Most of us aren’t “emotionally stunted”…. We just figured out pretty early on that nobody gives a fuck. Especially women. In particular when she is the reason for said emotion.
When women say they want a man who is "emotionally vulnerable", what they really mean is "a man who will pay attention to my emotions". To quote another commenter here, they just don't give a fuck about our emotions.
Even with my own wonderful wife, the few times I shared my inner turmoil with her, she was emotionally, verbally, and materially supportive of me....except the sex dried up for awhile. Like somewhere deep down she got "the ick". I like sex, so I will try like hell to never do that again.
I don’t think it was the ick really, more like the emotionally vulnerable person brings out maternal instincts of care and it takes a bit for it to subside? We don’t want that dynamic in our healthy relationship — the people who want it all the time need therapy— while absolutely recognizing there are times and circumstances when our spouse needs that support.
No, that’s post rationalisation in fairy tale language. A woman doesn’t find people who need nurturing, viscerally attractive, therefore, no desire to have sex with him. It is a non-rational decision.
Was once constantly barraged by a girl that I needed to show more emotion.
Then her brother went through a nasty divorce and she told him he could talk to her anytime. After two emotional barfs all I heard was ranting from her about how she couldn't handle it and he needed to get his crap together.
Recently, my heuristic for the "we want men to show emotion" thing has been that women want men to show positive emotion: joy, happiness, excitement, passion. They don't want negative emotion: sadness, anger, despair, aggression. A man showing negative emotion simply becomes socially, romantically and sexually repulsive.
The only exception to that rule is aggression towards another man who threatens you and/or her. But in modern Western post-scarcity world, this hardly ever happens anyway. And also maybe being sad when a family member or close friend died. But not too much. That's it.
So, the solution is to just get rid of negative emotions. It's easier to be said than done, but two things that help are getting your shit together (don't be poor/sick/sad/lonely) and applying redpill stoicism to counter the usual sources of negative emotion within the relationship (AWALT / "women be like that").
I don't think that first part is true either. Have you seen the "soyface" wojack memes? They're based on pictures of guys who have their mouths open in exaggerated expressions of happiness or excitement. It's a real thing: millenial men who want to look more emotionally positive have been doing this for years, and it looks absolutely idiotic.
Women don't actually like positive emotion out of normal men, either. You have to start by being formidable and controlled, high status, then release the emotions at exactly the appropriate times, otherwise the effusiveness can be bad in itself.
The soyface meme doesn't prove anything. The soyface reaction is fake, exaggerated and for no reason.
She wants you to be excited for the things she thinks you should be excited for. Like, for example the things she does for you. She wants positive feedback from you.
But if you're excited for things that she considers dumb shit, like your sports team winning a game or something, then yes, she might think you're soyface.
The soyface meme shows that there has been a subset of men who are aware that women want men who show positive emotion.
I said that those men don’t matter to women because they are low status and respond to things women don’t care about. That seems to be what you’re saying too, why the objection?
This, I've had girls I dated lose interest when I got too excited about art and literature or going to the Symphony. At this point I'm guarded around them irl.
Just because someone somewhere made a meme doesn’t mean that ‘women’ like or dislike something en masse.
I get that I am not exactly ‘women’, but seeing guys excited or happy about things has always been a massive turn-on for me. When men are excited or passionate about things they get super into them, they’re really knowledgeable about them, they hunt down tons of obscure facts and it is absolutely mesmerizing to listen to them, because they will tell you everything about the obscure lore of this particular game series or the history of Liverpool football club or whatever and you find a subject you never thought of for a second in your life is actually fascinating when presented by someone who lights up when they talk about it.
Of course women can have this sort of excitement for things too, but overall I have experienced it less often in women. We tend to be more modest about our interests, unless we have ADHD. Then hold on to your hat.
Some of my favorite online spaces have been specific hobby forums, and they were all frequented by a majority-male audience suuuuper-damn hyped about a subject. And it has been a wild amazing ride each time, whether it’s coding, or illustration, or fresh water aquariums, or tropical plants, or whatever. Nothing cooler than a guy excited about a project.
Unrelated but a clip was going around recently of a wife filming her dude as he flips over his caramel flan, which he made for the first time, and he is so excited he could burst and it is the most amazing adorable video I have ever seen in my entire life. You can feel how she and their two tiny kids are totally taken for a whirlwind ride by his overwhelming enthusiasm and it’s the best thing.
This is heartening, but you understand that having that kind of enthusiasm and openly expressing it is a sort of request for others to feel the same way. It’s vulnerable. And they isolate among the like-minded in forums for a reason.
When you start out valuing the person, seeing this reaction is empathetic and pleasurable. When this is just a random person and you have little interest in the topic or think it’s trivial, seeing this behavior comes off less empathetic and more childlike, and it’s harder to take that person seriously. And it’s much worse for men, as a woman can be childlike with less penalty.
Good reason for that, too. Being obsessed with something of little impact on the world means being distracted, frivolous, maybe even avoidant. You’re making flan because it’s better than having a real job. That’s not always fair, at all, people should be allowed to have hobbies and I wish we lived in a culture where we could assume we’re all responsible adults having a little fun on the side. But we absolutely are not, and begging for attention on social media or trying to get a girl who wants a breadwinner to appreciate how you kick ass at Elder Scrolls really isn’t endearing when the context isn’t right.
Vulnerability shouldn’t mechanically gain approval, and I actually respect that lots of women want a guy who acts like an adult. They’re just really, really brutal and surface in their evaluations, and the wojack face is an example of guys who recognize the need to present a persona that’s engaged, but do it really badly.
Oh for sure, big agree on all that. A guy in another comment here put it really well when he said that the crux here doesn’t seem to be whether women ‘want men to be emotional’ or not, it’s more that, since we all collectively raise boys to hide emotions, men tend to grow up without getting the opportunity to learn how to display emotions appropriately - basically, the essential skills of emotional intelligence - thus when they dare to try it it often backfires, which then makes them feel like they were tricked into a trap or asked to perform an impossible task.
The key I think is to let boys show emotion and teach them how to do that in a healthy, mature way.
