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According to Dr. Greg Matos, men and women are not coupling up very much any more. For some reason, Matos seems to believe that the fault lies with men. One suspects that he is showing off his empathy for his female patients. After all, God created men so that women can have someone to blame for their mistakes.
Dare we say, he does not seem to concern himself with the male perspective on this question. A curious omission.
Anyway, here is his opening:
Younger and middle-aged men are the loneliest they’ve been in generations, and it’s probably going to get worse.
Then he says that men are the larger portion of the long term single. One finds this rather strange, because if more men are long term alone then, logically speaking, more women would also be long term alone.
This is not my typical rosy view of relationships but a reality nonetheless. Over the last 30 years, men have become a larger portion of that growing group of long-term single people. And while you don’t actually need to be in a relationship to be happy, men typically are happier and healthier when partnered.
As it happens, and on the basis of very little evidence, Matos suggests that women are becoming increasingly selective. And that men are failing the test of empathetic communications skills.
With so many options, it’s not surprising that women are increasingly selective. I do a live TikTok show (@abetterloveproject) and speak with hundreds of audience members every week; I hear recurring dating themes from women between the ages of 25 and 45: They prefer men who are emotionally available, who are good communicators, and who share their values.
In the first place, if women want partners who are emotionally available, who are good communicators and who share their values, they would do better to marry women. Their partner choice is seriously narcissistic.
Of course, Matos does not consider that women at age 25 are not in the same position as women who are age 45. It’s a matter of genetics and hormones. These women all believe that they have never been hotter and that they are totally desirable. Clearly, this is not a male perspective.
Evidently, we would want to ask whether the men in question want to have children or not. This would obviously impact their willingness to have a relationship with a women who are 45. Duh?
Better yet, are these women feminists? Did they learn their relationship expectations in Women's Studies courses? Do they denounce the patriarchy and insist that their men do the dishes and share all household chores?
And then there are issues like: do they engage in casual sex before building a relationship? One might mention that women who hook up are telling men that they do not want relationships. At least, that is what men believe. And that is certainly what said men's mothers believe.
Why would a man confide in a woman who does not want a relationship?
And, of course, these women are assuming, as an article of faith, that they are eminently desirable, that they have never been hotter and that they are completely self-sufficient. And what if a man’s perspective does not accord with their bloated self-esteem?
Just because all of her girlfriends consider a woman to be the best of the best, that does not necessarily concord with a male perspective. And besides, men are no longer allowed to express their preferences. They are no longer allowed to say that they want to marry someone who is going to be a wife. So, they suppress their opinions and act them out.
Dare we mention that the Matos equation does not include any considerations of having a defined relationship, like a marriage.
Besides, sad to have to say it, but the disparities between male and female communication style has been studied and discussed for decades now. Over three decades ago Deborah Tannen opened up this field. Strangely, Matos, drowning in his own empathy, ignores it completely.
We cannot say as much of Daily Mail columnist Max Pemberton. The good doctor does a far better job of helping us to understand why men and women do not communicate, or better why they are not going to be able to communicate when imperious women insist on imposing their own conditions for said communications.
It ought to have been obvious to Matos, but it was not, that the women who are attempting to impose conditions on relationships are probably not very desirable to men and are pretending to blame men lest they have to recognize that their own beliefs and experiences have written them out of the marriage market. Nothing like shifting the blame.
Pemberton offers his more sane and sage view:
But are men that bad at communicating? I’m not convinced. I think the issue is that, increasingly, society views the way women communicate — sitting down with a coffee and having a chinwag, opening their heart and discussing the minutiae of every emotion — as the way to do it.
So, we live in an increasingly feminized society and women believe that all men should be just like them. This causes them to fail to understand the way men communicate:
Yet, I listen to men in conversation and they’re not the closed books many believe. Rather than talk about feelings for the sake of it, they tend to discuss concrete, real-world things such as sport or politics, and then punctuate this with snippets of how they are feeling and their problems.
For me, the real issue lies not in the contrasting methods by which the two sexes communicate, but in the different expectations to the responses given.
Pemberton continues:
The complaint I often heard when working with couples was that the man didn’t ‘listen’ — but when you drilled down into exactly what this meant, it was often that he didn’t respond in the way that was required. This meant that, while he may have heard what his partner was saying, he didn’t make the right emotional noises back to her. One wife illustrated the problem perfectly.
She would come home each evening and wanted to talk about her day. She’d recount all the ups and downs in the office and her husband would sit silently as she talked on, except when he occasionally responded by offering advice.
And Pemberton makes an excellent point. Women drone on about their feelings and fill the air with their complaints because they have been told that it’s therapeutic. They have been told that they must talk it all out, lest they repress something and get cancer:
There’s a view that talking about problems — airing things for the sake of it — is good for your mental health. You may be surprised to learn that there’s actually no good evidence for this.
