Do You Need a Visit to the Confident Man Ranch?
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I might be in a very limited bubble as well, as my very close bubble of decade+ friend group is almost 50/50 guys and girls. We’ve also discussed this exact topic numerous times among ourselves.
We need better emotional literacy and self regulation. Women tend to be better at this than men on average due to western culture.
Feels more probable that it's the other way around. Those that don't have problems with their (toxic) masculinity can likely maintain platonic relationships with any gender.
Grow up in a dysfunctional environment and develop a bad concept of other people and of masculinity and it becomes harder and harder to break out of that as you age. Eventually someone has to do a lot of emotional work to support you while you figure out how to treat other people and yourself.
A lot of times I think if it's caught early by someone with enough emotional intelligence and a little bit of capacity to forgive you and tell you when you're being a jerk, you can break out of it while young and continue to maintain healthy relationships going forward. Alternatively you get more and more isolated as you age and no one around is willing or able to help you and you end up pretty bad off. I'd consider myself in the first group but I definitely know a lot of men who are in the second group, or at least on their way there.
Men's mental health is a big deal and I think it's only getting worse. I don't know how to fix it though
Here's a start: don't simultaneously pulverize young men with progressive dogma that vilifies them while simultaneously desensitizing them to violence
Lol, having been a young man at one time, young men need MORE reality checks, not fewer. You have to learn that your actions have real consequences, that "pretty sure" isn't enough when there are real stakes, that "luck" and "fair" are meaningless, that you're not entitled to anything from anyone, and that you have to earn respect from people for them to take you seriously. If that's considered "pulverizing them with progressive dogma", then I'm all for it.
The problem is that that young men are told they are bad, not worthy, animals, sex crazed, not to be trusted, are likely to abuse children or woman, are less intelligent, are only worth their ability to provide, should not have emotions, should know (naturally) how to be good at physical activities, should be logical, and that they should not complain. Suck it up, buttercup. They are expected to behave like well behaved girls/woman. Sit quietly in class, don't make a ruckus. That is the progressive dogma I'm seeing and have experienced.
It doesn't help when people like you, CJ, laugh it off. "Suck it up, buttercup." For what it is worth, I know _zero_ men who feel they are entitled to a woman's body or whatever you have in your imagination. The closest to entitlement I see is men wanting a job and to be able to provide. You are feeding into the same dogma. There are real issues that drive depression and suicide in men.
This is an astonishingly low bar, and not progressive dogma at all.
> I know _zero_ men who feel they are entitled to a woman's body
So what, the fact that you don't personally know a rapist is irrelevant. If a woman is sexually harassed or assaulted you can be 99.99% certain she was accosted by a man. If any crime at all is committed, 9 out of 10 times it's perpetrated by a man.
I had to start explaining to my kids at age 3 that they have to be super extra careful around men, and never go alone with a man anywhere. I have to explain that yeah, they can do very bad things to you, and there's almost nothing you can do back.
My girls have to live in, and navigate a world where they can be coerced by any given man, at any given time. So yeah, suck it up buttercup. Boys and men should behave like well behaved girls and women. Not sure what kind of Lord of the Flies fantasy you're trying to sign us all up for.
What progressives in particular are telling you such things?
I suspect that the causation might be reversed. In other words, men who women want to be friends with may have the personality attributes that allow them to express their masculinity in non-problematic and easeful ways.
I guess I was thinking of adult platonic relationships, not those of children. As a parent I've seen that school is something of a special case: kids grow up together in a pre-existing school community, with some necessity to get along, and with adults (ie teachers) on hand to enforce rules. Quite different to the environment that most adults exist in.
I do agree on the necessity to cultivate friendship skills between sexes though.
It’s possible you’re mixing cause and effect here; like, it’s not implausible that men with the sort of issues mentioned would have difficulty relating to women as people.
Since separating - I've met a few wonderful women who I'm still in touch with - one is my "bestie" for sure and we meet up to eat, I'll go round and play with her kids too.
My daughter and I are really close too - we go food shopping once a week, have done since lockdown, and it's amazing how much deeper conversations can go when your mind is concentrating on menial tasks.
I definitely feel more well rounded as a man these days, and it's not just age related, it's definitely helped me having women friends.
Regarding the jealousy of others’ partners — it is always a problem! According to my girl friends, we (guys in our group) come up pretty often in talks with their partners or new boyfriends. We try to overcome those problems by either introducing our significant others to the friend group as soon as possible, or exclusively date people who also have platonic friends of opposite sexes.
