The weird thing about articles like this: Alienated reductive aggrieved generalizing about the opposite sex and their inner workings, is how men in the comments compete show praise for it. It's the weirdest dynamic on substack.
It says what my post above says, but with more scientific references and with the clear intention to critize men. So obviously, this message can be used for that purpose. But I only intended to open a discussion about how things are and I believe that most of the men in the comments field appreciated that.
I can only speak to my experience as someone from an immigrant and religious background—gender roles are much more strictly defined and enforced and within that fold men are the providers and women the caretakers. A man's role is to provide financially and act as the interface between the family unit and the outside world, and the woman is meant to contain the family unit itself.
I can imagine some of these traits stem from the biological differences between the sexes—women are the birthers and men are the "hunters", but without a formal study I think evolutionary theories give too much credence to biological essentialism to handicap any possibility of a change because "that's just how men and women are". I think men can care more in the relationship, and women can enjoy the relationship more.
But if not biology, it must be culture, right? I think so. Girls are taught domestic duties and trained to be more social than men, and so that paradigm continues to their later romantic relationships, whereas men are never given those same tools.
I hesitate to say men should adopt some of the habits of women, but I think we can investigate each gender's approach to the issue of relationships individually and address them. A man should not adopt a woman's productive approach to relationships. A woman should not adopt a man's leisurely approach to relationships. Instead, a man should be more proactive in his relationships, and a woman more relaxed. I am a strong believer in gender roles, and I think there's room for improving the gender dynamic rather than discarding it entirely.
I think that's my main takeaway from your brilliantly written essay. It's really opened my eye to the intricacies of relationships, and I hope to action your critiques in my own life (if one day I enter a romantic relationship)
Men and women each have both kinds of relationships. The relationships men have that they build and work on ARE AT WORK. The relationships outside of work are for leisure. Men feel like they shouldn't have to work on these, and if they become too much work, they'll abandon them. "Hey, this was supposed to be fun. I can get this at work." Women are the opposite. Their relationships at work are for leisure, escaping the dull grind. "I can't wait to tell Jenny in accounting the latest news!" Not saying all women are gossips that don't take their work seriously; please, just a general trend I've seen first hand. Their relationships outside of work are the serious ones, familial, generational, and require work to hold together; understandably so, because she has a lot riding on them.
According to that principle, the division between work and leisure should have created a gulf between the sexes. At the time when family members were supposed to actually work together, men and women might have been more in agreement on how much thought should be invested in their families. And the Amish might keep men mentally invested in their families through keeping their home environment work intense.
Well, people are more complex than my little vignette, and the division lines between men and women's behavior are not so sharp. I've been married to the same woman for 40 years and we have 11 children together, so obviously I've worked on those relationships. But I'm not the one who writes the anniversaries, grandkids' birthdays, etc. on the calendar. I should have said "men lean this way" and "women lean that way". And we do have a gulf between the sexes today. Millions are writing about it here on Substack. Maybe with more woman in the workforce the gulf is growing wider. Maybe women don't want to work on home relationships when they get home from a hard day at work either.
I agree with your last two sentences and you made me think that maybe part of the success of our big, happy family is the fact that I run a small family business. Everybody is invested in its success, and it keeps work and family relationships not so compartmentalized.
This is really interesting and gives me a few thoughts
1. I don’t think it is reasonable to assume that women’s approach to romantic relationships is automatically the right one and it is a deficiency for a man to not conform to that. Both sexes have equal membership in the relationship, so why should one side’s view form the basis that they should both see it from?
2. Men are focused on the world and women the home. I think you’re right about this. But I also think much of what you write here is inconsistent with this premise.
“If females had any important means of hurting the prospects of husbands who didn't please them, I think males would have evolved better abilities to care about female subjective feelings. The current division of relational labor simply suggests that during history, men were more important to women than women were to men.”
I do not find this to be a fair assessment. I am certain that throughout history, as now, nothing motivated men more than impressing and getting women. Which would suggest that it is what impresses women that has structured many aspects of how we evolved. The home and children that women focus primarily on requires lots of resources, and I do not think it is a coincidence that men are almost singularly motivated by the acquisition of resources. Or, to put it in terms closer to what you’ve used, this is why men focus on the outside world and women focus on the home. One requires the other. And I think throughout history this has probably been a very equal split. A mind that is optimized for acquiring resources is fundamentally different from the mind that is optimized for managing relationships and the home. The world operates according to different rules than the home; individual feelings matter less in the world than at home.
I think these are really good ideas, but I think you sometimes view the world from a woman’s lens and wonder why the world is not organized accordingly. Perhaps men need to change. Or perhaps the way women approach and understand relationships needs to change. Perhaps it is not men who do not devote enough intellectual effort towards relationships, but women who devote too much to it. I sometimes wonder if the tsunami of reality tv and movies that are heavy on interpersonal drama, that women disproportionately consume, has distorted how women interpret relationships. Maybe I’m wrong, but it certainly can’t be helping. I have heaps of criticism for men too, but I have not found much of a deficit (of quantity, not quality) there that needs correcting.
Parallel to this, and maybe only somewhat relevant, is that in my view modern thought among western women is complicated by the desire to have the benefits of tearing down traditional gender dynamics as well as the benefits to keeping them. It often feels that women want the advantages of being a man and the advantages of being a woman but the downsides of neither. I think this has sort of thrown things off kilter.