When women say ‘we want you to show emotion’ we basically mean ‘we want you to have and demonstrate emotional intelligence’. That would definitely include things like knowing when you’re overdoing it, knowing when it’s too early to describe your Warhammer collection in detail, not bursting into tears on the second date, knowing when to hold it in. Because everyone sometimes needs to have their shit together. Women also are not really praised and valued for being puddles of unmanaged emotion, though I totally agree we get wayyy more of a pass than men do. But that’s largely because the world already labels us as ‘emotional’ in the ‘irrational’ sense.
So it’s a weird balance. And I get the ‘being mocked for expressing interest in things others see as trivial’ thing too, it happens to me all the time because I (thank you ADHD) get suuuuper into things and invariably also get weird looks and questions like ‘so why are you, like….. so INTO that, all of a sudden?’ Ny responses vary from earnest to flippant depending on the situation hahah.
I think there is also a big confusion between men being ‘emotional’ and ‘acting like children’. Like I have witnessed grown men pouting, and that’s a no from me. (Grown women pouting is also a no from me, incidentally). Or like flying off the handle and getting super volatile sad-angry about something small, like a toddler who missed a nap. (Also very unattractive in both genders, and witnessed in both genders). Essentially we all need to find that line between being genuine and vulnerable but not making ourselves into a problem the other person constantly has to resolve. Because that shit gets tedious fast.
"Much of the rhetoric around wanting more emotionally vulnerable men therefore comes across as vacuous, because many men subconsciously realize that people (both men and women) only want these emotions at specific times, and in specific contexts."
You're just defining emotional intelligence. What else is emotional intelligence if not knowing the right emotions to share at the right times in the right contexts?
I think your argument would therefore be a lot stronger if it went:
1) women want emotionally intelligent men
2) men grow up discouraged to show emotion, and end up with low emotional intelligence
3) when men try to show emotion for women it rarely goes well, because they're bad at it- and women don't understand that the poor results are not for lack of trying
4) therefore, men feel that they're being asked to perform an impossible task
The blame here is not on women, nor on men, it's on the entire culture that teaches as you put it: "a lot of young men realize that in order to be a functional participant in society, it requires them to regularly stuff down their emotions and carry on with the tasks of their daily lives."
This absolutely!!! All of this. A big problem in these sorts of discussions is that we conflate ‘women’, like ‘women in general/ most women out there’ with ‘a woman’, as in ‘women want emotional men but this one woman I dared to show emotion to didn’t react well so women in general are lying when they say they want emotional men.’
But you make the perfect point - there are many ways to be emotional. Women don’t want a man who is emotional the way a toddler is emotional. I am pretty sure that men also don’t want women who are emotional the way a toddler is emotional. It must be a sort of balance.
My husband is very much on the emotional side, but since he grew up in a very unhealthy environment we had a loooong road of him learning how to be emotional without being volatile or overwhelming. Which I think is totally fair. Now we have a son and he won’t have that issue because he’s growing up in an emotionally stable environment and he already knows how to express his emotions in a fairly healthy and mature way.
It really is society itself that needs to be rewired and I think our best chance is to do it through how we raise our kids.
Great point that men also don’t want women who are “emotional” in the way a toddler is. There’s no double standard- everyone just wants emotionally mature partners. Thanks for the kind words and for sharing your thoughts!
I don't agree with this at all. Many men have the shared experience of trying to share negative emotions with women in varied modes and at varied times and come away believing that it doesn't matter how they present their negative emotions because they will always receive negative feedback for sharing them.
Many men who meet your definition of emotional intelligence would therefore never share negative emotion because they've learned through trial that it's never appropriate to share these.
This is very interesting to me, because while I absolutely don’t disbelieve you that this is your experience (and that of a certain number of other men), I look all around my life at all my friends and family and see not a single case of men being in any way ‘punished’ by women for showing emotion.
One possibility is we are speaking about different local cultures or specific social circles. Another is that we are speaking of different sorts of ‘emotion’. I mean, showing emotion can be anything from saying ‘man this song gets me every time’ to being just super hyped and excited about something in your life to bursting into tears to punching a hole in the drywall, all of those are ‘emotion’ but clearly they won’t all be received the same way.
If you could say something more specific about the type of showing emotion you have found women don’t actually appreciate, it would help paint the picture more clearly?
The other commenter is speaking much more broadly than his own anecdote. This is a consciously and subconsciously known fact known to all adult men. It’s instinctual, we know it’s antithetical to all that women find instinctively attractive in men. It’s ingrained. No amount of social engineering will change human nature, and no amount of higher level reasoning by women is able to squash the primal ick that washes over their body based on millions of years of evolution. It’s the same exact system that ensures you can’t force yourself to be viscerally attracted to someone, attraction is not a choice, just like this ugly yet well known fact (by men) of evolved female nature. This is not a moral judgment on either party, it is a descriptive fact, and it is borderline abusive to blame men for something borne out of female nature.
Attraction is indeed 'not a choice', but it is definitely framed by society more than by 'millions of years of evolution'. If you look through just the last two thousand years of history and across the different cultures of the world, you will see wildly different preferences depending on local cultures - for hairy women with mustaches, soft fat women, tall women, warrior women, delicate dainty women, all sorts. The same is true of attraction towards men - different cultures bring different markers of what we interpret as 'attractive'. Long or short hair, fine or rugged features, skill with sword or skill with pen have all been differently valued in men over the centuries in different parts of the world.
More than this, cultural branding of attractiveness is so strong, that people will often literally choose a partner their culture is telling them is attractive, over someone they genuinely find attractive but who is not socially 'acceptable' and will not bring 'social capital' - for example today we villainize fat people, so someone might feel genuine attraction for a fat person but will not let themselves date them because they know it would expose them to social pressure and judgment. Or will date them but only in secret. Same is very much true for queer attraction.
I will also (gently) point out that, while in one comment before this you were warning me about talking about my personal feelings instead of hard data, you will unironically write a line like 'This is a consciously and subconsciously known fact known to all adult men.' (sic). Now if I say that I have plenty of adult men in my own life who absolutely do not subscribe to this notion, you will probably again accuse me of 'being anecdotal'. But what possible 'evidence' can you have to support the idea that 'all men everywhere since forever' agree on something you believe? This is why productive discussion becomes difficult - our own positions seem to us as completely irrefutable common sense, while everyone else's are 'anecdotal and emotional'. It's a real trap.