Obviously sometimes things go wrong, then we have to explain these people in very toddler-esque way (“Do you have any siblings of opposite sex? You wouldn’t consider that relationship romantic, would you? Yeah it’s that between us.”). Some people don’t buy it, but we’re kinda used to it at this point. But oh well, such is life.
Sounds like it's working for you, hopefully we see more of this as things progress.
My wife on the other hand is a direct opposite of that. From having discussed past relationships, I don’t think she even knows what falling for someone the way I tend(ed) to do even feels like. I know that she loves me dearly, but that’s the kind of slow-burning long-term kind of love.
So, thanks, but no thanks. Following your advice would wreck my life.
Not that I have any problem with masculinity though. I doubt anyone sees me as super masculine to begin with.
I used to be one of those people who believed that opposite gender close friendships are not possible, but then I came to realize that I’ve just been projecting myself onto other people. I know people who have close, long-term friendships like that, and it’s working out just fine! So, yeah, people are different!
I’ve never had this cliche issue cause I’m a weirdo, and i think the best explanation I can come up for why it works for me is - i always think of relationships as friendships. My partner is my best friend because he has to be - I wouldn’t be with him otherwise, close friendship is the basis for a romantic relationship for me. And they don’t want the romantic portion, then the friendship is still there, and friendship is worthwhile on its own… I just don’t get the “it has to be all or nothing with me” mindset.
I don’t think any close female friend would do lots of people both men and women are extremely not self aware
Some problems are specific to men or women exactly because our society has different expectations for men and women, so general advice good for one gender is not always good for the other. Example:
Q: How to be more appealing to the other sex?
A: Wear some light makeup and a nice dress.
I think it’s because “a good man” is quantified by the indefinite article “a”. Whereas “man” in a sentence without that qualification, e.g. “one small step for man” I would not interpret the same way. So, “a man” = a male human, “man” = maybe a male human, maybe any human.
Whatever your circumstances, whether you're a man, woman, something else; some of that is a given. It's not just who you are or who you chose to be, but the expectations and opportunities made available to us based on who we appear to be.
It is a relevant question to ask what is the best way of playing the hand you were dealt by circumstance.
Without even broaching the diagnosis and treatment of mental health conditions, there are any number of reasons why paying a neutral third party to discuss your problems could be preferable than talking to a friend at a bar. Nor are they mutually exclusive.
A counsellor or therapist has training - think of it as a mental toolkit - to help explore things with you. Depends on their exact approach but most of them wont give advice for example, they will just ask question or reflect what you say back to you to encourage you to figure it out yourself. Or they might look for parallels between your early life and current life, as most people follow repeated patterns in their relationships (or so the theory goes). At least 75% of their skillset is just listening and occasionally asking good questions which is an underrated skill.
There are many different flavours of therapy/psychotherapy/counselling and sometimes the adherents get quite religious about it (ask an integrative therapist what they think of CBT for example). But research generally shows that most 'talking therapies' are roughly equal in effectiveness and the main factor for success is the relationship between the client and therapist - i.e. whether they click. (putting aside for the moment the tricky questions about how to measure effectiveness of therapy - what does improvement look like? how do you have a control group?)
There's a thing called the 'Dodo Hypothesis' - that "all empirically validated psychotherapies, regardless of their specific components, produce equivalent outcomes" - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo_bird_verdict
People heavily invested in a particular brand of therapy dont like to hear about the Dodo Hypothesis but broadly I think its an optimistic conclusion - talking to people helps, and if you find the right one, talking to a specially trained listener can help more.
Because general advice is rarely useful in such cases, like you can see in almost all of comments giving advice in this topic. Most of them have at least one "yeah, but in my case...".
If you're otherwise healthy, but never learned or have been discouraged from doing "the basics" like talk about how you are feeling with your loved ones then you really just need someone to teach you how or perhaps just give you permission to do so. Maybe this is easier if you dress it up in a specific kind of setting, depends on the individual.
If you have some potentially diagnosable serious mental health issue, then of course you should see an actual trained clinical psycologist.
Sometimes you may not know which one you are, perhaps you go to the former and figure you actually needed the latter. Maybe you're happy with what you've done, or maybe not? At the end of the day you just have to try figure it out.
> Why do people pretend to do therapy to make money?
The advice I ws given (by a pro) was that if you're thinking of therapy, you need to check out the therapist's credentials. In which tradition(s) were they trained? Are they in therapy themselves? (A therapist with active clients should be in therapy)
I don't think I'd consider group therapy on a dude-ranch run by a cowboy and a "life coach".