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Comment by sharkbird2 | Hacker News Reader

I think men are checking out of relationships because they feel they do not benefit them anymore. Not out of malice or even spitefulness (although there is some of that among some groups), but rather because so many things in our culture and society has been subtly altered to benefit women more and more over several decades to the point that men feel like getting into a relationship, or just investing in a woman at all, is a great way of getting screwed over, and I think there's something to that.

We need deep diving investigations to figure out the exact mechanics of it.

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Society went on a binge for about 10 years demonizing men and masculinity, turning dates into job interviews, and courtship into a dream; the apps have made it even worse, i.e. Bumble. No wonder they're turning off, it's just not worth it. One wrong statement, one wrong interaction, and they're afraid of getting put on TikTok.

It's not women, it's society as a whole deciding to take a giant shat on simple being male.

> but rather because so many things in our culture and society has been subtly altered to benefit women more and more over several decades to the point that men feel like getting into a relationship, or just investing in a woman at all, is a great way of getting screwed over

I'm a man, and I don't have this experience. Your comment makes me curious — what has changed and in what way to make it more likely that men will be screwed over by women? Is it that women are more likely to reject/leave a man once he has invested, or are you thinking about something else entirely?

I think it's such a huge topic that it's really hard to summarize on an online message board, but in very broad terms I think you could say that the feeling I have is that there used to be a social contract between men and women where men were supposed to be A, B, and C, and women were supposed to be X, Y and Z. But now it seems that only men are still expected to be A, B and C - plus maybe D, while women are instead 'free' to be whatever they want. So you still have to be a 'real man', but she doesn't have to be a 'proper woman'.

The weird thing is that I'm not really pro gender roles, I'm much more pro individual freedom, so I hate being the one to make this argument. But I do think that there will always be some differences between men and women, and I think we are hurting ourselves a lot as a society by refusing to acknowledge that.

You express the problem very charitably.

My only small antidote would be to allow people to have a marriage that could be more explicit if the partners chose to. If they wanted a 'till death do us part' marriage, then that should be allowed.

But don't annulment and divorce provide two paths to non-lifelong marriage?

Is that currently not allowed?

well, no. You can say that's what you're doing, and so can your future wife, but it's still incredibly easy to back out of if you change your mind, with few legal, economic, or social barriers to doing so.

On the one hand, these barriers can keep people trapped in truly abusive situations, and it is important for such people to be able to escape. But on the other, 'I don't love my husband/wife anymore', is not any great horror, and I'd hazard that most people who are happily married till death have had at least one long period, potentially of multiple years, where they don't feel as though they love their spouse. But they work through it and things improve. There's something about being 'trapped' with someone that motivates people to make things work in a way that they wouldn't if they know there is an out.

I believe the world ha changed and there is no way this would work in our culture anymore. Personally I treat not being divorced as a kind of achievement, but I realized many if not most people don't share my sentiment.

Yeh, I agree. I don't think there's any sort of legal solution to the problem, since the problem is social, not legal. I was just trying to explain what I think the other person was getting at.

Seconding this. Idk how things got so transactional and product-oriented in relationships for a lot of people but I'm really glad I don't think that way, even as a man who waited until 40 to get married.

No, we need investigations to figure out if it's happening at all, or simply another incel-like conclusion: "Women aren't good wives anymore, so why bother?".

Figuring out the exact mechanics presumes your sentiment is a fact.

> I think men are checking out of relationships because they feel they do not benefit them anymore.

Maybe we should make it so that men aren't allowed to own property anymore, that it needs to be owned by their wife? That's how it worked for hundreds of years (with the women being the ones not allowed to own property), and it definitely got women into relationships.

I'm not really sure how your comment helps.

What do you mean? There's a ... well, not a complete solution, but at least part of a solution, that we did for hundreds of years, and have relatively recently abandoned. And maybe we should bring it back. This seems like a pretty normal type of comment, isn' it?

Your comment was indeed confusing, do you mean a dowry?

Actually, I meant bank accounts, and was a bit confused / misinformed. It’s less a plan, more concepts of a plan.

I don't think they were intending to help.

Which country are you talking about? Women have been allowed to own property in USA from the beginning. Married women lost their right to own property separately, but that is the opposite of what you are suggesting, women still married men, some women did intentionally not marry though to not lose their property rights.

If we made women have all control over the property after marriage as you suggest we go back to then that would just make men marry women at even lesser rates.

Why does everything have to be about revenge or evening the score? Is that progress? "Two wrongs don't make a right" may be cliché but it has truth.

This isn’t about revenge or evening the score. OP described a problem (men don’t get anything out of relationships), and I’m offering a tried-and-tested solution to that problem.

And in the current US military, it isn’t a requirement for promotion to upper ranks to be married (honestly, I had thought it was, but it’s just a rumor), but it does seem to be strongly encouraged.

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