This article seems like the dark mirror image of the idea that's been bouncing around in my head for a couple years now: namely, that women don't really feel attraction to men, at least not in a way that a man would recognize. Consider the difference between the relationship-as-leisure mindset versus the relationship-as-work mindset: for someone with the leisure mindset, as you said, the relationship *is* the reward: It's inherently gratifying to spend time around your partner for someone, regardless of any effort you may or may not put into the relationship, like some kind of magic happiness spigot. Contrast with relationships as work: here, just being around your partner isn't enough. You have to extract some sort of value out of them in order to accomplish your actual terminal goal, which, unlike in the former case, is *not* just contact with your partner. The only difference between work and play is whether doing it is gratifying or not, and the fact that women seem to approach relationships as work makes me deeply skeptical that there can be any real attraction (or, rather, "real" attraction) occurring in light of this fact.
Men will solve this the usual way - e.g. by inventing and building things. Not by "adapting" - that is way too slow.
Ai , VR and sexbots for one segment of men. Islam for more traditional ones.
Women will be ones adapting. As they are least productive and least capable sex. Alas there also will by transhumanism , cyborgs and genetic engineering. So that can get pretty wild and far from current species and genders
What do you think about the argument that women tend to view "work" as more of a consumer good and men tend to view "work" as something they have to put work into? That would seem to be the mirror image of what you are describing in this post.
Hah, as I don't have time just yet to read I'll give my own anecdotal impressions and reading of the 'science', which will be interesting to compare with Tove's insightful takes.
Both male and female needs must have sex, otherwise the germ line dies. For humans "romantic relationships" are an inevitable outcome of sex producing kids that need the provisioning of both parents to succeed. As such I presume this relationship form has persistence as a product of past evolutionary selection. I ascribe parents the priority but it could be other adult humans though they may be less invested in the kids than the parents, or nowadays 'the social welfare system'.
However, birth control nowadays means that a romantic relationship is no longer needed for sex, but set that to the side.
Women, being the bearer of children, are invested in directly ensuring their kids survive through provisioning with food (and shelter) and are on the lookout for partners who will also invest beyond just being sperm donors. Men on the other hand who impress women with their potential capacity to enable their kids survival and success in adulthood are likely to be have more sex, and (before contraception) father more kids.
So, assuming women need the partnership of a father to raise their kids, naturally they will invest more effort into that partnership than the father who naturally is more into impressing women with his ability to husband resources and contribute them to his "romantic relationship" in exchange for sex. Given this exchange is made without thought on either partner's part I don't regard it as transactional. Of course that changes with birth control and is perhaps at the root of the problems being expressed with "romantic relationships"
This is so monumentally unrelatable that I wonder if It could be possible for me to travel to whatever planet you live on. In the various relationships I've had with women, I've found that they do no appreciable work whatsoever on the relationship. I did the lion's share both in a humorous reference to my name and in the sense of the fable where the lion just takes the whole thing for himself. I've always thought deeply and seriously about relating and relationships, and in fact have professional experience. It makes that I would do an unusual amount of work. However, I very much would have liked them to meet me if not halfway, perhaps even a quarter of the way. They did not. They did, however, do a great deal of 'work' attempting to change me into something that would fit into their preferential systems of convenience more easily than the real, large, and rather inconvenient man with whom they fell in love. They failed. More sadly, however, they also failed to realize that a lack of acceptance of the other was any kind of undesirable behavior on their parts that they could attempt through interior work to change. Perhaps they have reflected on this failure in the various lengths of time since I left them, but I have not heard any reports of this and frankly it would surprise me.
Re: M. Fray comment: "But she didn’t want to be my mother. She wanted to be my partner, and she wanted me to apply all of my intelligence and learning capabilities to the logistics of managing our lives and household[...] "
But, as evidenced by the feelings of the commenter at Fray's site (named Brian - no relation), this leaves a fundamental asymmetry in an ostensibly equal relationship between those 2 types of people. If the first person determines the standards by which the second person's contributions count as "all of their capabilities", and whether it is sufficient to maintain the relationship, and the second person's complaints about the contributions of the first person are not mentioned (perhaps Fray had symmetrical pet peeves about his wife's behavior, but they are not addressed in the post) or something that must just be borne, then I can see why the second person might feel aggrieved.