Certainly, men are more likely to take their own lives, but the reasons for this are incredibly complex and can’t simply be put down to men not talking about their feelings enough.
Interestingly, despite women being lauded for their communication style, they don’t experience any better mental health. In fact, they are more prone than men to conditions such as depression and anxiety.
A nice conclusion. You would think that women, for all their ability to express their feeling and for all of their empathy, would enjoy better mental health. The truth is, they do not.
So, put that in your hookah and puff on it.
[Afterthought: One hates to mention it, but one feels compelled to give it at least an afterthought. If we referring to the over-forty women in my neighborhood, we remark that nearly all of them have had their faces treated with Botox. Hmmm. For those who do not live in my neighborhood, take a gander one day at Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Her face has not moved in ten years.
Putting aside the aesthetics of masking your facial features, I would note that people do not just express themselves and do not just communicate by using language. They communicate via facial expressions. The easiest way to know how anyone is feeling is to mimic-- unconsciously-- his or her facial expressions. When a woman Botoxes her face, she cancels this mode of communication. The man who unconsciously mimics her facial expressions does not feel feelings. He feels a basic deadness.]
15 comments:
Look around, probably 45% of the women you see are just flat out obese. Men don't like "fat chicks," they are simply not attractive. Most guys are simply not interested in sharing the "values" of said women. Women who appear to possess so little self respect that they won't even control themselves enough to appear attractive to their intended target.
Put down the fork, step away from the buffet, maybe then men will care about your vaunted "values."
There is a yin and yang relationship with men and women. Men are problem solvers. Women create problems. Perfect!
They did an interesting study where men and women were asked what they would do if they were gifted $100,000. The men typically responded that they could then get married and have a family. The women typically responded that then they didn't need a man. Make of that what you will.
"Look around, probably 45% of the women you see are just flat out obese"...from what I observe, this is very class/income/profession dependent.
The complaint I often heard when working with couples was that the man didn’t ‘listen’
I agree that women's complaints often boil down to wanting sympathy but getting advice. But do they really get no expressions of sympathy, in words or tone of voice or facial expressions and body language?
Ironically, I have found that many women do not give verbal feedback showing that they are listening: Over and over I have conversations in which women reply without any words at all that show that they understand what I have said and agree or disagree. If we're hashing out problems that we are supposed to work together to solve, this silence is a problem.
Emotional women complain about their problems. Pragmatic men offer actual ways to solve them. And women don’t like that ???
"The complaint I often heard when working with couples was that the man didn’t ‘listen’"
Or, "You're not heaaring me." Which basically means, "You disagree with me. WAAH, WAAH."
Can Dr. Matos please define his terms? If we can't say what a woman is, how can any of his statistics be valid?
Leaving gender issues aside, is there any evidence, beyond girls picking up reading and writing skills earlier than boys, that women are better communicators?
All I've got is anecdotal evidence from my own life. It seems like that is all anyone has. Culturally, two tropes suggest that women aren't great at communicating. You know when your wife says she's fine, you've got a problem, and when the husband is in "yes, dear" mode, the wife isn't looking for a meaningful dialogue.
Western women are rude, entitled and very materialistic. And Western men are realizing how much of a raw deal marriage is.
"girls picking up reading and writing skills earlier than boys"
In my experience this is true but misses the mark. Girls want to please their parents and teachers, boys want to do what they want regardless of their parents and teachers. Then we allow their parents and teachers to decide who learned to read and write earlier! Bias anyone. What is missing from this observation is the girls are trying to impress you and the boys just want to get away from you so they can go do what they want. As the boys turn into men this attitude continues, they could care less what you think they have their goals and they pursue them while the girls are still out their looking pretty to impress you. I'm not saying that the boys/men are "right" what I'm saying is the factors used to evaluate them are designed to put the girls/women in a good light while ignoring the facts about the boys and men. When your car/plumbing/computer/etc. isn't working a man will fix it a women will still be trying to impress you about her makeup or shaved legs. They have different goals in life and the girls care what you think about them and the boys don't give a shit what you think. And THAT kinda pisses off the teachers (most of whom are female) and their only opportunity to be a Karen is to report negatively about the boys. And there it is, the raw truth about our public education.
Camille Paglia, author, practical feminist, cultural critic has made some good observations on this in the past. Namely that pre-1970's in particular that women and men broadly speaking had separate domains that they would operate in. E.g. all the women might gather to gab while putting together dinner and the men would gather in a different space and talk men stuff. Most of the social connection the women were looking for happened in that exclusive female domain, it served the emotional needs of the women for 90% of what they needed, namely to have their feelings validated. Men could talk about their issues, in the way that they do, in their own exclusive domain.
