Truth is the second option one is just a normal ass guy. Everyone has emotions and needs. The fact is it’s still taboo to be a “man” and have emotions.
Like honestly tell me any other option on there is preferable to someone with emotions… She acting like women don’t require the same thing? Gtfoh. It’s not even a bad thing. It’s just a human thing.
What she’s referring to isn’t the same as having emotions. She means the people who expect everyone around them, especially their romantic partner, to manage their emotions for them. Plenty of women do it, too.
I don’t know anyone like that. I do know we are plenty of people who are drama queens.
But that’s not really the same thing as having emotions people with functional emotions are actually fine, it’s the ones that don’t have emotions but do have an awful lot of opinions that are the problem.
No, that’s the narcissist. She’s referring to having to help someone with their emotional needs. Sounds moreso like she needs to work on her own if it’s laborious to support her partner emotionally.
Expecting your partner to be your personal therapist is not cool but it’s also not necessarily narcissism.
Ah, so they key is to have your own therapist, and a partner that doesn’t give two shits about your emotional well being. gotcha.
cuz being an emotionally supportive partner means becoming their personal therapist. cool cool, you sound fun
Who said anything about that? You can share your emotions with your partner in a way where you don’t expect them to be your personal therapist. Generally, it’s healthy to have a support network, preferably not just one person and especially not just one person who isn’t even a professional.
When you share your feelings with a therapist, that exchange is in one direction, you should never have to emotionally support your therapist. That is however not how it should be with a partner, in a romantic relationship both people should be able to share their emotions and receive support, and that isn’t possible if one person is treating the other as if they were a therapist and not giving them the space to share their emotions in turn.
Most things in life are about balance, just because you don’t agree with something all the way one side (e.g. there is no way to create an unhealthy relationship dynamic by sharing your emotions, regardless of how you do it) doesn’t mean that you agree with something all the way to the other side (i.e. you shouldn’t give two shits about your partner’s emotional well-being).
in a romantic relationship both people should be able to share their emotions and receive support
Expecting your partner to be your personal therapist is not cool
I was replying to someone up there who was shitting on men with emotions. Because they equated having them with being a bad partner. My point is that emotions are normal and wanting an emotionally supportive partner isn’t the same as treating them like a therapist.
Who was shitting on men with emotions? I haven’t seen that at all.
wanting an emotionally supportive partner isn’t the same as treating them like a therapist
We agree on that, you can do one without doing the other.
She’s referring to overly emotional men, who need extra attention; guys who can’t handle failure or rejection, who have a bad day at work and then can’t help around the house at all at night and who expect their partner to take care of them, regardless of how their partner’s day went. I know the type of dude she’s talking about and I wouldn’t want my daughter to bring one home. Dude needs a mother not a partner.
Nope this is a list of all the men available, like she said. She’s painting all emotional men with the same brush. There are good men and bad men in each of those categories she listed, but she thinks we’re all bad.
So I cry and need a hug sometimes? Emotional labor. I can describe the full range of emotions I feel to a partner and deal with them in a healthy way? Gross.
You have a victim mentality. You are looking for this stuff and you’re finding it. The post does not say that.
“As we seek so shall we find.”
I know who I am. I’m just reading what she said. That’s the dating pool.
Let me ask you this:
How could a decent man possibly respond to a post like that without being lumped into it, like you just did to me?
They could not respond, just be present at home with their family.
Yes, I suppose we could just become more silent and withdrawn, couldn’t we?
Let me try a different tack. I know I have issues. I’ve been working on myself for years. As men, we mostly experience negative reinforcement with emotional growth.
But if we are trying to get healthy, how are we supposed to respond to that kind of invalidating talk, inside our own heads? What if the woman saying that kind of stuff isn’t just venting her frustration onto the internet, what if she’s saying it to us, in a relationship? Does that kind of talk inspire us to improve or push us into darker places? Is complaining about us like this in any way helping to improve the way men and women interact?
Once again you’re making it the woman’s job to help you improve yourself. You’re going to see and hear things that put you in a dark place. That’s life. Bringing yourself back to a middle ground of contendedness requires constant self work.
I’m sorry you have problems. Not everyone breaks the wheel.
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one of the main points and benefits of a relationship is being able to share problems with someone else and have someone that could cheer you up or to share excitement with
‘emotional labor’ is for actual jobs, especially customer service type jobs
Yea, but if you’re trauma dumping on your partner every time you see them that’s not healthy or fair to them.