Women have for centuries swooned over poets. In Japan for centuries it was 100% necessary for every man to be able to express his feelings through poetry, and this would be more crucial to his success in society than his capacity in battle. The overwhelming mass of poets my generation read while growing up (and swooned over, frankly) - French, Russian, American - were men. The idea that 'every single man everywhere knows that every single woman gets the ick when a man shows any emotion' is..... it's just not a stance that can be productively debated.
It's not by accident that such masses of women swoon over Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice.
It is also very questionable ('borderline abusive'? :) ) to insist that 'all men everywhere' inherently understand 'female nature' better than.... women themselves?
Quite possibly you do not percieve the punishments. It’s not something as obvious as being put in chains or even being yelled at. Often it’s as basic as reduced sex or sexual enthusiasm, for one of the most obvious examples. The woman might not even realize she’s punishing him, either because she doesn’t realize she’s cutting him off or, like most women, doesn’t realize sex is a love language for men. But there are many other punishments. Probably the most common is simply a reduced respect, which is tacit but perceptible.
Also frequent and more lamentable is that many women are not above remembering the vulnerabilities a man expresses in order to hurt and punish him when she feels he deserves it, making the punishment non-obviously connected to its cause. In practice this looks like a man sharing his feelings and vulnerabilities and seemingly receiving acceptance and sympathy, and some time later on during a dispute experiencing a jab right where it hurts the most.
It took me a bit to understand this as well, as I'm a bit autistic and neurotic (like a lot of people on here, probably). What woman want from you is to make them feel good. In particular, they want to feel good about themselves - that they are attractive, special, valuable, moral, etc.
So you should express emotions that make the woman feel good about herself, and not ones that make her feel bad. For example, if you feel attracted to her, let her know it. But if she does something that frustrates you, keep it to yourself (unless it's really important).
Basically, what they mean is that they want a man who takes responsibility for their feelings. It's actually not that complicated, once you understand it.
This rings largely true for me but goes a bit too far, in the sense that most regular women I know are totally happy to hear their guy out and support him when he’s having a hard time or struggling with something, as long as that’s not all the time. Like obviously partners should support each other but also people should be responsible for how they show their emotions in the relationship, and that should definitely go for both partners.
I think the problem is that men are much more willing to support women than the other way around. The big problem guys face today is that they actually believed the "gender equality" meme. In this case, they actually believed that women and men are basically the same, so if he wants to care for her and is enthusiastic about doing that, surely she feels the same way about him.
IMO most guys are actually fine with lack of "gender equality". That's what we're wired for. We're happy to do the male gender role. The problem is the bait and switch, where we're told that we're doing gender equality, but in practice it only ever goes one way.
What's needed now is a positive, constructive vision of what gender roles should look like which isn't promoted by an Andrew Tate type scumbag.
Yes, big agree on that too. A lot of it comes from the fact that as boys and girls we took in the same stupid toxic messages about gender roles, and now that women have discovered ‘equality’ they’re overly focused on the part that benefits them. Which is natural but still creates problems, because they have this idea of ‘the emotional man’ but, like, emotional like Lucas Jones, not emotional like Spongebob Squarepants.
I absolutely agree that chasing some sort of 100% perfect equality is a fool’s errand and we need better ideas of what roles and spaces we ideally want to take up to ensure a healthy comfortable society for all. I think many couples are already doing this, I know many who are very happily and comfortably living far outside any traditional gender role split. I’d say my own relationship is among them.
Basically everyone should be working on their own self-awareness and doing less of this ‘men this women that’ stuff. More ‘when I feel this way, I react like this… but then people around me feel like they have to…..’ This is the level of consideration we need, for everyone.
One example I have spotted multiple times is guys getting scared (nervous/anxious) about a situation and immediately transforming that into anger or irritation at whoever is near. That is something they should have learned to handle and work through as kids, but we didn’t help them do it then, so it’s gotta be done now… same with women thinking acting pouty and petulant is cute. Like, maybe when you were three.
I'm not familiar, could you share some Youtube clips which exemplify?
Anyway, I think you and I might have a disagreement actually. I'll try to illustrate what I meant more concretely.
Instead of saying "don't be a pussy", or "men should cry if they feel like it, there's nothing wrong with that", I'm advocating something like: "Put on a brave face for your woman. Be a rock for her. She needs you to be strong, even when she's scared. If you've got things you need to process, take them to your bros." Basically describing an affirmative, positive, prosocial male gender role which jives with the reality of female biology. Give men a description of the thing they *should* do, not a big list of things they *should not* do.
As a man I find this sort of "affirmative masculinity" is a lot better for my mental health than the "woe is me" approach which is trendy nowadays. I don't always remember to put it into practice though.
This might sound a lot like traditional gender roles to you. My position is that we should study traditional gender roles and learn from them, picking and choosing the parts that make sense. Chesterton's Fence applies here: traditional gender roles were crafted through cultural evolution, and there is some embedded wisdom there.
I agree in part. Sure, modeling positive solutions is way better than constantly going 'don't do this, don't do that'. Kids also learn much more easily when you give positive instruction - 'next time if you carry it like this, it won't spill' rather than 'don't pick it up like that!!!!' which gives nothing of value.
But I absolutely disagree that a dude needs to take all his emotional issues to his bros. I DO agree a dude SHOULD have bros and SHOULD share emotional issues with them when he feels the need. But I do not agree that a woman cannot also provide a part of that support. The fact is, the way we live our lives today, we are very much focused on each other, and both men and women spend less time than they ideally would with anyone outside their nuclear family, because we're constantly running around between house and job trying to get everything done. My guy definitely doesn't have bros to share emotional crap with. I wish he did. But he does not.
But I do not in any way mind being his emotional support, just as I am grateful when he is my emotional support. Some differences between genders of course do exist and are real, generally speaking, but men are not from Mars and women are not from Venus. I do not need my man to 'always be strong'. There is no guarantee it is always me who will be 'scared', and him who will be 'strong'. We have different strengths and abilities, and we can take on more burden in different areas of our life, we can recognize each other's strengths and appreciate them.