The 70's of course blew up gendered domains entirely. Feminism has always been used to invade male space, disrupt it and break up men's exclusive control of it, there is no corresponding corollary of men invading women's domains until now with the trans fad happening. This invasion disrupted the nature of both domains and left both parties unsatisfied with the outcomes.
In destroying both domains women cut off their supply of emotional validation spaces they required to feel complete and whole. They don't want to hear solutions to their problems, they want to hear that their feelings about their problems are valid, that's it. Men are not suited to that role as they are more apt to "provide solutions" which is a waste for both sides, she doesn't want a solution and more often than not he doesn't want to provide solutions that will be ignored or disregarded.
Now that marriages and relationships are freighted with having to solve all the emotional requirements of women, love, tenderness, desire, hot sexiness, proper cleaning procedures, household logistics, emotional therapy center etc. they have also taken on being the repository of emotional venting that formerly would have been contained to the female domain. Nobody ever briefed the men properly to help them understand their new role in the marital domain, namely, you need to validate your partners feelings, that's it, just stop there, don't offer a solution. Men who can do this (Just nod and smile a lot and utter the words "yes I understand, that must be terrible") will generally do fine as "communicators" but they will also actually suffer the demise of intimacy. For they will have taken on the role of emotional tampon for the couple which is exceedingly beta and should be reserved for hair dressers and such. It's antithetical to a strong Alpha type who will be far more desirable to women, in part because any woman who trusts her intuition would know to never even bother such a man with her emotional trivialities.
So it's a crap choice for men, be "emotionally available" and consign your intimacy to the dust bin, or nut up, be awesome and somewhat stoic and avoid the mindless drone of emotional validation and enjoy great intimacy in the long run. It's not actually a bad choice, you simply need to choose to put yourself first and act that way as a man and ultimately women LOVE LOVE LOVE it.
Simply don't accept that the female way of doing anything relationship related is the "correct" way to do things. In fact anytime that the female way of doing X is identified, do the opposite to enjoy far more favorable outcomes in the long run.
I formerly worked on an environment that was overwhelmingly female, as a male in a support role: in other words my job was to help them solve problems. This of course required me to ask the women questions, e.g. "Have you tried pushing the reset button?"
Most of the time this kind of simple question invoked a response similar to "I am missing my deadline, and this is not my fault!"
To make a long story short, I consistently found it a challenge to focus the conversation on the problem and then the solution. Instead most of the time was spent on understanding how manifestly unjust the problem was!
It just seems to me that when the field of psychology was majority male, the problem was the women needed to be taught to be more like men. Now that women are majority in the field, the problem is that men need to learn to be more like women.
It just leads me to the question of whether the field has created the sterotype of "toxic masculinity" today to replace the equally prominent "hysterical femininity" of the past.
Women no longer have a set-aside place in society. Used to be, women knew their roles and the expectations placed on them, and so they could operate within that confine securely. Now, women are supposed to have it all, to be all, and no one can do that, and so of course women are now cast adrift and insecure. They are constantly wondering who around them thinks they're weak or dependent or confused.
And so they cannot function as whole entire persons in a male/female society anymore. They're always failing somehow. How do you establish intimate communications with someone who cannot communicate with herself?
My first wife died of cancer. Within a month, the two women closest to my house, came up and asked if I'd be interested in a woman they thought I might like. Well, sure! Set us up at a local restaurant. Three exits from the parking lot.(Just in case...) Worked for us, and we're at 17 years together.
From my observations, much of this miscommunication could be one reason so many men have decided that relationships and marriage are no longer desirable. While men and women have always communicated differently, there was usually some middle ground that allowed the two sexes to communicate. That middle ground seems to have disappeared and it is men that have to learn how to communicate in 'Female Mode'. For a lot of men, that is a non-starter.
More 'emotional' content in communications is something men don't do well. For some, it opens them up to emotional blackmail or ridicule. (I have both seen this and experienced this, where a man opens up about his feelings to the woman/women in his life and the disclosures are then used as a weapon against them in some future conflict or disagreement.)
Then there are the expectations in relationships and marriages. For many younger men and women (20's and early 30's), the expectations don't mesh, are nowhere near the same. Anecdotally, it appears many young urban women have unrealistic expectations about them men they will eventually marry. Part of it is the so-called 80/20 rule coming into play. Part of it is some women's unrealistic assessment of their own worth - stating they are a 9 or 10 when in reality they are a 4 or 5, but they demand that male 9's and 10's are all they will settle for. (One of my favorite expectations is that so many of them express that any man they date has to be at least 6 feet tall. That narrows their dating pool to just 4% of all available men, because only 4% of men in the US are 6 feet tall or taller.) It's a numbers game and the numbers don't add up.
I know an increasing number of young men, a few in their teens, who have expressed that they have no desire to get into a relationship with women because "it isn't worth it" as it is a losing proposition for them. If this attitude is becoming typical, then I feel sorry for them and their brethren.
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