Oh so that’s why relationships feel like jobs.
Relationships only really feel like jobs in this way when you feel your effort is not being reciprocated. Doing emotional labour for your partner is not exhausting if you feel like you are equally pulling each other up.
I have no idea who this chick is, but it aint exactly a string of hits for us guys out here either. People suck in general.
Well, if we’re generalizing THAT much, the dating pool for guys is just as bad.
We’ve got:
-women who will go out with you just for a free dinner date, then never talk to you again
-women who are looking for sugar daddies
-women obsessed with their socials (IG, TikTok, etc)
-women so unnatural you question they can still be considered human (lip fillers, butt lifts, boob jobs, have you ever heard of the term “Bimbofication”?)
-all of the above
In reality, there are so many more people in this world that don’t fit any of these categories on the men or women side. It’s just that a lot of the “dating pool” she’s talking about is centered around dating apps. The real world is so much more diverse.
How about “astrology and crystals are my personality”
I was with a girl in her room and when she started teaching me about astrology, I just bursted out laughing with how dumb it was. Basically, what you just said before but 10x worse with this girl, there were rocks fucking everywhere. I’m suprised Hank from Breaking Bad didn’t show up.
Jesus Christ Marie, they’re minerals!
Hank was busy with a PTSD episode that day…
E: apparently I can’t spell a 4-letter word.
Your forgetting the “I have sex” girl.
Having sex is basically her whole personality.
Those women are the worst. Where do they hang out so I can avoid them?
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So she’s complaining about sensitive guys, but also doesn’t want them to be emotionally distant.
Basically wants the guy to do the “emotional labour” but not do any herself.
How to phrase this…
Women’s behavior towards men’s emotions is like…it’s their very very favorite TV show, but they hate almost all of the episodes. They want you to be emotional, they want you to be in touch with your feelings…until you actually do, and she throws the remote through the screen because it’s not one of the very few episodes of this show that she likes.
There are words I just don’t say out loud in any context anymore because of this. “Love” is one of them. One of my exes would throw a three act opera of a shit fit if I said something like “I love jalapenos on pizza” because “You’ll say you love PEPPERS but not ME!” Well yeah, Tiffany; 1 because the word has different meanings when applied to food vs applied to a person, and 2 we’ve been dating for five weeks at this point; I’m still in the stage of trying to determine if you’re sane enough to get serious with, and early exit polls aren’t looking very promising." So I say things like “I really enjoy jalapenos on pizza” and I sound like a cyborg but I’m not sitting through another fucking meltdown like that.
Its just a litany of performative complaints to get attention. Standard Social Media interaction bait. More people respond, your metrics go up, more businesses are willing to give you money to do native advertising on their behalf.
Exactly. Insert the word “woke” into any post and get that ragebait interaction.
Trolling has become incredibly easy on the modern internet. It was always pretty easy, but I feel like it used to have to have more juice, you know?
People used to be less jaded and fewer interactions used to be with LLMs.
Emotional Labor is for the individual to do. If you feel like you need help, that’s what a therapist is for. Do you expect a gf to be your therapist? Sharing and expressing feelings is a normal part of a relationship, but expecting your SO to also be your own personal therapist is completely unhealthy. Everyone has their own emotional Labor to do, why should anyone else (who’s not a therapist) be expected to do yours?
uhhh, yeah, my wife and i try to be the best therapist we can be for each other. not wanting to do that for the person you love seems weird to me.
I’m talking about an unhealthy codependency that can happen when someone with a developed fight-response pairs with someone with a developed fawn-response. It sounds like you two have a healthy relationship where you can discuss each other’s problems with each other freely. Which is good.
Personally, no I wouldn’t expect my partner to unravel my own personal cPTSD for me. I would work on it myself and with a therapist need be. Discussing my progress and thoughts on my own cPTSD and hearing my partner’s is a healthy thing to do.
Everyone has their own emotional Labor to do, why should anyone else (who’s not a therapist) be expected to do yours?
Because part of a healthy relationship involves sharing with your partner and helping them through their struggles, emotional or otherwise?
Sharing and expressing feelings is a normal part of a relationship, but expecting your SO to also be your own personal therapist is completely unhealthy
I literally said that. The difference is sharing your own progress in a healthy way compared to expecting your SO to do the progress for you
That seems a bit hard on the dudes.
