns supporting each other, then it’s totally different, though.
It doesn’t even sound like he wants free therapy. He wants a woman to kiss him on the head and tell him what a good boy he is and how hard he worked, while ignoring any problems he might have. I don’t see a therapist’s role as “nurturing and restoring” unless you’re dating them.
Maybe he literally has no problems besides no gf?
Sorry, not sorry. If he begins this with “Men do not need a therapist.” (And many men do) And then declare that the women men need be soft and caring while verbally presenting the man as a hero who fights his daily battles… that’s just toxic bullshit as fuck.
I’m okay with somebody accepting and wanting traditional gender roles, everyone’s got their own taste in potential partners and need to find the person right for them.
But declaring what “men” need and then demanding not only traditional but toxically overblown gender roles for everyone is just… BAH! And the disapproval for therapy, or telling “men” that they don’t need therapy, only a mommy, when many of us do indeed need therapy… that’s just indicative of the most bullshit incel-alpha-baby-needs-a-mommy mindset.
If you’re a guy and in touch with your feelings (like me, for example), yes, lean on your partner if you need to and they are okay with it. If you are an emotional person, be emotional. But don’t demand or expect to just be able to vomit your shit on your partner and they being okay with it and then cleaning the corner of your mouth with a tissue… Your partner is not free therapy, do not treat them like somebody providing a service.
I’m a man and I just need a big hairy and muscular chest to lay my head on the end of a very tough day.
I have no idea what this guy Alex is on about.
He said a hairy and muscular chest! That chest is smooth!
So a pitbull?
He wants to wake up with his face still on
Life’s hard when your husband has a smooth chest 😔
So, uh, if this is what men need at the end of the day, what does this guy think women need at the end of their day? Or is it only men “fighting battles” in their day-to-day lives? Because this surely implies that either men are needlessly making things harder for themselves if women somehow manage to avoid daily battles, or that women don’t need comfort after their daily battles… and wouldn’t that make men, who do need that help, the weaker sex?
See, youre actually missing one key component here. They dont think of women as people. Just baby machines made to please men.
It’s true. As soon as I’m out of sight of my husband I dock like a Roomba and wait until he returns so I can wipe away his tears and give him a foot rub.
/s
I know right! It’s all “but men bruh” but who takes care of women?
I know themselves do, because no one will. But somehow that’s accepted, and men taking care of themselves and stop exploiting women isn’t?
All women have to do is iron his shirt and make sure there’s food on the table when he gets in. He’s out in the real world doing manly things to bring home the bacon.
Every woman I’ve ever dated has expected me to do what they call “being there for them” in what I can only assume to be situations similar to whatever he’s hyperbolically referring to as “battles,” and I was happy to, and they did the same for me which I appreciated. But maybe since it’s just taken for granted that men do that for women (people itt seem not to realize being supportive is a bare minimum expectation for any partner), and according to the post it is mommy issues when a man wants it in return, it sounds to me like women are the weaker one.
Did I do the gender war right? Do we really have to “men bad women bad” wanting supportive partners ffs? This is why I don’t talk to people anymore, cats are better.
A whole lot of people in this thread don’t understand that a therapist does.
Also I guess gay men don’t exist. But would not be surprised someone with such a bad take also has bad ideas about queerness
You are correct. People with these attitudes would prefer gay men to not exist.
As a guy, when I was younger, I jumped from relationship to relationship looking for that exact thing. You know what I got for my trouble? Nothing.
So, during my college years, I spent time by myself, learning how to get by and be okay with surviving without relying on anyone else. It was a farce of course because I was in school, not going to work, but it was close enough.
I got into the workforce and all of the things I forced myself to learn to be independent from literally everyone, was the pivot point where I was able to stabilize my life and start dating.
After a while I knew I didn’t want someone who needed me. I wanted someone who 100% could do everything that they needed to do on their own, but wanted me around anyways.
I found what I was looking for. I put a ring on it.
I don’t worry when she goes out in her vehicle that she bought with her own money for her own purposes, that she’s going to go find someone “better” because neither of us care about what’s “better” than whatever else. I don’t have to worry that she’ll call and say she needs money because x, y, or z. She has her own money she made, that she can spend however she wants.
We split household costs, we enjoy eachother company and we value that we aren’t relied on by the other for everything. It goes both ways.
As things have gone, the line between “mine” and “hers” has blurred to the point that, unless it’s a high dollar value item, it’s just ours. Because bothering to remember who paid for what is a waste of time and effort. Cars, yes, anything else? Probably not.
I generally agree with the caveat that having each other as a safety net of sorts has allowed my partner and I to be much more aggressive in our professional careers than we would have otherwise. While we don’t need each other we certainly enable each other because should the need arise we both know that we wouldn’t be left out to dry alone.