I think we need to be more creative and open minded with how we diagnose these problems. That said, I think you are doing important work.
>>I don’t think it is reasonable to assume that women’s approach to romantic relationships is automatically the right one and it is a deficiency for a man to not conform to that.
I agree. My aim with this post was just to highlight the state if things, not to establish norms for how things ought to be. Just trying to explain.
>>Perhaps it is not men who do not devote enough intellectual effort towards relationships, but women who devote too much to it.
I wholeheartedly agree. As a woman, I have been really worried about my own prospects for thinking about anything outside the personal sphere. I recently wrote a post about it in our paid section. I only posted it to paid subscribers because I didn't feel my post was as carefully written as posts on controversial subjects should be. But I will try to write about this subject on the open part of the blog too because it is a subject that concerns me enormously. On the whole, I'm a lot more worried about women's lack of interest in the world than I'm worried about men's lack of interest in relationships.
The thing I disagree with you about is history. I do believe that women mostly evolved as subordinates to men and that it is important to recognize this in order to understand the female side of psychology:
>>throughout history, as now, nothing motivated men more than impressing and getting women.
Nothing motivated men more than getting women and impress whoever needed to be impressed to achieve that. And throughout most of history, that wasn't only, or even mainly the woman herself, but other men. I think that matters a lot for today's relationship between the sexes.
Alright. Perhaps I misunderstood certain elements of what you were saying.
A theory I have, which may bring you some solace (with respect to your second point) is that the world men are is optimized for is violent, resource scarce, and primitive. But the world is no longer like that, at least not in developed societies. We exist within complex societies where having a greater understanding of others' emotions, existing within a relatively equal collective, and understanding interpersonal dynamics is really important. So at the very least I think developed societies have become something that women can contribute to and thrive in more relative to what was historically the case. I think we have achieved a state of existence that neither men nor women are perfectly optimized for. We are sort of outpacing evolution.
All that said, I do agree that it is really important to explore whether the conditions women were optimized for by our evolution is fundamentally at odds with aspirations to be equal participants in society. So I think you are exploring a very important idea that modern feminism has, up to this point, really avoided.
That said, I have sometimes understood progressive thought in the US (with respect to the more extreme form it ended up taking) as an attempt by women to articulate a view of the world that makes sense to them. I do not think it is off the mark to characterize the excesses of progressive thought as being the result of an abundance of compassion and the associated assumption that the locus of control (main reason for why things happen) is external to the individual. I remember reading about someone who pushed a stranger in front of a subway in New York and the response among progressives was overwhelmingly that he was basically not to be blamed because he had mental health problems and it was the city's fault for not helping him with that. That strikes me as being very characteristic of how women think in that it is pursuing a compassionate interpretation to an extreme.
>> The thing I disagree with you about is history. I do believe that women mostly evolved as subordinates to men and that it is important to recognize this in order to understand the female side of psychology.
I don't think our interpretations of history are mutually exclusive. It can be simultaneously true that the division of labor was, when it was all said and done, relatively equal. But someone needs to be in charge. And in a violent, resource scarce time I think it probably makes more sense for that to be the one who is capable of responding to violence and acquiring resources. But that does not come from a place of malice in men, nor is that the form it must necessarily take. I don't think you can be as emotionally complex and aware as women and be the one primarily taking the world head on; the world shears you of that sort of sensitivity. I think at some level men want to protect their women from the world so they can maintain their sensitivity, as I think I speak for all men when I say that it is beautiful. But also it is necessary for one partner to retain that sensitivity, as I think it is required at the interpersonal level. There is order and balance to all this, I think. It is just a matter of whether we have outlived the relevance of the order we were optimized for.
>> Nothing motivated men more than getting women and impress whoever needed to be impressed to achieve that. And throughout most of history, that wasn't only, or even mainly the woman herself, but other men. I think that matters a lot for today's relationship between the sexes.
In this I think you misunderstand men. I really do think women do not understand how much men think about sex. Virtually everything we do is about women and sex; first having sex and then providing for our woman. I would say it is true that men are focused on impressing other men, but only to the extent that it can help us achieve status. And the reason we give a shit about status is that women are attracted to men who are of higher status and can provide more resources.
You will never understand men until you understand that we meaningfully give a shit about little else outside of women. Women have their plan, men have their woman. I think this is part of the gulf between us; we are in some ways far simpler than women, and women refuse to accept that. They just assume we must be like them but defective.
To an earlier point you made, I think this may create room for women to contribute in ways that men can't. A Huxley quote I have always liked is "an intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting than sex". (and a related Nietzsche quote I have always liked is that, basically, genuis is regarded as a feminine quality. They are getting at something real). And I think Huxley was talking about men, and implicitly recognizing what I said earlier: that men are genuinely wired to care about little else than women/sex. And I don't know that women are similar to us in that way. Men do not contemplate things for the sake of contemplating them. In that way we are more constrained.
My main problem is not that women are doing badly. My main problem is that science and philosophy is doing badly without most of half the human race. Science and philosophy are valuable in themselves and in my opinion it is too bad that women's focus tends to lie elsewhere. (Not that I'm in a position to tell people what they should think about, I just have opinions.)
>>I really do think women do not understand how much men think about sex.
I'm working on understanding that. Maybe I'm halfway there. In general I think that one of the most important things women could do to improve their relationship to men is to have some respect for men's focus on sex.