It’s kinda exhausting seeing progressive language constantly used to rag on men. I want men to be anti-racist / feminist / LGBT allies / etc. I get that there are a lot of problems with many streams of masculinity and people who have been hurt by those have a right to complain, but goddamn. I would not expect lots of women to be attracted to a movement that constantly complains about women.
That’s why a lot of people oppose third wave feminism. It stop being about uplifting women and about pushing men down to achieve the goals. It forgot that the original goal was to raise the standards for everyone to equality.
A lot of males face issues that women face as well. But when there’s a portion of people basically saying you’re scum for being born a man… It’s very tiring and eventually it starts to feel like “well if you don’t care about me, why should I keep caring about you?”
when there’s a portion of people basically saying you’re scum for being born a man
There is no way of changing these people’s minds, they invariably tend to be zero-sum absolutionists. Any attempt to prove them otherwise will only trigger their victimization complexes.
The only effective strategy is to not engage in the first place, to avoid having anything to do with them even if they are blood and especially if they can be easily avoided.
Unfortunately, this attitude is also held by the vast majority of vocal feminists… which, if you are actively dating, ought to make this one of the first red flags you should be looking for to make women self-select themselves out of contention.
After all, you don’t want to be with someone who hates you for what you are. Leave those venomous vipers on the branch, where they belong.
And yes, this entire strategy works equally as well in the other direction, for women. The difference is that women are far more effectively avoiding men with these red flags than men are at avoiding women with these red flags. Far too many men are far too thirsty to think straight where women are concerned.
you’re scum for being born a man
No people in the real world say this. This is something that exists purely in social media and the anonymous Internet.
This whole thread seems filled with people who view men as victims of something. They aren’t.
A man can be a victim, sure.
Men, as a group, are not general victims of anything they didn’t choose.
No people in the real world say this
I’ve heard similar things from women when I was in college, and not someone joking around or being ironic.
This whole thread seems filled with people who view men as victims of something. They aren’t.
This is a thread of men supporting each other emotionally, and venting about how society largely disregards any problems that affect primarily men. There are a few shithead bigots who are gonna try to shove in their vile opinions, but they’re all pretty down voted and a small minority. All the top level discussion seems pretty reasonable to me, and venting about the very thing you’re doing with this statement.
Men, as a group, are not general victims of anything they didn’t choose.
I don’t think the young men in Russia who were forcefully conscripted and sent to die in the Ukrainian war (or a Russian prison) chose to do so. You can’t just generalize the struggles of an entire demographic and brush them aside as their fault. It reminds me of the rhetoric of women being sexually assaulted because they dressed a certain way. It’s extremely sexist and gets us absolutely nowhere, only pushing people further into extremes.
Men, in general, have higher job mortality rates, higher suicide rates, shorter life expectancy, and higher homelessness rates to name a few things. None of us “chose” this. However, because the problems affect men they’re often swept aside.
You can benefit from a system in some ways while still being a victim of it in others. I completely agree that much more work needs to be done for women and people of color, and that there are much worse/more skewed injustices that they face (which is why that’s where society’s focus is/should be right now). However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t acknowledge the struggles men face when they’re brought up.
If men feel like their struggles are not being acknowledged enough, all they have to do is acknowledge them. I mean, we do live in a pretty patriarchal society.
Men are not a monolith. Many men would like their struggles acknowledged, while other men verbally abuse them for doing so.
Someone, somewhere, says this unironically. If you want to avoid pedantic arguments about the meanings of words, use “virtually no one in real life says this.” When you say “no one says this,” two or three examples of people saying it is evidence against you. When you say “virtually no one says this in real life,” those two or three examples become evidence that it’s hard to find people actually saying it
You are right.
That seems a bit hard on the dudes.
Fitting since it’s a discussion about dating pool. It’s not pretty out there for guys
Cause thats unusual…
Yeah, everyone knows it’s so easy being male that literally anything bad that ever happens to one has to be 100% their own fault.
Not particularly realistic, but people go ahead and “know” it anyway.
When h3h3 wasn’t what it is now, on one of these cases/stories Ethan said something like:
“I’m sure many white males are watching this with their average to below average life, and ask: Where is my privilege?”
And yeah there is truth in that…
Well the average person is pretty stupid, so I’m not surprised
Relationships are emotional labor on both sides
Maybe she should find someone outside those social media pools then.
