I'll never forget the girlfriend who when I showed emotional vulnerability grabbed that knife and twisted it in the wound, telling me to man up. More painful than the immediate situation was the realization that I couldn't rely on her, that she was a fairweather girlfriend. Yes I broke up with her and yes I talked to a therapist about it. Never had a guy say anything like that to me. Other girlfriends have been there for me and were very supportive.
Maybe some parts of toxic masculinity are perpetuated more by women and the media than other men.
| Maybe some parts of toxic masculinity are perpetuated more by women and the media than other men.
Absolutely. During the Kavanaugh confirmation process I was blown away by how many women spouted off the "boys will be boys" excuse. It was frankly disgusting. In a similar way, the body image problems that so many women have are very much driven by male ideals about beauty.
> I've cried in front of maybe three SOs. In each case, they were very understanding and empathic about it and their sexual attraction toward me started a gradual but inexorable slide to zero.
Ah yes, reddit, that great bastion of facts and well-sourced research.
If you're a man and you're with a woman who stops being attracted to you because you've cried in front of her, that's a great thing, because you've dodged a bullet, and found a strong signal that you should find a better girlfriend.
I think this speaks more about the type of woman you're attracted to more so than women in general. Literally the only person I speak to about emotions, and make myself generally vulnerable around, is my partner.
In fact, I think this is common enough that it contributes in part to the high suicide rates for divorced men as opposed to divorced women [0] - women have friends that they can lean on emotionally during this time while men don't typically cultivate that kind of relationship.
The only person who is in a position to judge whether a woman (or man) is right or wrong for you is yourself. Any judgement or blame you read in my message is a product of your own mind - we've all got our own type, yours just appears to skew towards one region on the plot.
Or maybe it is due to not being socially acceptable for many generations before, so that men grew up hearing that you should be strong, get over it, etc? And especially the other guys make “weakness” into a weakness, not women, though of course they also uphold the attributed social status to the genders.