It legitimately seems like they are a subservient member of the relationship? Obviously some people might be entirely fine with that, but there is definitely an expectation of equality in relationships by many/most people, and if one side determines the standards which the other must meet ("all of my [...] capabilities") - and your male-consumer/female-producer model (implying higher female demands on male investment) is true - then this seems like a recipe for resentment. I don't really have a dog in this fight (thankfully) but for two people of those types in a relationship, what's the solution?
Excellent essay and insights. I think a lot of this plays out in great literature. When I have more time, I might revisit it and try to analyze "Anna Karenina" in light of what you say. (I really probably won't because I'm lazy/busy, but I have something to ponder.)
"I always reasoned: “If you just tell me what you want me to do, I’ll gladly do it.” But she didn’t want to be my mother. "
Maybe she wanted him to be more responsible, or maybe that was her passive-aggressive way of expressing that she now hates his guts. Happens quite often when a toddler drains the romance out of a marriage.
What men expect from relationships is sex. What women expect from relationships is passion. Or drama. Day-time TV drama. I've seen men blowing up their marriages for sex and I've seen women blowing up their marriages out of boredom.
I've also seen men who love to create relationship drama and women who hate drama, but there is a pattern that women are far more into romance than men, for better and for worse.
There's a simple explanation: Men evolved from builders, warriors, and extractive foragers, while women built coalitions to try to deal with their lower status. Evolution produced men who are good at, and interested in, designing, build, and servicing the tools and technology of their people. The lower status of women produced females who showed solidarity with each other and bargained with providers and controlling husbands.
Consequently modern women are interested in relationships; men are interested in tools. If men were interested in relationships, they wouldn't be as good at building cars, digging ditches, and figuring out why the computer won't start up. There are about fifty studies I'm aware of in the vein of the Holland Hexagon, but I can't figure out how to cite them without being boring, so I'll offer an anecdote instead:
Twenty years ago I drove down to visit my best friend. He lived in his garage, literally surrounded by firearms, motorcycles, video game consoles, and computers, and walls and walls of tools to take apart, repair, and customize these objects. While there, I divided my time between him and my fiancee (not Mrs. Apple Pie), who wanted constant communication through Yahoo Messenger, with frequent smilies and checks on my emotional state. She was so bad with mechanical things that she died in an automobile accident.
This article seems like the dark mirror image of the idea that's been bouncing around in my head for a couple years now: namely, that women don't really feel attraction to men, at least not in a way that a man would recognize. Consider the difference between the relationship-as-leisure mindset versus the relationship-as-work mindset: for someone with the leisure mindset, as you said, the relationship *is* the reward: It's inherently gratifying to spend time around your partner for someone, regardless of any effort you may or may not put into the relationship, like some kind of magic happiness spigot. Contrast with relationships as work: here, just being around your partner isn't enough. You have to extract some sort of value out of them in order to accomplish your actual terminal goal, which, unlike in the former case, is *not* just contact with your partner. The only difference between work and play is whether doing it is gratifying or not, and the fact that women seem to approach relationships as work makes me deeply skeptical that there can be any real attraction (or, rather, "real" attraction) occurring in light of this fact.
Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps (1999, with Barbara Pease)[9][10]
Gen Z isn't interested in marriage and kids so there's hope.
Men will solve this the usual way - e.g. by inventing and building things. Not by "adapting" - that is way too slow.
Ai , VR and sexbots for one segment of men. Islam for more traditional ones.
Women will be ones adapting. As they are least productive and least capable sex. Alas there also will by transhumanism , cyborgs and genetic engineering. So that can get pretty wild and far from current species and genders
What do you think about the argument that women tend to view "work" as more of a consumer good and men tend to view "work" as something they have to put work into? That would seem to be the mirror image of what you are describing in this post.
Hah, as I don't have time just yet to read I'll give my own anecdotal impressions and reading of the 'science', which will be interesting to compare with Tove's insightful takes.
Both male and female needs must have sex, otherwise the germ line dies. For humans "romantic relationships" are an inevitable outcome of sex producing kids that need the provisioning of both parents to succeed. As such I presume this relationship form has persistence as a product of past evolutionary selection. I ascribe parents the priority but it could be other adult humans though they may be less invested in the kids than the parents, or nowadays 'the social welfare system'.
However, birth control nowadays means that a romantic relationship is no longer needed for sex, but set that to the side.
Women, being the bearer of children, are invested in directly ensuring their kids survive through provisioning with food (and shelter) and are on the lookout for partners who will also invest beyond just being sperm donors. Men on the other hand who impress women with their potential capacity to enable their kids survival and success in adulthood are likely to be have more sex, and (before contraception) father more kids.