I agree that 'woe is me' is getting old really fast and serves no one. Both genders have their version of it and I find it equally unhelpful on both sides. I feel like we forget that while yes, men and women definitely have their differences, before all that we are human beings first, and as such have a whole lot in common too.
Yeah that's fair, my objective was to illustrate the overall approach of describing a positive purpose for men, as opposed to claiming that *particular* positive purpose was important/critical/valid/etc. That one was just for the sake of illustration. I agree that whether you adopt it depends more on your relationship.
That would be fine if there was equal value provided for the responsibility of women’s emotions. But as thing stand today’s it’s just a loss, another shit men have to do for very little benefits.
So I don’t why any man should feel the urge to fill that role…
Great points all around. Right now, when men open up, they're being accused of imposing on the woman with the new pejorative 'mankeeping.' Even worse, their emotions and empathy are weaponized against them because these very women say they want that emotional connection really just express Toxic Empathy: https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/toxic-empathy
I'm feeling attacked by your repeated mention of B2B software sales. Separately, I can confirm that I have punished my ex for being emotionally fragile, but I might have been less harsh if he did indeed have his life together (I was the more ambitious one in that relationship). Currently, it seems like I have to elicit emotion from my partner because he intuitively knows women do this. I wonder if this is just a deep-seated evolutionary thing whereby my being wired for emotionality means I'm just going to subconsciously punish men for this. I don't have a good answer.
Ive been married twice and divorced twice. In the course of those marriages I opened up emotionally on a couple of occasions, and was emotionally savaged in response.
Women don’t have emotions. Just feelings. They want you to describe your surface level reaction to events in your life so they can judge your responses and determine if they are in line with what is considered normal or not.
They do NOT want to hear about your emotions, they don’t want to hear about what motivates you or what matters to you
Your fears
Your insecurities
Your desires
The things you hate
The things you’re passionate about
These are all negative things and if you tell them to a woman she will get the wrong idea and think these things are all you think about all day when you’re doing stuff and you are an unhinged weirdo.
Women do not think about these things, they live in the moment and just want to have fun.
If a woman wants you to open up, just tell her what you’ve done recently or something you saw and pretend you actually gave a shit and thought it was fun or cool when you did. Spin her a story about meaningless bullshit and she’ll live vicariously through it, they love that dumb shit.
My only regret was too young for Lisa Bonet 🔥 But yeah great piece, there's just so much internal calculation (how much should I reveal? how honest can I be? etc) that's involved when having any kind of these conversations man.
Men having emotions is not compatible with the absolute docility and compliance required by ever-intensifying accumulation, and a tightening monopoly of violence.
Ashley Frawley:
"The working-class movements of the 19th century were a profoundly destabilizing force, and they were movements of “working men.” Masculinity comes to represent all that elite governance fears: populism, resistance, the refusal to comply. Once the bearer of liberal democracy, the old ideal of the citizen becomes the saboteur of our new “democracy” of managed compliance. "
On the theme of anger, recall that men used to be able to duel with pistols over their public honor. Once the match was resolved, hopefully both men missed, and could retire together to share a brandy. Try that today and you will be drinking prison hooch, alone.
I'd go one further and say that very few people (men or women) wants emotionality outside of very specific contexts that allow the Other to play a role of sorts. He cries at the end of the Disney movie, and quietly reveals something about the protagonist's struggle and how he's always felt like he couldn't get out from under his father's shadow either. She says something profound, and the music soars, and he is Healed, and they are Closer, and the Love Story narrative reaches a tidy conclusion.
I experienced significant bereavement as a young person, under really pretty horrific circumstances. The women who told me I "need to open up about it" (often under duress that I was not a good friend for being private about my feelings) often stopped contacting me really quickly when I did said "opening up". With age and experience, I suspect this is because they couldn't jump into the "Person Helping Bereaved Friend" role in the way they imagined they might. I was supposed to be "helped" by displaying emotion in a way that made THEM feel good.
Vulnerable disclosure only leads to closeness when neither party needs to "be" something for the other person. When they don't have an agenda beyond listening and allowing whatever's there to be there, as ugly as it might get.
Yeah I think what a lot of people are describing here is the fact that people often ask you to ‘open up’ and imagine it’s going to be some sort of movie scene moment and it’s, like, pretty much never that. Also people are just generally shit at genuinely being there for each other. Lots of people lose friends when they go through bouts of depression because they can’t show up in that way people expect and people just bounce. Lots of people lose friends when they become chronically ill and can’t do shit they did before. We’re bad at genuinely tending to relationships. Relationships require care, like gardens. You want pretty flowers you need to be digging in the dirt.
Absolutely relate to this. I was around 22 when I had a particularly rough breakup with one whom I thought was the love of my life (in hindsight, no...) and it changed me. Prior to that I was a typical, emotionally stunted boy. Previous girlfriends broke up with me because I was a 'robot'. A common word describing me over the years.
That changed after that break up and my emotions somehow unlocked.
I would be lying if I said it hasn't been a perpetual inconvenience ever since with all the above quotes from women right at me, but I refuse to put it back in the box and be like my dad and my granddad. That chain of events is over, even if it costs me everything.
i just knew it'd be that Cole verse once you mentioned Bush the junior 😂😂
Most of us aren’t “emotionally stunted”…. We just figured out pretty early on that nobody gives a fuck. Especially women. In particular when she is the reason for said emotion.
I remember being depressed and talking to people about it.
It was like I was trying to give them a rattlesnake or something.
I learned hard that my feelings are only important when it's to benefit others
This right here: nobody gives a fuck.
When women say they want a man who is "emotionally vulnerable", what they really mean is "a man who will pay attention to my emotions". To quote another commenter here, they just don't give a fuck about our emotions.
Even with my own wonderful wife, the few times I shared my inner turmoil with her, she was emotionally, verbally, and materially supportive of me....except the sex dried up for awhile. Like somewhere deep down she got "the ick". I like sex, so I will try like hell to never do that again.
This is insightful!