Social Media Influencer: “All men are trash. Everyone I meet just wants to stare at me, fuck me, or use me as a trophy.”
Same Social Media Influencer: “Five Amazing Tricks to instantly get a stud’s attention. When his friends see you with him, they will be so jealous!”
The amount of “don’t sexualize me” women who then turn around and post explicit and obvious thirst traps is crazy.
The problem is that they’re talking to two completely different and separate groups of men: the bottom-90%, and the top-10%, respectively. They just don’t provide any such context, which turns this behaviour from mere hypocrisy into blatantly cruel hypocrisy.
they’re talking to two completely different and separate groups of men
I mostly see them talking to women, with the message being to hyper-individualize and consider everyone else as nothing more than an object of exploitation (because that’s how everyone sees you).
“Get the Top 10% Dude” messaging isn’t even really about the subset of men in question. Its just about extracting stuff from the highest value targets. It is the deep commodification of relationships.
I feel your explanation is equally as valid and likely (if not more so) as mine, you’re just seeing things from a different perspective.
isn’t even really about the subset of men in question. Its just about extracting stuff from the highest value targets.
Except the highest value targets tend to be the top-10% of men, which is why women tend to be deeply offended if anyone from the lower-90% actually makes an approach - dealing with that interruption is a massive waste of her time and efforts, which can be better spent targeting those high-value men and extracting value from them.
Hence that “don’t sexualize me” messaging - it’s meant to dissuade the low-value truly-nice guys (the non-sociopaths) who actually value and obey the wishes of women. It ensures that they self-select themselves out of contention for her attentions without her having to expend any energy on them, specifically.
women tend to be deeply offended if anyone from the lower-90% actually makes an approach
That has not been my experience. The single friends I know aren’t looking for a Top 10% Man nearly so much as they are looking for a guy who will just act normal. Don’t be a giant horndog. Don’t get violent when you’re upset. Don’t flake on dates. Don’t ask me to pay for everything.
Unfortunately, they’re all on the dating websites, and those sites are flooded with fuckbois, creeps, and assholes. Folks who, very likely, consider themselves in the Top 10%, but can’t maintain a relationship because they are so toxic.
it’s meant to dissuade the low-value truly-nice guys (the non-sociopaths) who actually value and obey the wishes of women
It isn’t meant to dissuade them because they’re invisible to people who spend all their time looking for love on these social media sites. The struggle to find nice, chill, normal guys is real. What’s more - and what really staggered me when we were hanging out - was how social media has degraded her ability to just… flirt with people in public. We were at a bar and there was a guy she saw who she thought was cute. And my wife goes over to tell him, “My friend thinks your cute can she buy you a drink?” and he says yes and comes over to chat, and she fucking flubs it! Just wiffs so hard! Complete emotion seize up. This woman is in her 30s and has hooked up online a thousand times, but as soon as she’s not using her phone she just face-plants.
Its the fucking apps, man. They are obliterating the ability for people to form normal human relationships. These social media gurus are feeding on that negative energy, and people are falling for it because they’ve forgotten how to communicate with one another normally.
You really don’t need to be in this mythical elite to get a girl. There are so many women who would love to have a bog-standard normal human dude. They aren’t trying to dissuade these people. They have just lost the social skills necessary to make a healthy human connection. All they know how to do anymore is hit the “Fuck Me” button and hope someone else hits it back.
Guys who ask you about your Linux distro on the first date (none of which are hard for enough)
> guys who post on lemmy
also raving communists
and Star Trek utopists
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Meanwhile the dating pool for men contains the following:
Crickets
No no, there’s tons and tons of scam accounts that all use the same pictures of a hot Asian supermodel, who all try to get you to buy them 10k of Bitcoin in exchange for the promise of a handy or whatever
I’ve seen her. Her breasts are like softballs duct taped to a broom.
Still would.
Requirements:
Woman (optional)
“No one wants to date me, it must be their fault.”
That comes with other connotations so we’ll say it’s just a joke for right now.
Awknowledging men don’t have many options isn’t the same thing as blaming women for the situation.
Well, that post is a straight flush of red flags.
Thinking that someone else having emotions is work is definitely a major one.
Also I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do, if I’m emotional I’m bad, if I’m cold and distant I’m bad, what she want?
She wants you to be emotionally available for her, but not to be emotionally available for you. Avoid these people, men or women, for anything you’re not absolutely forced to.