You do make an interesting point on science and philosophy being important but women's focus lying elsewhere. a piece i'm working on asserts that scientific approaches have basically taken over the endeavor to understand the human condition, so our philosophy and art is garbage. It is too grounded in deductive reasoning and evidence seeking (e.g. there was no methodology and works cited section to 'Beyond Good and Evil', yet western thought suggests that any idea lacking those things is not sound).
So, interestingly, women, whose thinking is not characterized by evidence seeking and deductive reasoning (generally speaking, imo) to the same extent, may be able to add a dose of what is missing, if a mode of feminine thought could be constructed that was grounded in reason and oriented towards the world. I believe men and women in western societies, at this point in time, are equally far from sound philosophical thinking but for different reasons.
Concerning your point about women understanding men, I think just starting from the basic point that men are not just shitty women. Have to be willing to accept that you need to interpret what we do within a different framework that does not assume the same mental model. We do not seek sex for the same reason a woman does, and that statement that was lacking in empathy was not made with the same intent that a woman would have made it with.
Women should just still out and relax then. Just stop working in or on the relationship. Why put in any effort if the other party isn't? Both can be slackers together and it will probably be a great, go with the flow symbiosis.
I love Tove's writing as much for the absence of obvious political shaping as the insight. This is an example at its best. It comes just as I'm mentally abstracting a piece of my own on sex & love. So, for now, just a thank you (although many observations also resonated - including those in the comments). Everyone is thoughtful & smart on this blog.
This framing makes a lot of sense to me. As you got towards the end, I was thinking about men's tendency to be lazier and to sort of "expect" the concept of more options and more reproductive success, as an excuse to invest less emotionally. A couple things I wanted to add:
First, I know men who go fully to one end of the spectrum - their only goal in life is to provide money and security, and they think that buys their way out of all other responsibilities. Needless to say these men end up unhappy with terrible marriages and bad relationships with their kids. Making a lot of money is not an excuse to forgo literally all of the other life skills you're supposed to acquire as a man. This mindset might have worked at some point, when just keeping children alive was a victory. But it is profoundly outdated, and men who fail to see that are failing a basic test of intelligence (and manliness).
And second, there is a tendency for even mediocre men - men who aren't providing a lot of money or security - to do this same thing. To bring low investment to the relationship, to adopt the mindset that the relationship is just the home thing. That there are other options - subconsciously they believe they could still find reproductive success elsewhere.
And it may sound harsh, but it's like... dude, if you're not providing a lot of resources, I'm sorry but you're going to have to work even harder at home than the men who are. You don't have the luxury of treating your relationship as a given. Is it unfair? Sure, all of life is unfair. But a man who isn't at least providing a lot of resources has even less an ability to rest on his laurels than a high earner or a stud.
"I always reasoned: “If you just tell me what you want me to do, I’ll gladly do it.”
This isn't really true. This is the voice of the superego that tries to maintain a positive self-image. The deeper recesses of the soul actually hate these chores, but few men have the self-reflection to admit it.
These tasks are mundane, boring, nothing heroic about them, a 75 IQ person with the physical strength of a child could do them. I was very unhappy in my marriage after our child was born, I told my life I hate being at home in the evenings, it is all extremely boring, mundane and unheroic, I don't understand how can she cope with that.
How can a person do tasks that do not make themselves feel good about them, because they are so easy, anyone could do them?
Well I suppose they can try to not make them about themselves, but I am not so unselfish.
How can women accept a life of mundane, unheroic tasks? Are they really that unselfish?
Treating the home as a second workplace is bad enough in itself, but in the real workplace I solve computer puzzles only a few % of people could. Filling a dishwasher is something any child could do. Maybe one could train a monkey to. I absolutely hated this stuff.
I told her I want to be a rampaging viking, or something, romantic adventure, challenge, heroism, I cannot deal with this gray mundane domestic life.
The marriage did not last long after.
Well of course I did not turn into any kind of adventurer, but now I get to read about them. And paid help does the chores.
So my take is men do not deal well with domestication, we just try to maintain a good-hubby self-image so we lie to ourselves and tell us we do.
The results are these excuses "I did not know it needs to be done" and so on.
One thing is clear, I am never ever doing a live-in relationship again. I want relationships as vacation, leisure, going to the beach together and suchlike.
Post-40 it is doable, many older divorcee women want it like that - staying independent.
I understand perfectly what you mean. Actually, I could have said that myself when I had only one child. Paradoxically, that is one reason why I have six children: One or two is too easy. With more children it starts to get more similar to computer puzzles.
My guess is that the boredom of domestic life is one very important reason behind the fertility crisis. People need incentives to choose to have children - and definitely choose to have more than two children. Just saying that having children is extremely fun and stimulating doesn't work. Because as you say, many parts of it are not.
Interesting! Well a "herding cats" experience would have been challenging enough to be fun, I think.
When the neighbor kid, who is also a single child, visits my daughter, she is entirely transformed. Even just two work very different than one. She is transformed from the lazy phone addict couch potato to a whirlwind, they chase each other around the garden, with the dogs and all.
""*If a woman obviously puts a lot of effort into looking sexy, don't pursue her for a long-term relationship. Slutshame her instead.""
This is a common misconception. Men do not slut shame in anywhere near the intensity and frequently as women do. Women do this because a slut lowers the value of sex for all women. If sex were cheap and easy, women would get fewer benefits for holding out. Men on the other hand love cheap and easy sex. Why would we ever want to dissuade a woman from engaging in such.