I don’t think it was the ick really, more like the emotionally vulnerable person brings out maternal instincts of care and it takes a bit for it to subside? We don’t want that dynamic in our healthy relationship — the people who want it all the time need therapy— while absolutely recognizing there are times and circumstances when our spouse needs that support.
Still gonna try like hell to never repeat that mistake. I would've taken sex any day over and above all the other types of support.
Attention ladies! If your man is going through a hard time, fuck his brains out. He'll appreciate it, trust me.
That’s a cool tip actually 😊
No, that’s post rationalisation in fairy tale language. A woman doesn’t find people who need nurturing, viscerally attractive, therefore, no desire to have sex with him. It is a non-rational decision.
Was once constantly barraged by a girl that I needed to show more emotion.
Then her brother went through a nasty divorce and she told him he could talk to her anytime. After two emotional barfs all I heard was ranting from her about how she couldn't handle it and he needed to get his crap together.
Never bothered me again.
Recently, my heuristic for the "we want men to show emotion" thing has been that women want men to show positive emotion: joy, happiness, excitement, passion. They don't want negative emotion: sadness, anger, despair, aggression. A man showing negative emotion simply becomes socially, romantically and sexually repulsive.
The only exception to that rule is aggression towards another man who threatens you and/or her. But in modern Western post-scarcity world, this hardly ever happens anyway. And also maybe being sad when a family member or close friend died. But not too much. That's it.
So, the solution is to just get rid of negative emotions. It's easier to be said than done, but two things that help are getting your shit together (don't be poor/sick/sad/lonely) and applying redpill stoicism to counter the usual sources of negative emotion within the relationship (AWALT / "women be like that").
I don't think that first part is true either. Have you seen the "soyface" wojack memes? They're based on pictures of guys who have their mouths open in exaggerated expressions of happiness or excitement. It's a real thing: millenial men who want to look more emotionally positive have been doing this for years, and it looks absolutely idiotic.
Women don't actually like positive emotion out of normal men, either. You have to start by being formidable and controlled, high status, then release the emotions at exactly the appropriate times, otherwise the effusiveness can be bad in itself.
The soyface meme doesn't prove anything. The soyface reaction is fake, exaggerated and for no reason.
She wants you to be excited for the things she thinks you should be excited for. Like, for example the things she does for you. She wants positive feedback from you.
But if you're excited for things that she considers dumb shit, like your sports team winning a game or something, then yes, she might think you're soyface.
The soyface meme shows that there has been a subset of men who are aware that women want men who show positive emotion.
I said that those men don’t matter to women because they are low status and respond to things women don’t care about. That seems to be what you’re saying too, why the objection?
This, I've had girls I dated lose interest when I got too excited about art and literature or going to the Symphony. At this point I'm guarded around them irl.
My wife loves it when I am joyful. Usually I am doing something childish like chasing ducks. She doesn’t get my excitement about going to ACE though.
I love when my guy is joyful too. Doubly so because it’s a pretty rare thing for him to express, he’s pretty lowkey most of the time.
Just because someone somewhere made a meme doesn’t mean that ‘women’ like or dislike something en masse.
I get that I am not exactly ‘women’, but seeing guys excited or happy about things has always been a massive turn-on for me. When men are excited or passionate about things they get super into them, they’re really knowledgeable about them, they hunt down tons of obscure facts and it is absolutely mesmerizing to listen to them, because they will tell you everything about the obscure lore of this particular game series or the history of Liverpool football club or whatever and you find a subject you never thought of for a second in your life is actually fascinating when presented by someone who lights up when they talk about it.
Of course women can have this sort of excitement for things too, but overall I have experienced it less often in women. We tend to be more modest about our interests, unless we have ADHD. Then hold on to your hat.
Some of my favorite online spaces have been specific hobby forums, and they were all frequented by a majority-male audience suuuuper-damn hyped about a subject. And it has been a wild amazing ride each time, whether it’s coding, or illustration, or fresh water aquariums, or tropical plants, or whatever. Nothing cooler than a guy excited about a project.
Unrelated but a clip was going around recently of a wife filming her dude as he flips over his caramel flan, which he made for the first time, and he is so excited he could burst and it is the most amazing adorable video I have ever seen in my entire life. You can feel how she and their two tiny kids are totally taken for a whirlwind ride by his overwhelming enthusiasm and it’s the best thing.
This is heartening, but you understand that having that kind of enthusiasm and openly expressing it is a sort of request for others to feel the same way. It’s vulnerable. And they isolate among the like-minded in forums for a reason.
When you start out valuing the person, seeing this reaction is empathetic and pleasurable. When this is just a random person and you have little interest in the topic or think it’s trivial, seeing this behavior comes off less empathetic and more childlike, and it’s harder to take that person seriously. And it’s much worse for men, as a woman can be childlike with less penalty.
Good reason for that, too. Being obsessed with something of little impact on the world means being distracted, frivolous, maybe even avoidant. You’re making flan because it’s better than having a real job. That’s not always fair, at all, people should be allowed to have hobbies and I wish we lived in a culture where we could assume we’re all responsible adults having a little fun on the side. But we absolutely are not, and begging for attention on social media or trying to get a girl who wants a breadwinner to appreciate how you kick ass at Elder Scrolls really isn’t endearing when the context isn’t right.
Vulnerability shouldn’t mechanically gain approval, and I actually respect that lots of women want a guy who acts like an adult. They’re just really, really brutal and surface in their evaluations, and the wojack face is an example of guys who recognize the need to present a persona that’s engaged, but do it really badly.
Oh for sure, big agree on all that. A guy in another comment here put it really well when he said that the crux here doesn’t seem to be whether women ‘want men to be emotional’ or not, it’s more that, since we all collectively raise boys to hide emotions, men tend to grow up without getting the opportunity to learn how to display emotions appropriately - basically, the essential skills of emotional intelligence - thus when they dare to try it it often backfires, which then makes them feel like they were tricked into a trap or asked to perform an impossible task.
The key I think is to let boys show emotion and teach them how to do that in a healthy, mature way.