Agreed. Both me and my partner had need for medical leave from work, while that includes some income from the government, it’s about half of the usual amount we would earn if we were working. So, when I was out, she stepped up, when she was out, I stepped up.
That’s just what you do when things go sideways. 90% of the time or more, we’re completely independent. The time we spend together is because we want to spend that time together.
Reminds me of the book, The Missing Piece by Shel Silverstein.
No piece is going to fill you just right. Have to learn to roll on your own before you can roll with someone else.
We read this to our kid for years. Hopefully the message stuck
Interesting concept from what you’ve described.
As I take it, you’ll never find someone who perfectly makes you whole, so you have to become whole on your own before you go and find someone to partner with for life.
Grab the book from the library and read it. Even as an adult, it’s an important message. Don’t even need to check it out. Takes five minutes cover to cover.
It’s like, maybe you think you are the missing piece for someone else. You’re a pie-shaped triangle. You can’t roll on your own. So you’re looking for a circle that is missing a slice. Some you’ll be too big and won’t fit, or too small and you’ll fall out. Some will break. Some will break you. Some will neglect you. Others will put you on a pedestal.
But it you start trying to roll on your own as a triangle, and you can will yourself to just flop over one time, and then again, and then again, eventually your corners will wear down and you will become a full circle, and be able to roll all on your own.
I think a modern dysfunction of intergender relationship is an increase in transactional intimacy. Whether it’s dating, sex, or emotional, I think a lot of men are paying for their intimacy.
There is a disconnect between people noticing that love is not unconditional, and thinking love is completely transactional.
Of course if love is never useful for one of the participating parties involved, then this/their love will fade. But people interpret this fact in the way that love should always be exactly as useful for all parties involved all the time.
But in reality, it should be fine if sometimes maybe one side is more selfish, less giving, sometimes the other side. Sometimes one side gives more emotional support, but the other side is more physically caring. And so on. Love doesn’t need to be perfectly equal, it just needs to make all parties involved better than if they were without the love.
But when you’re very competitive and selfish, and it’s hard to quantify each person’s usefulness to each other, it’s easy to always think that what you give is more than what someone else gives. Constantly having arguments about how you think things should be.
It can easily be a case of personal perception of a relationship, at least my generation was constantly told their only value in life is utilitarian, when that’s your mind set you’re going to assume that’s the only value you have in relationships as well. Again, therapy would help a lot so men can see that their partners do value them outside of their assigned value culture.
I agree with what you and @Azzu @Azzu@lemm.ee are saying, in the vein that traditional gender roles have done more harm than good.
I think the culture is shifting but there’s also a weird backlash to the change, like the toxic Masculinity of Andrew Tate or Jordan Peterson, or the Trad Wife movement, or the rise of Only Fans and other pay-to-play parasitic economies.
I think a certain subgroup of men are willing to give money in exchange for intimacy as a way to exercise power in that dynamic, as if it lessens their vulnerability.
Relationships should of course be mutually beneficial, and therefore are inherently transactional. But I also find it ironic that whether men paying for online dating apps to meet women, paying for drinks, paying for sex, or paying for therapy, it’s all hitting their wallets.
You gotta remember that the traditional gender roles come from somewhere. There are many that detest them so much that they can’t even imagine that there must be something in the human psyche that came up with them.
There are plenty of people that know about the traditional gender roles doing more harm than good, yet still choosing to mostly follow them, in a non-toxic way, because they are what actually feels best for them.
I think the radical feminist push of trying to achieve perfect outcome equality in all areas is as misguided as the rigid, inflexible attempt to keep traditional gender roles completely intact.
Naturally, if people notice a shift too far in a certain direction, they try to work against it, and most of the time this working against it is too far in the wrong direction as well.
I’m not positive you mean this, but you’re implying men shouldn’t pay for their intimacy? You think it should be free? Everyone pays, but in healthy relationship the “payment” is emotional intimacy, acts of service, words of affection etc. No one is walking up to a stranger and banging them without giving anything. Heck even in sex alone there’s “transactions.” During foreplay, I get you a little turned on, you get me a little turned on, I escalate, you escalate.
I mean literal payment, with money.
Women aren’t paid enough to be both your bangmaid and your therapist.
How about if you’re their bangmaid and therapist right back? Sounds like a good deal to me
Women only want one thing and it’s fucking disgusting.
Its a peg or be pegged world.
Por que no los dos?
But why XOR not OR?
Nor do I, that’s why I prefer sexless silence with my partners, just sit there and listen to the forks clink on the plate. I don’t need to hear about her stupid day and it’s not my job to make her cum goddammit!
(/s ffs. Do you people want romantic partners or roommates?)
Between Two Ferns: Dating Edition
¿Por qué no los dos?
Someone who would lay down in bed with me and hold me while I cry would be a tremendous help to my mental health, but a therapist would be real nice, too. Too bad it’s a five-month wait to get in to see one around here.
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