I think she’s talking about people who need to be constantly emotionally validated, which can absolutely be emotionally draining, especially if you’re working through shit yourself.
Like, if your partner has BDD and you have to have a
conversationargument with them multiple times a day defending them from their own self loathing, that’s exhausting after a few years.I read this to refer to the way overly emotional guys that cannot handle failure or rejection.
Online is a perfect haven for predators so I cant fault her for acknowledging there are some if not many awful people out there(which are in all walks of life and not just preying on young women). If there weren’t there would be no need for moderators. So okay…Good for her for setting some standards but like she could just acknowledge it with her friends over coffee or have a p2p chat about it and maybe put together a game plan and do more deep dive on how to get more aware of when she’s getting used and tuck that away into her back pocket and rely on it when she needs and not set out to ‘teach all men a lesson about young women to be nicer only to them’.
Cuz if you start announcing things like she did and just going ‘no users!’ On a public profile this is just lazy filtering and airing personal baggage. At the very least you still have to give people a chance not to tick those boxes or get some counselling if you start predicting the worst of an entire group and start getting exclusionary and generalizing who’s victimized and who’s predatory based on age and gender like this.
People calling the effort you put in to support your partners, friends and family “emotional labor” are either blatantly misinformed or people who want a pass on not giving a shit about their “close ones”.
Emotional labor, as a term, was created to explain the difficulties and effort someone has to engage in to regulate their emotions when they’re constantly dealing with the suffering of other people during work. It’s valid, just as long as you use it in its appropriate context. This dumbass appropriation of the term by a certain branch of liberals is like if someone used the physical concept of entropy to justify why they’re never getting out of depression.
If someone only wants emotionless relationships with people they only interact with for their own benefit, and never giving a care in turn, that’s legitimate, as long as they don’t lie about their intentions. But that might also explain why this Hannah at the OP cannot find a good partner.
If your partner has a mental illness/disorder, then being in a relationship with them can absolutely involve emotional labor.
We all have mental disorders. Fuckin everybody does. Especially those considered normal. If you have no problems fitting into this corpo hellscape, you’re nuts.
The irony about depression and entropy is that is actually a pretty good analogy. Depresson, just like entropy, will only cool down more and more over time. You quite directly have to put in effort to solve depresson just like ‘something’ has to be countering entropy for difference to remain. Entropy untreated leaves you with nothing to work with much like depresson.
It works well as a metaphor, which is why people might be fooled to think there might be a direct parallelism without understanding the insurmountable differences between both (depression may be very hard to get out of if you’re in a downwards spiral, but definitely possible, while entropy is literally an inevitability of the Universe, as far as our understanding of physics goes) which is why I compared it to the popular appropriation of emotional labor, which notices the poetic similarity but is unable to understand the actual differences between both.
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Mind to explain how?
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I certainly dislike people who have neat little boxes to put other people in. I know it’s a human thing, still think it’s detrimental.
It’s not a human thing. Humans are natural empathizers. It’s a capitalism “you’re your job and your khakis” thing.
Theres some tendency towards tribalism that is probably a human thing though right? Wasn’t that the main social unit for humans through prehistory?
Social units existing in the first place requires some level of empathy. Tribalism is just selective empathy, not the absence of it.
Yes. Humans definitely aren’t altruistic or empathetic, as a whole.
That’s because we’re just animals. I would say it this way: humans are not instinctually altruistic but are capable of being rational.
Which isn’t any better and may actually be worse: we can be rational, but we can also rationalize our instincts.
Yeah communism famously doesn’t allow for punishing people for intrinsic traits
Empathy is a learned behaviour.
Lol, humans are inherently tribalistic.
Capitalism is actually normal human behavior. There’s a reason it has to be regulated.
Tribalism is based on empathy towards other tribe members. Capitalism, ironically, goes against this: tribal bonds take a back seat to economic interest.
Humans are, in fact naturally empathetic. It’s why we pack-bond with anything with a name.
They’re naturally empathetic to their tribe, but not to others. Tribalism isn’t a good thing.
Tribalism is the root of the entire GOP platform of hate. Racism, anti-LGBT, etc. are all because humans are tribalistic.
Tribalism is bad, but the tribe existing at all is empathy in action. Once the tribe is there, it’s just a matter of expanding it.