My relationship has been on the rocks for about a year, and I have attempted to leave several times, but my partner says “he’ll really change this time”, and for some reason I believe him, despite us discussing the same issues for years and years.
Starting about a year ago, I have been frequently asking him to read a certain relationship book that offers great understanding and strategies to deal with the issues we have been facing, and he has never read it. Recently he actually read it and our relationship is instantly turning around. He now says he regrets not reading the book a year ago, as it would have saved a year of grief. Men can fuck right off, right?
The problem with blaming the other sex is that both engage in frustrating behavior. The problems are inherent to the human condition. Nothing truly meaningful comes to you easy. If it did, you would not value it.
If you want to see old, lonely and pathetic, find elderly men who were players, or women who dropped every man who did not read her mind. I assure you that working towards a higher goal is worth it. It may not be this one, but you will be regretful if you never sufficiently change and adapt to be part of something greater than yourself.
I mostly give this speech to young men, but I have been giving more and more to women. It is sad how our culture has abandoned so many institutions that were once central to our growth as human beings (churches, clubs,...). We are paying such a high price for that now.
This is actually a new take on the curse of Eve -- that she's going to be thinking too much about her husband, way more than he thinks about her. And she'll be so busy thinking about their relationship that she can't do much else. It certainly describes me. Add kids to the mix, and I'm basically useless. I understand the desire to be a housewife, simply because it's all I can think about anyway.
well, I don't *actually* want to be a dependent and spend my day cleaning up after people. But I do find that since having kids my brain is 25% occupied by them at all times.
I have been saying for years that the problem with modern dating is that men just aren't interested, and there isn't anything you can do to make them interested. Thank you for putting this together! Its a good theory and at least it makes it all make sense. I have historically been very baffled by all of this.
Men are interested, but the women are too busy fighting each other over the sleaziest men. I never cease to be amazed at how many women prefer being cheap playthings to a handful of men over having real relationships with men who actually want them. I am so happy I grew up when I did (1990's).
Could you give more examples of the work women are putting in? I planned vacations, planned dates, found a place for us to live, moved all our stuff, found her a reliable car, etc. because as she would say “you know I’m not good at that kind of stuff.”
I got the feeling she thought she was sacrificing more than me just because she carried the heavy heavy burden of being unsatisfied with the relationship and who I was as a person.
This whole post seems so backwards to me. Like saying “the consumers of Game of Thrones actually put in more work than the producers, because they spend more time reacting to the finished product.”
I have only dated one man who actually planned dates. I’ve never dated any man who would plan a vacation. I’ve always made more money than the men I’ve dated, and had my shit more together. Maybe I’m just picking/putting up with losers. And maybe you have too.
I’ve spent a lot of time and effort thinking about (and trying to apply) how relationships and life could be improved (communicating better, parenting better, being more healthy, more connection, more fun, more sex), only to receive zero reply or effort from the man. They are then apparently super surprised when I end the relationship
The fans are way more invested in the show (and continually find and explain away discrepancies and internal contradictions in the show) than are anyone in the cast, crew or staff.
I was thinking the same; personally, I have seen more couples like you where the man is investing heavily for survival of relationship. The author herself is admitting that she is drawing these conclusions from her anecdotal experiences, her viewpoint can have some value but I will suggest to male readers not to assume that the relationships that will encounter will give same observations as that of the author.
From my personal experience (as a lot of relationship advice is given), it sounds like you were taken for granted as the relationship was one sided. I think women weigh sex (esp. after the initial spark is gone) as more work and emotional upkeep than us guys understand. This can start a cycle, putting in tons of work to get your reward at the end of the night and her believing things are now equal as you both did something to contribute.
>>Like saying “the consumers of Game of Thrones actually put in more work than the producers, because they spend more time reacting to the finished product.”
A very interesting analogy. And a surprisingly good one. Actually I do think some consumers of Games of Thrones get more obsessed with the show than the creators themselves. The crew will work hard for months and years. But eventually they will move on and create something else. Meanwhile, some fans will remake their entire lives and entire selves after their favorite TV show.
Are they productive? Should they rather be doing something else? Probably, yes. But nonetheless, they are sacrificing more than the crew that created the show. And although those extreme fans are overdoing it, there can't be any show without fans.
It's kind of a sideways analogy, because the "consumers" don't do more work to *produce/create* the show, but the evangelists/true believers/stans are not simply consumers and they maintain the world of the media property (in this case, GOT) long past the creators have moved on, as you say.
It's simply a different thing, but it does relate to your post in that these fans maintain relationships/a shared reality with one another requires much more/different work than the producers. It's why Lost disappointed so many hardcore fans: nothing the production team could come up with could compare with the years long, collaborative project of thinking up scenarios of what's really going on and projecting "4D chess." The way fans are stoked to heavily invest emotionally, financially, and spiritually these days and leads to intense backlashes it's reflective of your point.
The weird thing about articles like this: Alienated reductive aggrieved generalizing about the opposite sex and their inner workings, is how men in the comments compete show praise for it. It's the weirdest dynamic on substack.
It was never my intention to critize men. And definitely not to seem aggrived. I recently stumbled over this article
https://thenoosphere.substack.com/p/why-women-pay-the-price-for-caring
It says what my post above says, but with more scientific references and with the clear intention to critize men. So obviously, this message can be used for that purpose. But I only intended to open a discussion about how things are and I believe that most of the men in the comments field appreciated that.
