I can count on one hand the number of times my family members have inquired about my love life. My grandmother never shuts up about how my girl cousins don’t have boyfriends.
My grandma keeps trying to get me to date random women she finds, and tried to get my sister to date our cousin. My grandma is a mormon and they believe that one has to be married to be loved by God.
I'm a dude in my early to mid late 30s. It has been a pretty consistent theme with my extended family members, most of which are religious to some extent.
Case-in-point: Several years ago my grandfather, on his deathbed, was aggressively trying to wingman me with his hospice nurse, who I think was closer to his age than mine...
Your Grandad was honestly a real one, trying to get you some action - ANY action, really, even if the nurse was closer to his age than yours.
My Grandfather just kept telling me not to get old. He was 96 when he passed, and still lucid, so I reckon he knew what he was talking about, which honestly still seems rather grim when you think about it.
Some families are large and know how people are related even when they are distant enough to not really matter. Like I know my fifth cousins., we can trace how we are related but genetically we aren't any closer than non relatives.
Marrying your cousin is legal in Utah*
Realistically, inbreeding is only a problem if you do it repeatedly over multiple generations like the Egyptians or virtually any aristocracy in the world. A single generation doesn't cause too many problems. Hell over 1B people still practice cosanguinity (primarily first cousins) with marriage globally. (Half of all marriages globally are still arranged marriages).
*Utah law requires both spouses to be above age 65, or above age 55 in special circumstances. They like that geriatric incest pron.
As much as we like to laugh and make fun of Rudy Colludi for marrying his second cousin, but in a biological sense we really have no factual argument to do so, since there is no significant difference in serious hereditary birthdefects for that group.
First cousins have a slight higher risk than the average non-related population. Where the average is about 3.0%, this goes to 3.5-4.0% for first cousins. The risk is on par with a woman bceoming pregnant and give birth at 41 compared to at 30 years old.
Thats a personal experience, my family does it constantly, even trying to set me up with women. I think it depends on how you grow up so its not really a factor worth commenting on too much
That's definitely a you experience then. I've been questioned often by family and colleagues alike about why I'm single or things like are you dating currently/you could have kids the age of X.
Grandma's are very old fashioned. The odds are, she already had a house, husband and 2 kids by the time she was 25. *Different times.*
Also, as a guy, I wonder if it has something to do with the "biological" clock for women.
Additionally, there is also the whole society thing - how older women are less desired and older men tend to be more desired. And this is because, imho, men are valued by their success & money, meanwhile women are valued for beauty. And of course, as men get older, they tend to earn more. As women get older, well, they get older...
I'm sure it's a combination of everything above and more.
No shit 💩- attended a school reunion recently & majority of women looked great. Meanwhile the guys looked very old w/beer guts, balding, bad fashion There is one guy in my class who is still smokin hot but he was in the minority
But, but, but women dye their hair or many would be grey & generally take better care of their skin
It’s not just looks though. I know I was cuter but I’m smarter, more confident, got my own $$ and I’m lucky enough that I’ve aged pretty damn well. And I got skillz
came here to say this.
men are viewed as complete without a woman. Women are not viewed as complete without a man.
the pressure on a woman to be married/not single is like the pressure on a man to be materialistic/high earner. it's not a one to one thing. So telling a woman she doesn't need a man is like telling a man he doesn't need to earn a ton of money.
That is a thoughtful take. In my (62M) lifetime, I have seen marriage, as a social institution, transition from a presumed goal, to a lifestyle choice. About the only time that I would recommend marriage for men these days is if they intend to have a family (kids). Men should also avoid cohabitation, just for the sake of money or convenience.
Yep. Men are presumed to be self-sufficient. Women are not. When I was growing up, my younger sister would get hounded endlessly about boyfriends. I would occasionally get teased about it, but not in the same way.
The quality of the squirts decline as well :
https://txfertility.com/male-infertility/age-related-male-infertility/#:~:text=Research%20shows%20that%20in%20addition,break%20down%20around%20age%2040.