When women say ‘we want you to show emotion’ we basically mean ‘we want you to have and demonstrate emotional intelligence’. That would definitely include things like knowing when you’re overdoing it, knowing when it’s too early to describe your Warhammer collection in detail, not bursting into tears on the second date, knowing when to hold it in. Because everyone sometimes needs to have their shit together. Women also are not really praised and valued for being puddles of unmanaged emotion, though I totally agree we get wayyy more of a pass than men do. But that’s largely because the world already labels us as ‘emotional’ in the ‘irrational’ sense.
So it’s a weird balance. And I get the ‘being mocked for expressing interest in things others see as trivial’ thing too, it happens to me all the time because I (thank you ADHD) get suuuuper into things and invariably also get weird looks and questions like ‘so why are you, like….. so INTO that, all of a sudden?’ Ny responses vary from earnest to flippant depending on the situation hahah.
I think there is also a big confusion between men being ‘emotional’ and ‘acting like children’. Like I have witnessed grown men pouting, and that’s a no from me. (Grown women pouting is also a no from me, incidentally). Or like flying off the handle and getting super volatile sad-angry about something small, like a toddler who missed a nap. (Also very unattractive in both genders, and witnessed in both genders). Essentially we all need to find that line between being genuine and vulnerable but not making ourselves into a problem the other person constantly has to resolve. Because that shit gets tedious fast.
"Much of the rhetoric around wanting more emotionally vulnerable men therefore comes across as vacuous, because many men subconsciously realize that people (both men and women) only want these emotions at specific times, and in specific contexts."
You're just defining emotional intelligence. What else is emotional intelligence if not knowing the right emotions to share at the right times in the right contexts?
I think your argument would therefore be a lot stronger if it went:
1) women want emotionally intelligent men
2) men grow up discouraged to show emotion, and end up with low emotional intelligence
3) when men try to show emotion for women it rarely goes well, because they're bad at it- and women don't understand that the poor results are not for lack of trying
4) therefore, men feel that they're being asked to perform an impossible task
The blame here is not on women, nor on men, it's on the entire culture that teaches as you put it: "a lot of young men realize that in order to be a functional participant in society, it requires them to regularly stuff down their emotions and carry on with the tasks of their daily lives."
This absolutely!!! All of this. A big problem in these sorts of discussions is that we conflate ‘women’, like ‘women in general/ most women out there’ with ‘a woman’, as in ‘women want emotional men but this one woman I dared to show emotion to didn’t react well so women in general are lying when they say they want emotional men.’
But you make the perfect point - there are many ways to be emotional. Women don’t want a man who is emotional the way a toddler is emotional. I am pretty sure that men also don’t want women who are emotional the way a toddler is emotional. It must be a sort of balance.
My husband is very much on the emotional side, but since he grew up in a very unhealthy environment we had a loooong road of him learning how to be emotional without being volatile or overwhelming. Which I think is totally fair. Now we have a son and he won’t have that issue because he’s growing up in an emotionally stable environment and he already knows how to express his emotions in a fairly healthy and mature way.
It really is society itself that needs to be rewired and I think our best chance is to do it through how we raise our kids.
Great point that men also don’t want women who are “emotional” in the way a toddler is. There’s no double standard- everyone just wants emotionally mature partners. Thanks for the kind words and for sharing your thoughts!
I don't agree with this at all. Many men have the shared experience of trying to share negative emotions with women in varied modes and at varied times and come away believing that it doesn't matter how they present their negative emotions because they will always receive negative feedback for sharing them.
Many men who meet your definition of emotional intelligence would therefore never share negative emotion because they've learned through trial that it's never appropriate to share these.
This is very interesting to me, because while I absolutely don’t disbelieve you that this is your experience (and that of a certain number of other men), I look all around my life at all my friends and family and see not a single case of men being in any way ‘punished’ by women for showing emotion.
One possibility is we are speaking about different local cultures or specific social circles. Another is that we are speaking of different sorts of ‘emotion’. I mean, showing emotion can be anything from saying ‘man this song gets me every time’ to being just super hyped and excited about something in your life to bursting into tears to punching a hole in the drywall, all of those are ‘emotion’ but clearly they won’t all be received the same way.
If you could say something more specific about the type of showing emotion you have found women don’t actually appreciate, it would help paint the picture more clearly?
The other commenter is speaking much more broadly than his own anecdote. This is a consciously and subconsciously known fact known to all adult men. It’s instinctual, we know it’s antithetical to all that women find instinctively attractive in men. It’s ingrained. No amount of social engineering will change human nature, and no amount of higher level reasoning by women is able to squash the primal ick that washes over their body based on millions of years of evolution. It’s the same exact system that ensures you can’t force yourself to be viscerally attracted to someone, attraction is not a choice, just like this ugly yet well known fact (by men) of evolved female nature. This is not a moral judgment on either party, it is a descriptive fact, and it is borderline abusive to blame men for something borne out of female nature.
'Borderline abusive' is.... really strong emotional framing here.
Attraction is indeed 'not a choice', but it is definitely framed by society more than by 'millions of years of evolution'. If you look through just the last two thousand years of history and across the different cultures of the world, you will see wildly different preferences depending on local cultures - for hairy women with mustaches, soft fat women, tall women, warrior women, delicate dainty women, all sorts. The same is true of attraction towards men - different cultures bring different markers of what we interpret as 'attractive'. Long or short hair, fine or rugged features, skill with sword or skill with pen have all been differently valued in men over the centuries in different parts of the world.
More than this, cultural branding of attractiveness is so strong, that people will often literally choose a partner their culture is telling them is attractive, over someone they genuinely find attractive but who is not socially 'acceptable' and will not bring 'social capital' - for example today we villainize fat people, so someone might feel genuine attraction for a fat person but will not let themselves date them because they know it would expose them to social pressure and judgment. Or will date them but only in secret. Same is very much true for queer attraction.
I will also (gently) point out that, while in one comment before this you were warning me about talking about my personal feelings instead of hard data, you will unironically write a line like 'This is a consciously and subconsciously known fact known to all adult men.' (sic). Now if I say that I have plenty of adult men in my own life who absolutely do not subscribe to this notion, you will probably again accuse me of 'being anecdotal'. But what possible 'evidence' can you have to support the idea that 'all men everywhere since forever' agree on something you believe? This is why productive discussion becomes difficult - our own positions seem to us as completely irrefutable common sense, while everyone else's are 'anecdotal and emotional'. It's a real trap.