I can only speak to my experience as someone from an immigrant and religious background—gender roles are much more strictly defined and enforced and within that fold men are the providers and women the caretakers. A man's role is to provide financially and act as the interface between the family unit and the outside world, and the woman is meant to contain the family unit itself.
I can imagine some of these traits stem from the biological differences between the sexes—women are the birthers and men are the "hunters", but without a formal study I think evolutionary theories give too much credence to biological essentialism to handicap any possibility of a change because "that's just how men and women are". I think men can care more in the relationship, and women can enjoy the relationship more.
But if not biology, it must be culture, right? I think so. Girls are taught domestic duties and trained to be more social than men, and so that paradigm continues to their later romantic relationships, whereas men are never given those same tools.
I hesitate to say men should adopt some of the habits of women, but I think we can investigate each gender's approach to the issue of relationships individually and address them. A man should not adopt a woman's productive approach to relationships. A woman should not adopt a man's leisurely approach to relationships. Instead, a man should be more proactive in his relationships, and a woman more relaxed. I am a strong believer in gender roles, and I think there's room for improving the gender dynamic rather than discarding it entirely.
I think that's my main takeaway from your brilliantly written essay. It's really opened my eye to the intricacies of relationships, and I hope to action your critiques in my own life (if one day I enter a romantic relationship)
Men and women each have both kinds of relationships. The relationships men have that they build and work on ARE AT WORK. The relationships outside of work are for leisure. Men feel like they shouldn't have to work on these, and if they become too much work, they'll abandon them. "Hey, this was supposed to be fun. I can get this at work." Women are the opposite. Their relationships at work are for leisure, escaping the dull grind. "I can't wait to tell Jenny in accounting the latest news!" Not saying all women are gossips that don't take their work seriously; please, just a general trend I've seen first hand. Their relationships outside of work are the serious ones, familial, generational, and require work to hold together; understandably so, because she has a lot riding on them.
According to that principle, the division between work and leisure should have created a gulf between the sexes. At the time when family members were supposed to actually work together, men and women might have been more in agreement on how much thought should be invested in their families. And the Amish might keep men mentally invested in their families through keeping their home environment work intense.
Well, people are more complex than my little vignette, and the division lines between men and women's behavior are not so sharp. I've been married to the same woman for 40 years and we have 11 children together, so obviously I've worked on those relationships. But I'm not the one who writes the anniversaries, grandkids' birthdays, etc. on the calendar. I should have said "men lean this way" and "women lean that way". And we do have a gulf between the sexes today. Millions are writing about it here on Substack. Maybe with more woman in the workforce the gulf is growing wider. Maybe women don't want to work on home relationships when they get home from a hard day at work either.
I agree with your last two sentences and you made me think that maybe part of the success of our big, happy family is the fact that I run a small family business. Everybody is invested in its success, and it keeps work and family relationships not so compartmentalized.
This is really interesting and gives me a few thoughts
1. I don’t think it is reasonable to assume that women’s approach to romantic relationships is automatically the right one and it is a deficiency for a man to not conform to that. Both sexes have equal membership in the relationship, so why should one side’s view form the basis that they should both see it from?
2. Men are focused on the world and women the home. I think you’re right about this. But I also think much of what you write here is inconsistent with this premise.
“If females had any important means of hurting the prospects of husbands who didn't please them, I think males would have evolved better abilities to care about female subjective feelings. The current division of relational labor simply suggests that during history, men were more important to women than women were to men.”
I do not find this to be a fair assessment. I am certain that throughout history, as now, nothing motivated men more than impressing and getting women. Which would suggest that it is what impresses women that has structured many aspects of how we evolved. The home and children that women focus primarily on requires lots of resources, and I do not think it is a coincidence that men are almost singularly motivated by the acquisition of resources. Or, to put it in terms closer to what you’ve used, this is why men focus on the outside world and women focus on the home. One requires the other. And I think throughout history this has probably been a very equal split. A mind that is optimized for acquiring resources is fundamentally different from the mind that is optimized for managing relationships and the home. The world operates according to different rules than the home; individual feelings matter less in the world than at home.
I think these are really good ideas, but I think you sometimes view the world from a woman’s lens and wonder why the world is not organized accordingly. Perhaps men need to change. Or perhaps the way women approach and understand relationships needs to change. Perhaps it is not men who do not devote enough intellectual effort towards relationships, but women who devote too much to it. I sometimes wonder if the tsunami of reality tv and movies that are heavy on interpersonal drama, that women disproportionately consume, has distorted how women interpret relationships. Maybe I’m wrong, but it certainly can’t be helping. I have heaps of criticism for men too, but I have not found much of a deficit (of quantity, not quality) there that needs correcting.
Parallel to this, and maybe only somewhat relevant, is that in my view modern thought among western women is complicated by the desire to have the benefits of tearing down traditional gender dynamics as well as the benefits to keeping them. It often feels that women want the advantages of being a man and the advantages of being a woman but the downsides of neither. I think this has sort of thrown things off kilter.
I think we need to be more creative and open minded with how we diagnose these problems. That said, I think you are doing important work.
>>I don’t think it is reasonable to assume that women’s approach to romantic relationships is automatically the right one and it is a deficiency for a man to not conform to that.