It’s not a matter of expanding it. Humans developed to have tribes of 2-300 people, and as a species we haven’t done well past that. Look how society started turning to shit once we could communicate globally with millions of people.
We didn’t learn to love and accept everyone, we just formed echo chambers (tribes) and turned the dial up on the hate.
What you’re looking for is something like globalism, which goes against human nature.
Dunbar’s number is 150, I believe. But that’s the limit for ““real”” people, with names and addresses and birthdays. The magic is, however, they don’t need to all be real: a nation is a tribe, and nations can hold millions. You just need a few real people that you take as a stand in for all the others, and then keep doing it untill it encompasses the whole of humanity.
I say “just”, it’s not like it’s that easy, but it’s doable.
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Capitalism really couldn’t happen to this degree until industrialism became a thing.
I mean, all you have to do is look at all of recorded human history to see that we’re not an altruistic or compassionate species. A person might be altruistic or compassionate, but people aren’t. If people were, communism would actually work.
Regardless, tribalism isn’t a good thing because you end up with ‘that persons skin color is different from mine and that’s bad.’
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Communism works for small communities, like 2-300 people (which incidentally is the size of the tribes we developed to be part of).
And while altruistim and compassion have existed, they’re by no means traits in the majority of humans. Humans are selfish, greedy animals. Some of us might realize this and work to be better, but that means we’re fighting our natural tendencies.
Easy, just go bi and date other women. You still have the option for men.
Edit also it’s unfair to say what she’s saying anyways. I almost feel like your dating pool options or choices are more a reflection of you than other people. Or idk, maybe some people get unlucky.
Yeah she’s gonna have a rough time
The dating pool for young men is literally
-OF models
-“Sensitive” girls you have to perform constant emotional labor for
-Narcissistic (if not sociopathic) insta models
-Emotionally abusive manipulators
-Spambots
Add gold diggers to the list
Gold diggers are not in the pool for non-rich
Me, an emotionally distant narcissistic porn addict: get on my level nerds
I hate that I’m the second, and so aggressively that it’s hurt relationships before
if i tried to comfort you about it, though, wouldn’t that just perpetuate and enable the problem?…actually no, i can’t even joke about it. I’m sorry people left you feeling emotionally abandoned, bro. It’s not fair that you get put under this double standard. The fact is, everyone needs emotional labor. Another word for emotional labor is goddamn fucking empathy and SOME PEOPLE don’t want to show any toward men.
THOSE people don’t matter. The kind of woman who would look at you as a burden would, in fact, be a burden upon you.
You are worthy of love. You are worth the investment of psychological and emotional energy. You have value even above and beyond intrinsic value as a human being. And if you were here, I’d be taking us both out for tacos and/or ice cream right goddamn now.
Another word for emotional labor is goddamn fucking empathy and SOME PEOPLE don’t want to show any toward men.
The very people screaming the loudest about “toxic masculinity” being a problem in men, are invariably the ones imposing it the most fiercely upon men, as this woman is doing.
You have no idea what is meant with emotional labour. I wish people would at least try to look something up before just reading into it whatever they like. This comment section is unhinged.
I think this statement about emotional labour is being misinterpreted and knee jerk reactioned. People are getting angry and jumping to conclusions about men not being allowed to have emotions, but that isn’t it.
Of course partners are supposed to support each other. What this is talking about is someone who prioritizes their emotional needs over the other person the majority of the time to the detriment of the relationship. Your partner is there to be your partner - the role of full time therapist is above their pay grade. And I’m wondering whether this is highlighted as an issue because men are less likely to seek therapy where needed and rely on their partner for this. Helping your partner through issues is one thing but sometimes it’s healthy and necessary to zoom out and get perspective from a professional. This happened in my relationship and I had to honestly and kindly say I don’t have the expertise to help you with this issue. I’m willing to hold space for you and sit with you as you navigate it but you do need the help of a professional to unpack this.
Have you ever had a friend who every time you hang out with and the whole time it’s them talking about themselves and their issues to the point where they don’t even show any interest in you. You’re effectively acting like that person’s therapist 100% of the time.
I had an ex brother in law like this. He had many mental health challenges but everything was 100% about him all the time for the whole family. His likes, his dislikes, his issues, his interests. He’d ask a short how are you and dive right into all his shit. If the event or conversation didn’t revolve around him, he would leave and disengage. It sucks the air out of the room and it’s fucking exhausting for everyone.