So, assuming women need the partnership of a father to raise their kids, naturally they will invest more effort into that partnership than the father who naturally is more into impressing women with his ability to husband resources and contribute them to his "romantic relationship" in exchange for sex. Given this exchange is made without thought on either partner's part I don't regard it as transactional. Of course that changes with birth control and is perhaps at the root of the problems being expressed with "romantic relationships"
cheers
This is so monumentally unrelatable that I wonder if It could be possible for me to travel to whatever planet you live on. In the various relationships I've had with women, I've found that they do no appreciable work whatsoever on the relationship. I did the lion's share both in a humorous reference to my name and in the sense of the fable where the lion just takes the whole thing for himself. I've always thought deeply and seriously about relating and relationships, and in fact have professional experience. It makes that I would do an unusual amount of work. However, I very much would have liked them to meet me if not halfway, perhaps even a quarter of the way. They did not. They did, however, do a great deal of 'work' attempting to change me into something that would fit into their preferential systems of convenience more easily than the real, large, and rather inconvenient man with whom they fell in love. They failed. More sadly, however, they also failed to realize that a lack of acceptance of the other was any kind of undesirable behavior on their parts that they could attempt through interior work to change. Perhaps they have reflected on this failure in the various lengths of time since I left them, but I have not heard any reports of this and frankly it would surprise me.
Re: M. Fray comment: "But she didn’t want to be my mother. She wanted to be my partner, and she wanted me to apply all of my intelligence and learning capabilities to the logistics of managing our lives and household[...] "
But, as evidenced by the feelings of the commenter at Fray's site (named Brian - no relation), this leaves a fundamental asymmetry in an ostensibly equal relationship between those 2 types of people. If the first person determines the standards by which the second person's contributions count as "all of their capabilities", and whether it is sufficient to maintain the relationship, and the second person's complaints about the contributions of the first person are not mentioned (perhaps Fray had symmetrical pet peeves about his wife's behavior, but they are not addressed in the post) or something that must just be borne, then I can see why the second person might feel aggrieved.
It legitimately seems like they are a subservient member of the relationship? Obviously some people might be entirely fine with that, but there is definitely an expectation of equality in relationships by many/most people, and if one side determines the standards which the other must meet ("all of my [...] capabilities") - and your male-consumer/female-producer model (implying higher female demands on male investment) is true - then this seems like a recipe for resentment. I don't really have a dog in this fight (thankfully) but for two people of those types in a relationship, what's the solution?
Excellent essay and insights. I think a lot of this plays out in great literature. When I have more time, I might revisit it and try to analyze "Anna Karenina" in light of what you say. (I really probably won't because I'm lazy/busy, but I have something to ponder.)
Thanks for writing and sharing this.
"I always reasoned: “If you just tell me what you want me to do, I’ll gladly do it.” But she didn’t want to be my mother. "
Maybe she wanted him to be more responsible, or maybe that was her passive-aggressive way of expressing that she now hates his guts. Happens quite often when a toddler drains the romance out of a marriage.
What men expect from relationships is sex. What women expect from relationships is passion. Or drama. Day-time TV drama. I've seen men blowing up their marriages for sex and I've seen women blowing up their marriages out of boredom.
I've also seen men who love to create relationship drama and women who hate drama, but there is a pattern that women are far more into romance than men, for better and for worse.
There's a simple explanation: Men evolved from builders, warriors, and extractive foragers, while women built coalitions to try to deal with their lower status. Evolution produced men who are good at, and interested in, designing, build, and servicing the tools and technology of their people. The lower status of women produced females who showed solidarity with each other and bargained with providers and controlling husbands.
Consequently modern women are interested in relationships; men are interested in tools. If men were interested in relationships, they wouldn't be as good at building cars, digging ditches, and figuring out why the computer won't start up. There are about fifty studies I'm aware of in the vein of the Holland Hexagon, but I can't figure out how to cite them without being boring, so I'll offer an anecdote instead:
Twenty years ago I drove down to visit my best friend. He lived in his garage, literally surrounded by firearms, motorcycles, video game consoles, and computers, and walls and walls of tools to take apart, repair, and customize these objects. While there, I divided my time between him and my fiancee (not Mrs. Apple Pie), who wanted constant communication through Yahoo Messenger, with frequent smilies and checks on my emotional state. She was so bad with mechanical things that she died in an automobile accident.