I agree. My aim with this post was just to highlight the state if things, not to establish norms for how things ought to be. Just trying to explain.
>>Perhaps it is not men who do not devote enough intellectual effort towards relationships, but women who devote too much to it.
I wholeheartedly agree. As a woman, I have been really worried about my own prospects for thinking about anything outside the personal sphere. I recently wrote a post about it in our paid section. I only posted it to paid subscribers because I didn't feel my post was as carefully written as posts on controversial subjects should be. But I will try to write about this subject on the open part of the blog too because it is a subject that concerns me enormously. On the whole, I'm a lot more worried about women's lack of interest in the world than I'm worried about men's lack of interest in relationships.
The thing I disagree with you about is history. I do believe that women mostly evolved as subordinates to men and that it is important to recognize this in order to understand the female side of psychology:
>>throughout history, as now, nothing motivated men more than impressing and getting women.
Nothing motivated men more than getting women and impress whoever needed to be impressed to achieve that. And throughout most of history, that wasn't only, or even mainly the woman herself, but other men. I think that matters a lot for today's relationship between the sexes.
Alright. Perhaps I misunderstood certain elements of what you were saying.
A theory I have, which may bring you some solace (with respect to your second point) is that the world men are is optimized for is violent, resource scarce, and primitive. But the world is no longer like that, at least not in developed societies. We exist within complex societies where having a greater understanding of others' emotions, existing within a relatively equal collective, and understanding interpersonal dynamics is really important. So at the very least I think developed societies have become something that women can contribute to and thrive in more relative to what was historically the case. I think we have achieved a state of existence that neither men nor women are perfectly optimized for. We are sort of outpacing evolution.
All that said, I do agree that it is really important to explore whether the conditions women were optimized for by our evolution is fundamentally at odds with aspirations to be equal participants in society. So I think you are exploring a very important idea that modern feminism has, up to this point, really avoided.
That said, I have sometimes understood progressive thought in the US (with respect to the more extreme form it ended up taking) as an attempt by women to articulate a view of the world that makes sense to them. I do not think it is off the mark to characterize the excesses of progressive thought as being the result of an abundance of compassion and the associated assumption that the locus of control (main reason for why things happen) is external to the individual. I remember reading about someone who pushed a stranger in front of a subway in New York and the response among progressives was overwhelmingly that he was basically not to be blamed because he had mental health problems and it was the city's fault for not helping him with that. That strikes me as being very characteristic of how women think in that it is pursuing a compassionate interpretation to an extreme.
>> The thing I disagree with you about is history. I do believe that women mostly evolved as subordinates to men and that it is important to recognize this in order to understand the female side of psychology.
I don't think our interpretations of history are mutually exclusive. It can be simultaneously true that the division of labor was, when it was all said and done, relatively equal. But someone needs to be in charge. And in a violent, resource scarce time I think it probably makes more sense for that to be the one who is capable of responding to violence and acquiring resources. But that does not come from a place of malice in men, nor is that the form it must necessarily take. I don't think you can be as emotionally complex and aware as women and be the one primarily taking the world head on; the world shears you of that sort of sensitivity. I think at some level men want to protect their women from the world so they can maintain their sensitivity, as I think I speak for all men when I say that it is beautiful. But also it is necessary for one partner to retain that sensitivity, as I think it is required at the interpersonal level. There is order and balance to all this, I think. It is just a matter of whether we have outlived the relevance of the order we were optimized for.
>> Nothing motivated men more than getting women and impress whoever needed to be impressed to achieve that. And throughout most of history, that wasn't only, or even mainly the woman herself, but other men. I think that matters a lot for today's relationship between the sexes.
In this I think you misunderstand men. I really do think women do not understand how much men think about sex. Virtually everything we do is about women and sex; first having sex and then providing for our woman. I would say it is true that men are focused on impressing other men, but only to the extent that it can help us achieve status. And the reason we give a shit about status is that women are attracted to men who are of higher status and can provide more resources.
You will never understand men until you understand that we meaningfully give a shit about little else outside of women. Women have their plan, men have their woman. I think this is part of the gulf between us; we are in some ways far simpler than women, and women refuse to accept that. They just assume we must be like them but defective.
To an earlier point you made, I think this may create room for women to contribute in ways that men can't. A Huxley quote I have always liked is "an intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting than sex". (and a related Nietzsche quote I have always liked is that, basically, genuis is regarded as a feminine quality. They are getting at something real). And I think Huxley was talking about men, and implicitly recognizing what I said earlier: that men are genuinely wired to care about little else than women/sex. And I don't know that women are similar to us in that way. Men do not contemplate things for the sake of contemplating them. In that way we are more constrained.
My main problem is not that women are doing badly. My main problem is that science and philosophy is doing badly without most of half the human race. Science and philosophy are valuable in themselves and in my opinion it is too bad that women's focus tends to lie elsewhere. (Not that I'm in a position to tell people what they should think about, I just have opinions.)
>>I really do think women do not understand how much men think about sex.
I'm working on understanding that. Maybe I'm halfway there. In general I think that one of the most important things women could do to improve their relationship to men is to have some respect for men's focus on sex.
You do make an interesting point on science and philosophy being important but women's focus lying elsewhere. a piece i'm working on asserts that scientific approaches have basically taken over the endeavor to understand the human condition, so our philosophy and art is garbage. It is too grounded in deductive reasoning and evidence seeking (e.g. there was no methodology and works cited section to 'Beyond Good and Evil', yet western thought suggests that any idea lacking those things is not sound).
