I’m fairly certain that the flipside of this could easily be written (Women, Where Have You Gone?), and I would be equally off the mark.
I will respond to some of the author’s text below. My comments are based on my experiences as well as those of my male and female friends and professional acquaintances. Note that I’m a male in my 50s in Northern California.
Note that I’m typing this on my phone, so please ask for clarification if something seems weird.
> You’ve retreated — not into malice, but into something softer and harder all at once: Avoidance. Exhaustion. Disrepair.
Mostly exhaustion, but some folks are squarely in the avoidance and disrepair modes. Holds for both male and females imho.
> Maybe no one taught you how to stay. Maybe you tried once, and it hurt.
While there are men and women who are dysfunctional and can’t sustain a long-term relationship, I think that this is only part of the problem.
I think that there are two other main issues:
1. Visions of “living the good life” that are not aligned.
2. Scars from being financially burned (true for both males and females, although sometimes through different mechanisms).
Heartbreak doesn’t seem to be high on the list.
> Maybe the world told you your role was to provide, to perform, to protect — and never to feel.
I’m from the same generation as the author. “Feeling” was pushed on us quite aggressively (at least in the upper middle class world that she and I live in).
Then women started asking where the real men were.
Women seemed to expect men to feel in just the specific way that the woman wants the man to feel, and no others. Otherwise they are seen as less manly.
Note that this type of expectation was good for me personally due to the specifics of how I was raised, but I saw a lot of men and women really struggle to balance these expectations.
> But here’s what’s real: We never needed you to be perfect.
Often the expectations are unreasonably high.
I have straight up heard women I know create a list of the best traits in all of the men that they have dated, and genuinely say that they just want a man who has all of those traits. These are women who, imho, are not bringing much to the table. Their expectations are unreasonable. They will be forever single.
I imagine there are men who do the same, but I’ve never heard that line of thinking directly.
> We needed you to be with us. Not above. Not muted. Not masked. Just with.
If only…
I think most women expect much more. Whether they admit that to themselves or not is a different issue.
One of the questions I ask people (both women I’ve dated as well as people around me who are dating) is what the ideal relationship looks like for them. The answers are incredibly diverse, and sometimes folks don’t communicate their somewhat esoteric expectations to potential partners.
> And you can still come back. Not by becoming someone else, but by remembering what connection feels like when it’s honest and slow.
Many/most women I dated were expecting magic on the first date.
I’m more of a slow simmer type. The number of “honest and slow” women was very low in my dating pool.
That said, the most active men on dating apps who I know are just looking to add a notch to the headboard, and they will be as charming as needed to make that happen… and then they disappear. No “honest and slow” with these guys.
> When it’s earned and messy and sacred.
I know of very few women who are actually willing to tolerate anything approximating “messy” in a relationship, especially early.
> We’re still here, those of us who are willing to cocreate something true. We are not impossible to please. We’re not asking for performances. We are asking for presence. For courage. For breath and eye contact and the ability to say, “I’m here. I don’t know how to do this perfectly, but I want to try.”
I am certain that these women exist. I know quite a few of them. That said, many of them are not accessible socially.
It’s not that they are anti-social — quite the opposite. But you won’t find them if you don’t already have direct access to their pool of family and friends.
> Come back. Not with flowers or fireworks,
The most active women in dating sites seem to want flowers and fireworks or some variation thereof.
> but with willingness. With your whole, beautiful, imperfect heart.
This is a nice thing to say. It’s not something I’ve seen actually happen very often in the actual dating world.
I hear a lot of “I don’t have time for that” over small things.
> We’re still here. And we haven’t stopped hoping.
I think many of the women actually have stopped hoping.
Certain categories of social mechanisms for meeting people have become commoditized in an unhealthy way.
“Putting yourself out there” these days requires a fairly high degree of extroversion, pro-active behavior, and a thick skin (women get hit on a lot, men get rejected a lot).
As such, I think that there are a lot of highly desirable folks out there who are here and are maybe still hoping (with lowered expectations), but are largely inaccessible by the opposite sex.
My comments above come across as fairly cynical.
I think social media and the commoditization of the major dating sites have had a lot of negative impact on our collective ability to engage in socially constructive ways.
All that said, I think that society has a way of self-correcting. I have a strong belief that the suboptimal environment that we are currently in will be the catalyst for something more robust and dynamic in the next few years.