Women have for centuries swooned over poets. In Japan for centuries it was 100% necessary for every man to be able to express his feelings through poetry, and this would be more crucial to his success in society than his capacity in battle. The overwhelming mass of poets my generation read while growing up (and swooned over, frankly) - French, Russian, American - were men. The idea that 'every single man everywhere knows that every single woman gets the ick when a man shows any emotion' is..... it's just not a stance that can be productively debated.
It's not by accident that such masses of women swoon over Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice.
It is also very questionable ('borderline abusive'? :) ) to insist that 'all men everywhere' inherently understand 'female nature' better than.... women themselves?
Quite possibly you do not percieve the punishments. It’s not something as obvious as being put in chains or even being yelled at. Often it’s as basic as reduced sex or sexual enthusiasm, for one of the most obvious examples. The woman might not even realize she’s punishing him, either because she doesn’t realize she’s cutting him off or, like most women, doesn’t realize sex is a love language for men. But there are many other punishments. Probably the most common is simply a reduced respect, which is tacit but perceptible.
Also frequent and more lamentable is that many women are not above remembering the vulnerabilities a man expresses in order to hurt and punish him when she feels he deserves it, making the punishment non-obviously connected to its cause. In practice this looks like a man sharing his feelings and vulnerabilities and seemingly receiving acceptance and sympathy, and some time later on during a dispute experiencing a jab right where it hurts the most.
Emotional Intelligence Is Jewish Bullshittery.
It is FARTNIGGERDOM.
It took me a bit to understand this as well, as I'm a bit autistic and neurotic (like a lot of people on here, probably). What woman want from you is to make them feel good. In particular, they want to feel good about themselves - that they are attractive, special, valuable, moral, etc.
So you should express emotions that make the woman feel good about herself, and not ones that make her feel bad. For example, if you feel attracted to her, let her know it. But if she does something that frustrates you, keep it to yourself (unless it's really important).
Basically, what they mean is that they want a man who takes responsibility for their feelings. It's actually not that complicated, once you understand it.
This rings largely true for me but goes a bit too far, in the sense that most regular women I know are totally happy to hear their guy out and support him when he’s having a hard time or struggling with something, as long as that’s not all the time. Like obviously partners should support each other but also people should be responsible for how they show their emotions in the relationship, and that should definitely go for both partners.
I think the problem is that men are much more willing to support women than the other way around. The big problem guys face today is that they actually believed the "gender equality" meme. In this case, they actually believed that women and men are basically the same, so if he wants to care for her and is enthusiastic about doing that, surely she feels the same way about him.
IMO most guys are actually fine with lack of "gender equality". That's what we're wired for. We're happy to do the male gender role. The problem is the bait and switch, where we're told that we're doing gender equality, but in practice it only ever goes one way.
What's needed now is a positive, constructive vision of what gender roles should look like which isn't promoted by an Andrew Tate type scumbag.
Yes, big agree on that too. A lot of it comes from the fact that as boys and girls we took in the same stupid toxic messages about gender roles, and now that women have discovered ‘equality’ they’re overly focused on the part that benefits them. Which is natural but still creates problems, because they have this idea of ‘the emotional man’ but, like, emotional like Lucas Jones, not emotional like Spongebob Squarepants.
I absolutely agree that chasing some sort of 100% perfect equality is a fool’s errand and we need better ideas of what roles and spaces we ideally want to take up to ensure a healthy comfortable society for all. I think many couples are already doing this, I know many who are very happily and comfortably living far outside any traditional gender role split. I’d say my own relationship is among them.
Basically everyone should be working on their own self-awareness and doing less of this ‘men this women that’ stuff. More ‘when I feel this way, I react like this… but then people around me feel like they have to…..’ This is the level of consideration we need, for everyone.
One example I have spotted multiple times is guys getting scared (nervous/anxious) about a situation and immediately transforming that into anger or irritation at whoever is near. That is something they should have learned to handle and work through as kids, but we didn’t help them do it then, so it’s gotta be done now… same with women thinking acting pouty and petulant is cute. Like, maybe when you were three.
>emotional like Lucas Jones
I'm not familiar, could you share some Youtube clips which exemplify?
Anyway, I think you and I might have a disagreement actually. I'll try to illustrate what I meant more concretely.
Instead of saying "don't be a pussy", or "men should cry if they feel like it, there's nothing wrong with that", I'm advocating something like: "Put on a brave face for your woman. Be a rock for her. She needs you to be strong, even when she's scared. If you've got things you need to process, take them to your bros." Basically describing an affirmative, positive, prosocial male gender role which jives with the reality of female biology. Give men a description of the thing they *should* do, not a big list of things they *should not* do.
As a man I find this sort of "affirmative masculinity" is a lot better for my mental health than the "woe is me" approach which is trendy nowadays. I don't always remember to put it into practice though.
This might sound a lot like traditional gender roles to you. My position is that we should study traditional gender roles and learn from them, picking and choosing the parts that make sense. Chesterton's Fence applies here: traditional gender roles were crafted through cultural evolution, and there is some embedded wisdom there.
Oh for Lucas Jones - this is him - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/V9KZazwxJSs
He's not really sharing any of his emotions there, just validating womens' emotions
I agree in part. Sure, modeling positive solutions is way better than constantly going 'don't do this, don't do that'. Kids also learn much more easily when you give positive instruction - 'next time if you carry it like this, it won't spill' rather than 'don't pick it up like that!!!!' which gives nothing of value.
But I absolutely disagree that a dude needs to take all his emotional issues to his bros. I DO agree a dude SHOULD have bros and SHOULD share emotional issues with them when he feels the need. But I do not agree that a woman cannot also provide a part of that support. The fact is, the way we live our lives today, we are very much focused on each other, and both men and women spend less time than they ideally would with anyone outside their nuclear family, because we're constantly running around between house and job trying to get everything done. My guy definitely doesn't have bros to share emotional crap with. I wish he did. But he does not.