The reason people are responding negatively is because, regardless of what she MEANS, she did not say it with any hint of deference what so ever. She isn’t being nuanced. She isn’t painting a line where men can be emotional and accepted. She’s just whining that the available men that aren’t in the other camps are too much emotional labor.
That conveys literally nothing positive to men. Everyone understands lopping off bad parts of toxic masculinity, but people need to remember that men NEED that emotional support, especially if they’re only just getting out of toxic masculinity: they won’t have many tools to healthily deal with immature emotions.
While it is absolutely reading in to it, she is clearly leaving the room there for that interpretation by only speaking negatively of men in genral. She’s literally only shitting on all single men, and people are surprised single men aren’t happy with that message??
If people are going to Twitter expecting nuanced, perfectly balanced and fleshed out essays then that’s an internet literacy problem. Men give all sorts of opinions on the internet about how women should be, dress, look, have sex, etc - I don’t see how this is any different.
I’d agree with her opinion in the context that it’s the same for any friendship, or relationship honestly. If you are so sensitive and vulnerable with me all the time that it’s unbalanced and I have no room to have and express my own emotions then it is not a friendship that is worth keeping. It’s not black and white be a stone or be a puddle. It’s that relationships are built on empathy and empathy is an exchange. Just as I hold space to help you through your issues, you too need to hold space for me.
There was a post on I saw on Lemmy a while ago of an OP asking for friends in a local community because they lacked friends due to a laundry list of baggage and mental health issues - they felt that friendship could solve those. The issue is why would anyone see that and be like wow that is a fun positive person I want to be around, I’m totally equipped to handle all of that. No - the solution was why doesn’t that OP go to a therapist or support group and work on those issues first where it is possible to find community related to those particular issues.
The basis of any relationship can’t be one party constantly being the pump-up person and emotional cheerleader for the other party, which is a role that women fall into A LOT. This goes both ways obviously no matter what your gender, but women in my experience tend to spread out their emotional support needs across a larger network - friends, family, therapists etc. It’s actually become something my sister and I have noticed with our guy friends - they like hanging out with us because we do talk about our emotions, and they feel freer to talk about theirs. However, no one person monopolizes the conversation.
I have another friend who every time she shows up to a party she talks about all of her past trauma. It’s a lot. We have sat with her on multiple occasions but the friend group now has to move her along from talking about it because it can easily spiral and become the basis for the whole night. This person needs therapy in a big way and we have encouraged this. But if the relationship is one sided and you’re not having fun and getting anything out of it, what do you do? How do you proceed if this person won’t also follow through to do the work on themselves? A quote that struck me lately: “Mental health is not your fault, but it is your responsibility.”
If men are getting out of toxic masculinity and are not equipped to be in a healthy relationship they need to seek therapy for help with that. It is above any partner’s pay grade to shepherd them through that alone if they do not also have the support of a therapist.
How many times on the internet do I see “Your wife/gf isn’t having sex? Break up with her!” There could be many reasons for this. If there is a libido mismatch, if there’s something mentally or physically wrong. If the non-sexual partner isn’t willing to do the work on themselves to arrive at a compromise, isn’t seeking outside help, and then wants the sexual partner to do all of the work 100% of the time, then yeah what exactly do people expect the sexual partner to do other than break up?
I’m not arguing there is zero not-mean interpretations. I’m only saying she poisoned the well thoroughly.
Eh, I wouldn’t take that at face value. Sometimes women use that “emotional labor” line when they’re the ones who expect a ton of emotional labor from their male partner but have no desire to give any effort the other way. I’m not gonna try to claim that’s the norm or whatever but it does happen.
As a woman whose had the same struggle it really does suck, but I can say from personal experience it can be improved and there are ways to deal with it.
I’ve been on both sides of it actually and I think I learned this behavior from my parents who I grew up comforting.
One big piece of advice I have is that it’s too easy to flip between extremes here. The response to close off doesn’t help. I have two big techniques that’re helping me here: cbt practice, and pre processing. The latter is basically I step away from loved ones when I’m having too much emotions. Sometimes that means taking a walk without my phone, sometimes it’s locking myself in a room to cry. I get the big stuff out of the way so I can share my feelings while they’re at a manageable level.
It’s normal to be the second. Everyone has emotions. If your partner/ex can’t handle that, tell them to go date an AI robot.
