Originally Posted by
Pendulum
This seems too one-sided for me, maybe it's because as a male you can only really view things from your perspective, but I think you can perfectly invert the roles and end up with the same questioning. Do men even know what they want in a relationship? It often seems to be a game to them, women are treated like a commodity, like a key to a social status boost. No one wants to be the virgin, they want to be the alpha. Look at these menosphere videos and talks, they're all about increasing your sexual value so you can get more laid, but is it for the sake of women? No, it's to compete with other men. It's like they're not even people, they're creatures you must tame and breed. All they talk about is the quantity of relationships and sex, never quality. You maximize your gains so you can go higher on the social hierarchy, have more value as an individual. It's never about the woman and what she wants in a relationship. If the relationship ends, men are free to go out looking for as many other women as they want, being seen as a "player", while women would be seen as "sluts".
What do men find attractive in women? It seems that men want women that are fierce but submissive. Someone's who able to contribute but never really go against or attempt to overrule the man. Intelligent, but not enough to challenge them. Emotional, but controlled. Don't bring your problems out but also be completely honest and open, while allowing me to be secretive about what I choose. It's these paradoxical views that make women's role in society complicated.
You might read this and find it unfair. "I'm not this asshole, this doesn't represent all men." Yeah think about how women reading your post feel too. Besides the subjective, some things you wrote are straight up untrue, possibly distorted by your own experience but not really an indicative of the whole. Men don't love women more than vice-versa, there's nothing pointing to this. There's no general trend, it's on a case by case basis. You might see women telling you the exact opposite, that they love men much more. I disagree with both. You might be right that while men tend to have more friendships in general, women, due to their nature, will be more emotionally open and supportive of one another (men becoming victim of the toxic masculinity standards in society set by themselves in the past), but I don't think it makes ending relationships any easier. Friends are great but are no replacement for intimate love, which makes it all the more soul crushing. I've seen women go through breakthroughs and become completely depressed for a long while, despite having a lot of deep friendships. I've also seen others get over it quickly. I've seen the same happen to men. In the end it depends on the person's personality and how much love was invested in the relationship to begin with. FYI, I'm also male. I just think it's important to do an exercise to try to recognize and address your own biases.
I often asked myself the same questions you did, but in general, not about a particular gender and not just in the context of heterosexual relationships. Do people, men or women, really know what they want in a relationship? Do they really want to commit and submit to someone, to nurture a relationship, to give their fragile heart to another and receive that person's heart in return? To become codepedent, not just two people anymore, but a couple, blurring the lines of individuality. It's a big task that asks a lot of you and can be crushing when it fails, so why does it seem like most are so ready to jump into it. Is it fear of loneliness, or desire for experimentation, or an idea that society implanted in our hands that only relationships will make you whole and you're a loser if you're not in one, or something you just do it because you see everyone else doing and don't want to be left out, or is it something else? I don't really know. Regardless I can't help but think of relationships as a commodity with the way they're generally treated by society. They're something to acquire, the subjective, personal factor, the feeling of love for a particular person becomes secondary. A lot of relationships especially these days are more casual, with less strings attached, more about the company and the sex, not the most romantic and deep thing. But even these relationships are risky, there's the chance that one ends up completely falling for the other, who still doesn't view it as that serious, resulting in obvious heartbreak.
This is why to me the most important things in a relationship are honesty and mutual understanding of what each other wants and expects out of it. In my view, just wanting to date "someone" is a vapid wish. You're starting off putting the burden of filling the emptiness inside you on an imaginary, idealized someone you don't even know, which is already an awful way to go. Real love is about "the one", not anyone, but the single person you've met and spent time with that makes you feel like you're ready to spend the rest of your life with them. It's a real feeling about a real person, you know exactly what you need and not having it makes you feel terrible. That's genuine love, it's a personal and tangible feeling. This is why to me you shouldn't worry about trying to conform to what you think the expectations of the majority of women out there are. Live your life, be yourself, put yourself out there sometimes in situations that make you meet new people, and one day you might someone who likes you for what you are. This "lot of women" is irrelevant when you only need one.