So, interestingly, women, whose thinking is not characterized by evidence seeking and deductive reasoning (generally speaking, imo) to the same extent, may be able to add a dose of what is missing, if a mode of feminine thought could be constructed that was grounded in reason and oriented towards the world. I believe men and women in western societies, at this point in time, are equally far from sound philosophical thinking but for different reasons.
Concerning your point about women understanding men, I think just starting from the basic point that men are not just shitty women. Have to be willing to accept that you need to interpret what we do within a different framework that does not assume the same mental model. We do not seek sex for the same reason a woman does, and that statement that was lacking in empathy was not made with the same intent that a woman would have made it with.
Men who analyze relationships would be called "overthinking" them, and would logically decide against entering them to begin with.
Women should just still out and relax then. Just stop working in or on the relationship. Why put in any effort if the other party isn't? Both can be slackers together and it will probably be a great, go with the flow symbiosis.
I love Tove's writing as much for the absence of obvious political shaping as the insight. This is an example at its best. It comes just as I'm mentally abstracting a piece of my own on sex & love. So, for now, just a thank you (although many observations also resonated - including those in the comments). Everyone is thoughtful & smart on this blog.
This framing makes a lot of sense to me. As you got towards the end, I was thinking about men's tendency to be lazier and to sort of "expect" the concept of more options and more reproductive success, as an excuse to invest less emotionally. A couple things I wanted to add:
First, I know men who go fully to one end of the spectrum - their only goal in life is to provide money and security, and they think that buys their way out of all other responsibilities. Needless to say these men end up unhappy with terrible marriages and bad relationships with their kids. Making a lot of money is not an excuse to forgo literally all of the other life skills you're supposed to acquire as a man. This mindset might have worked at some point, when just keeping children alive was a victory. But it is profoundly outdated, and men who fail to see that are failing a basic test of intelligence (and manliness).
And second, there is a tendency for even mediocre men - men who aren't providing a lot of money or security - to do this same thing. To bring low investment to the relationship, to adopt the mindset that the relationship is just the home thing. That there are other options - subconsciously they believe they could still find reproductive success elsewhere.
And it may sound harsh, but it's like... dude, if you're not providing a lot of resources, I'm sorry but you're going to have to work even harder at home than the men who are. You don't have the luxury of treating your relationship as a given. Is it unfair? Sure, all of life is unfair. But a man who isn't at least providing a lot of resources has even less an ability to rest on his laurels than a high earner or a stud.
"I always reasoned: “If you just tell me what you want me to do, I’ll gladly do it.”
This isn't really true. This is the voice of the superego that tries to maintain a positive self-image. The deeper recesses of the soul actually hate these chores, but few men have the self-reflection to admit it.
These tasks are mundane, boring, nothing heroic about them, a 75 IQ person with the physical strength of a child could do them. I was very unhappy in my marriage after our child was born, I told my life I hate being at home in the evenings, it is all extremely boring, mundane and unheroic, I don't understand how can she cope with that.
How can a person do tasks that do not make themselves feel good about them, because they are so easy, anyone could do them?
Well I suppose they can try to not make them about themselves, but I am not so unselfish.
How can women accept a life of mundane, unheroic tasks? Are they really that unselfish?
Treating the home as a second workplace is bad enough in itself, but in the real workplace I solve computer puzzles only a few % of people could. Filling a dishwasher is something any child could do. Maybe one could train a monkey to. I absolutely hated this stuff.
I told her I want to be a rampaging viking, or something, romantic adventure, challenge, heroism, I cannot deal with this gray mundane domestic life.
The marriage did not last long after.
Well of course I did not turn into any kind of adventurer, but now I get to read about them. And paid help does the chores.
So my take is men do not deal well with domestication, we just try to maintain a good-hubby self-image so we lie to ourselves and tell us we do.
The results are these excuses "I did not know it needs to be done" and so on.
One thing is clear, I am never ever doing a live-in relationship again. I want relationships as vacation, leisure, going to the beach together and suchlike.
Post-40 it is doable, many older divorcee women want it like that - staying independent.
I understand perfectly what you mean. Actually, I could have said that myself when I had only one child. Paradoxically, that is one reason why I have six children: One or two is too easy. With more children it starts to get more similar to computer puzzles.
My guess is that the boredom of domestic life is one very important reason behind the fertility crisis. People need incentives to choose to have children - and definitely choose to have more than two children. Just saying that having children is extremely fun and stimulating doesn't work. Because as you say, many parts of it are not.
Interesting! Well a "herding cats" experience would have been challenging enough to be fun, I think.
When the neighbor kid, who is also a single child, visits my daughter, she is entirely transformed. Even just two work very different than one. She is transformed from the lazy phone addict couch potato to a whirlwind, they chase each other around the garden, with the dogs and all.
Cats resent being herded!
What in the world is "relationship theory"? What are you even talking about?
""*If a woman obviously puts a lot of effort into looking sexy, don't pursue her for a long-term relationship. Slutshame her instead.""
This is a common misconception. Men do not slut shame in anywhere near the intensity and frequently as women do. Women do this because a slut lowers the value of sex for all women. If sex were cheap and easy, women would get fewer benefits for holding out. Men on the other hand love cheap and easy sex. Why would we ever want to dissuade a woman from engaging in such.