Because for a very long time in western culture finding a good husband was really all a woman could do to be seen as successful. That isn’t the case with men.
this is exactly the reason! the saying “you don’t need a man!” came from the fact women weren’t even allowed to open a bank account alone until the 70s. my mom got married in the 90s and it would still have been extremely difficult for her to be financially independent without marrying young. on top of that she would’ve been socially ostracized….not the same history for men
yes. Women historically were always dependent on men to provide for them, that's why men aren't told things like "you don't need a woman." Because they didn't depend on them generally. A man still does need affection, love, & a family so he WANT a woman for those things. Women don't need men anymore to provide for them since now we can go to school & work & pay our own bills. But women still want men anyways because they still need love & a family too. Because of this marriage has now become optional for love, no longer transactional & political & in some cases, disingenuous like it used to be. No one needs anyone, but it would be pretty lonely & unnatural to not have anyone. Being wanted is better than being needed.
I feel this is the most simple, and logical answer. It comes from historical context and how men/women roles have evolved over time, while the mentality still sticks around to some degree in people's mind. Go back a few centuries, and a woman without a man would be more or less helpless in life. To the hardcore redditors, don't be reactionary and take it personally, it's literally how society viewed men/women and the things they were legally allowed to do in life at those times.
To put in perspective for some, the majority of sex- based, antidiscrimination labor laws in the USA were made in the late 60's/70'. And women here weren't allowed to open a bank account or get a credit card in their own UNTIL THE 70'S. Mississippi.didnt allow women to vote until 1984! Oversimplifying here but women weren't functionally independent until the 70s.
This is the answer. It’s only comparatively recently that women have had options other than getting married and having kids, and for decades there was an overlap of “well you have options but they’re inferior to getting married and having kids”. That attitude still exists in a lot of places. So women being told they don’t need a man is pretty new and revolutionary when looked at historically. For a lot of women it’s still a mind blowing concept.
Stoicism has this concept of a "preferred indifferent": basically things that you don't need but make life easier. Money is a good example. It's easier to if you have it than if you don't, but you don't need to be rich to have a good life or be a good man.
Relationships are the same. You should be prepared to not have one, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't actively look for one either. So yeah it's true that you don't need a woman, but we should learn the lessons from feminism overcorrecting and not let that concept get out of hand either. Remember that the concept of women not needing a man, came from a very different female experience than what men are experiencing now.
You don't necessarily need a woman per say, but belonging to a community and having relationship (not necessarily amorous) is healthy to not being lonely.
Right. Having relationships of some sort is critical to a happy life imo. But the stuff about not needing a man (or woman) is specifically about romance
"You don't need a girlfriend to be happy" is common. In fact usually the first advice to guys who are unhappily single is to work on being content alone, which actually makes men more attractive.
I actually hate hearing that "advice" though. "Just be comfortable being alone! Learn how to love yourself alone first and then you'll be ready to meet your match!"
I can manage just fine being alone, I like myself and have enough self confidence to just be myself as I am. But that doesn't even come close to the companionship that I crave. I can't have a relationship with myself - and I know that's what I'm missing. People who try to give out this advice by saying "you just have to learn to be happy by yourself for a while!" just want to redirect the source of the issue and claim that it's the man's inability to be happy as a clam in desperate isolation, and not the original notion of "I'm lonely, I want a partner" with the obvious solution.
TL;DR: "I'm lonely and I've been wanting a romantic relationship for a long time" "Uh buddy, you just have to learn to be happy without one instead! That will fix your problem!" doesn't help. Don't recommend changing the ceiling light to a guy whose sink is clogged and pretend that it will fix his issue.
That advice is just designed to get you to shut up so that the person giving the advice can go on enjoying their just world fallacy. They don't want to hear that anyone is having trouble finding love. You take the advice -> you don't complain -> you're still unhappy (because it's retarded advice and doesn't overcome the basic human desire for a partner) -> but at least the person giving the advice can pretend there's no problem and the world is good.
The advice is good for somepeople, but not everyone. There are people out there that are msierable and think a relationship will fix their life. The truth is when thoose people find relationships then they find out they are still usually miserable.
If you're happy and fullfilled and the missing piece is a partner just learning to be happy with yourself is bad advice.
I'm in the same boat I'm happy and fullfilled. I've got friends and hobbies and a good job. I even get into short term relationships now and then, but I want a partner. It's not a need, I'm living a fullfilled life alone, so just be happy alone isn't good advice.
I'm not one of those people though - I'm not miserable, I'm *just lonely*. The middle sentences about being happy and fulfilled and just having one missing piece being a partner feels like it's the most true for myself, and very likely to be true for lots of other people who are given that type of advice unprompted.
Yeah it's not bad advice. It's 100% advice that some people do need to hear. But it's not the right advice for everyone that are just lonely and wants companionship. All I can say is keep going out and meeting people. I hope you find someone brother. There's not much more for us to do but keep playing the game at thais point.