But I do not in any way mind being his emotional support, just as I am grateful when he is my emotional support. Some differences between genders of course do exist and are real, generally speaking, but men are not from Mars and women are not from Venus. I do not need my man to 'always be strong'. There is no guarantee it is always me who will be 'scared', and him who will be 'strong'. We have different strengths and abilities, and we can take on more burden in different areas of our life, we can recognize each other's strengths and appreciate them.
I agree that 'woe is me' is getting old really fast and serves no one. Both genders have their version of it and I find it equally unhelpful on both sides. I feel like we forget that while yes, men and women definitely have their differences, before all that we are human beings first, and as such have a whole lot in common too.
Yeah that's fair, my objective was to illustrate the overall approach of describing a positive purpose for men, as opposed to claiming that *particular* positive purpose was important/critical/valid/etc. That one was just for the sake of illustration. I agree that whether you adopt it depends more on your relationship.
Women only want 11/10 Genetically Ordained Super-Chads. Anything else is bullshittery and window dressing that they can take or leave.
That would be fine if there was equal value provided for the responsibility of women’s emotions. But as thing stand today’s it’s just a loss, another shit men have to do for very little benefits.
So I don’t why any man should feel the urge to fill that role…
This might be the autistic thing I've ever read.
Great points all around. Right now, when men open up, they're being accused of imposing on the woman with the new pejorative 'mankeeping.' Even worse, their emotions and empathy are weaponized against them because these very women say they want that emotional connection really just express Toxic Empathy: https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/toxic-empathy
Thanks Michael I'll check it out
I’d love your thoughts.
Considering men have written the greatest love songs/poems/lyrics/music, it's strange we don't have emotions.
I'll never show myself vulnerable again.
When talking to women talk to them the same way you're talking to the police.
Tell them nothing.
lol
I'm feeling attacked by your repeated mention of B2B software sales. Separately, I can confirm that I have punished my ex for being emotionally fragile, but I might have been less harsh if he did indeed have his life together (I was the more ambitious one in that relationship). Currently, it seems like I have to elicit emotion from my partner because he intuitively knows women do this. I wonder if this is just a deep-seated evolutionary thing whereby my being wired for emotionality means I'm just going to subconsciously punish men for this. I don't have a good answer.
The only answer is to get good at B2B sales 🧾
Strong B2B sales skills = strong PMC marriage
Ive been married twice and divorced twice. In the course of those marriages I opened up emotionally on a couple of occasions, and was emotionally savaged in response.
Absolutely never ever again.
That is genuinely horrible. Nobody deserves that.
Women don’t have emotions. Just feelings. They want you to describe your surface level reaction to events in your life so they can judge your responses and determine if they are in line with what is considered normal or not.
They do NOT want to hear about your emotions, they don’t want to hear about what motivates you or what matters to you
Your fears
Your insecurities
Your desires
The things you hate
The things you’re passionate about
These are all negative things and if you tell them to a woman she will get the wrong idea and think these things are all you think about all day when you’re doing stuff and you are an unhinged weirdo.
Women do not think about these things, they live in the moment and just want to have fun.
If a woman wants you to open up, just tell her what you’ve done recently or something you saw and pretend you actually gave a shit and thought it was fun or cool when you did. Spin her a story about meaningless bullshit and she’ll live vicariously through it, they love that dumb shit.
My only regret was too young for Lisa Bonet 🔥 But yeah great piece, there's just so much internal calculation (how much should I reveal? how honest can I be? etc) that's involved when having any kind of these conversations man.
Men having emotions is not compatible with the absolute docility and compliance required by ever-intensifying accumulation, and a tightening monopoly of violence.
Ashley Frawley:
"The working-class movements of the 19th century were a profoundly destabilizing force, and they were movements of “working men.” Masculinity comes to represent all that elite governance fears: populism, resistance, the refusal to comply. Once the bearer of liberal democracy, the old ideal of the citizen becomes the saboteur of our new “democracy” of managed compliance. "
On the theme of anger, recall that men used to be able to duel with pistols over their public honor. Once the match was resolved, hopefully both men missed, and could retire together to share a brandy. Try that today and you will be drinking prison hooch, alone.
Would we really benefit from bringing back duels?
I'd go one further and say that very few people (men or women) wants emotionality outside of very specific contexts that allow the Other to play a role of sorts. He cries at the end of the Disney movie, and quietly reveals something about the protagonist's struggle and how he's always felt like he couldn't get out from under his father's shadow either. She says something profound, and the music soars, and he is Healed, and they are Closer, and the Love Story narrative reaches a tidy conclusion.
I experienced significant bereavement as a young person, under really pretty horrific circumstances. The women who told me I "need to open up about it" (often under duress that I was not a good friend for being private about my feelings) often stopped contacting me really quickly when I did said "opening up". With age and experience, I suspect this is because they couldn't jump into the "Person Helping Bereaved Friend" role in the way they imagined they might. I was supposed to be "helped" by displaying emotion in a way that made THEM feel good.
Vulnerable disclosure only leads to closeness when neither party needs to "be" something for the other person. When they don't have an agenda beyond listening and allowing whatever's there to be there, as ugly as it might get.
Yeah I think what a lot of people are describing here is the fact that people often ask you to ‘open up’ and imagine it’s going to be some sort of movie scene moment and it’s, like, pretty much never that. Also people are just generally shit at genuinely being there for each other. Lots of people lose friends when they go through bouts of depression because they can’t show up in that way people expect and people just bounce. Lots of people lose friends when they become chronically ill and can’t do shit they did before. We’re bad at genuinely tending to relationships. Relationships require care, like gardens. You want pretty flowers you need to be digging in the dirt.
Absolutely relate to this. I was around 22 when I had a particularly rough breakup with one whom I thought was the love of my life (in hindsight, no...) and it changed me. Prior to that I was a typical, emotionally stunted boy. Previous girlfriends broke up with me because I was a 'robot'. A common word describing me over the years.
That changed after that break up and my emotions somehow unlocked.
I would be lying if I said it hasn't been a perpetual inconvenience ever since with all the above quotes from women right at me, but I refuse to put it back in the box and be like my dad and my granddad. That chain of events is over, even if it costs me everything.
I genuinely love that for you. We all deserve to live a life where we feel fully alive ⭐️