From what I've seen, men who aren't getting any sex will slutshame.
My relationship has been on the rocks for about a year, and I have attempted to leave several times, but my partner says “he’ll really change this time”, and for some reason I believe him, despite us discussing the same issues for years and years.
Starting about a year ago, I have been frequently asking him to read a certain relationship book that offers great understanding and strategies to deal with the issues we have been facing, and he has never read it. Recently he actually read it and our relationship is instantly turning around. He now says he regrets not reading the book a year ago, as it would have saved a year of grief. Men can fuck right off, right?
The problem with blaming the other sex is that both engage in frustrating behavior. The problems are inherent to the human condition. Nothing truly meaningful comes to you easy. If it did, you would not value it.
If you want to see old, lonely and pathetic, find elderly men who were players, or women who dropped every man who did not read her mind. I assure you that working towards a higher goal is worth it. It may not be this one, but you will be regretful if you never sufficiently change and adapt to be part of something greater than yourself.
I mostly give this speech to young men, but I have been giving more and more to women. It is sad how our culture has abandoned so many institutions that were once central to our growth as human beings (churches, clubs,...). We are paying such a high price for that now.
This is actually a new take on the curse of Eve -- that she's going to be thinking too much about her husband, way more than he thinks about her. And she'll be so busy thinking about their relationship that she can't do much else. It certainly describes me. Add kids to the mix, and I'm basically useless. I understand the desire to be a housewife, simply because it's all I can think about anyway.
Are you disappointed you don't have energy left to be a corporate attorney or a stockbroker?
If only we could afford such a luxury.
well, I don't *actually* want to be a dependent and spend my day cleaning up after people. But I do find that since having kids my brain is 25% occupied by them at all times.
I have been saying for years that the problem with modern dating is that men just aren't interested, and there isn't anything you can do to make them interested. Thank you for putting this together! Its a good theory and at least it makes it all make sense. I have historically been very baffled by all of this.
Men are interested, but the women are too busy fighting each other over the sleaziest men. I never cease to be amazed at how many women prefer being cheap playthings to a handful of men over having real relationships with men who actually want them. I am so happy I grew up when I did (1990's).
I think it was better to grow up when I did--in the 1960s and 1970s. But the late 1940s and 1950s might have been still better.
Not my experience in the least!
Interesting read.
Could you give more examples of the work women are putting in? I planned vacations, planned dates, found a place for us to live, moved all our stuff, found her a reliable car, etc. because as she would say “you know I’m not good at that kind of stuff.”
I got the feeling she thought she was sacrificing more than me just because she carried the heavy heavy burden of being unsatisfied with the relationship and who I was as a person.
This whole post seems so backwards to me. Like saying “the consumers of Game of Thrones actually put in more work than the producers, because they spend more time reacting to the finished product.”
I have only dated one man who actually planned dates. I’ve never dated any man who would plan a vacation. I’ve always made more money than the men I’ve dated, and had my shit more together. Maybe I’m just picking/putting up with losers. And maybe you have too.
I’ve spent a lot of time and effort thinking about (and trying to apply) how relationships and life could be improved (communicating better, parenting better, being more healthy, more connection, more fun, more sex), only to receive zero reply or effort from the man. They are then apparently super surprised when I end the relationship
Ever seen "Galaxy Quest"?
The fans are way more invested in the show (and continually find and explain away discrepancies and internal contradictions in the show) than are anyone in the cast, crew or staff.
I was thinking the same; personally, I have seen more couples like you where the man is investing heavily for survival of relationship. The author herself is admitting that she is drawing these conclusions from her anecdotal experiences, her viewpoint can have some value but I will suggest to male readers not to assume that the relationships that will encounter will give same observations as that of the author.
From my personal experience (as a lot of relationship advice is given), it sounds like you were taken for granted as the relationship was one sided. I think women weigh sex (esp. after the initial spark is gone) as more work and emotional upkeep than us guys understand. This can start a cycle, putting in tons of work to get your reward at the end of the night and her believing things are now equal as you both did something to contribute.
Perhaps you are an outlier?
>>Like saying “the consumers of Game of Thrones actually put in more work than the producers, because they spend more time reacting to the finished product.”
A very interesting analogy. And a surprisingly good one. Actually I do think some consumers of Games of Thrones get more obsessed with the show than the creators themselves. The crew will work hard for months and years. But eventually they will move on and create something else. Meanwhile, some fans will remake their entire lives and entire selves after their favorite TV show.
Are they productive? Should they rather be doing something else? Probably, yes. But nonetheless, they are sacrificing more than the crew that created the show. And although those extreme fans are overdoing it, there can't be any show without fans.
It's kind of a sideways analogy, because the "consumers" don't do more work to *produce/create* the show, but the evangelists/true believers/stans are not simply consumers and they maintain the world of the media property (in this case, GOT) long past the creators have moved on, as you say.
It's simply a different thing, but it does relate to your post in that these fans maintain relationships/a shared reality with one another requires much more/different work than the producers. It's why Lost disappointed so many hardcore fans: nothing the production team could come up with could compare with the years long, collaborative project of thinking up scenarios of what's really going on and projecting "4D chess." The way fans are stoked to heavily invest emotionally, financially, and spiritually these days and leads to intense backlashes it's reflective of your point.
There have been many shows without fans. You simply never hear of them.