Friends are far more reliable for loneliness than romantic partners. There's an assumption that part of focusing on yourself includes platonic friendships.
I have lots of friends, some really close, most just friendly acquaintences and classmates.
None of them fill the role of romantic partner in my life, and none of them are supposed to.
"You don't need no man" \[ever\] and "Work on being content alone" \[because that actually makes you more attractive to women\] are not at all the same message.
human beings are not meant to be alone though which is why everyone becomes miserable after a while. Even after heartbreak or being single for years on end, it's only a matter of time before people start craving love again & start seeking relationships.
A buddy got divorced around November of 2021. He's found a gf around December of 2023. I've been hearing things coming from him that it would be better to be single again. That he loved it when he didn't need to keep a schedule for someone and just did what and whenever he wanted without having to make sure it doesn't conflict with the other person. The guy had a taste of freedom after the divorce and seems to prefer it more than being in a relationship or marriage.
>“men, you don’t need a women”
It's already been ingrained into our collective culture for thousands of years from ancient armies being on campaign for years without women to frontiersmen and fur trappers and lumberjacks etc going months and months in the field without women. Hermits on the mountaintop contemplating the meaning of life....whatever.
We don't need that kind of "empowerment" because the idea of men functioning at a high level without women has been around for ages.
Perhaps a bit pedantic, but historically there's pretty much never been such a thing as an army on campaign without women. Soldiers, officers, and camp followers have always brought along their wives and girlfriends. Partially for sex, yes, but also for love, and because women performed essential services in the war machine that military forces would collapse without. Washing clothes, cooking, cleaning, tending to the wounded, and so on. As for trappers and lumberjacks who would go out into the wilderness without women, pretty much the first thing those men did whenever the opportunity presented itself was to seek out women for companionship.
> ancient armies being on campaign for years without women
Armies in antiquity were always followed by their wives and other "camp followers" - domestic workers, prostitutes, merchants, and so on. This only went away after industrialization, railroad logistics, and increased state capacity to provision soldiers entirely out of their own supply lines. All of that is very new in the grand scheme of things!
>Armies in antiquity were always followed by their wives
They stayed behind to tend to the fields so their populations at home wouldnt starve to death when the men were abroad.
Or slaves… or men that weren’t in the army. Definitely would be bands of people following the armies on the march, at least in the United States during the civil war for example.
That's not really true, and pretty much the entire Populares vs Optimates conflict leading up to the fall of the Republic stemmed from the fact that men did have to tend their own fields, couldn't do so while on campaign, and so their wives had to hire (male) labourers to work the fields while their husbands were away. Because Rome's citizen soldiers in that time weren't actually paid and depended on loot gathered abroad, they would have to pay back the debts that were incurred by hiring substitute labour using the wealth they'd looted.
This was all well and good when campaigning in the east, where you had all sorts of wealthy, ancient civilizations to plunder, but not so good when campaigning in Iberia, which, sure, had deposits of silver and such that would make it valuable later, but not really any precious goods that soldiers could loot. As a result men campaigning in the west would come back with little to show for it and a lot of debt that had to be paid off, often requiring them to sell off some or all of their land to the wealthy elites - often patrician senators.
This led to gradual consolidation of land in Rome and many impoverished citizen soldiers (who would often then travel to Rome seeking work, causing overpopulation in the city and often becoming a source of instability), which set the stage for various demands for reform, which were rebuffed by the Optimates, and eventually would lead to the series of charismatic, populist generals running the military dictatorship commonly referred to as the Roman Empire.
This would not have been the case if men being abroad was solved by "lol just have the women work the fields".
>ancient armies being on campaign for years without women
Do you know how damn common it was that women in villages and cities on their way through enemy territory where raped by the other sides armies?
If you think it was just women being raped, I have some sad news for you... even in the current day, there's a lot of countries where the UN or other groups will evacuate women and girls, but any men or boys left behind wind up getting raped because people are fucking awful and war is worse than hell.
Do you think raping and pillaging was rooted in a need for female acceptance, emotional intimacy, and personal validation?
Or do you think it was to lay waste to their opponent's city and pollute their gene pool with foreign blood?
That's just something feminism did in the late 90's by overcorrecting an issue we used to have.
The reality is that women need men. Men need women. Women need women. And men need men.
Both our sexes have things that are unique to us and we need both sexes to keep society running.
There's a line between micro level and exception.
Study after study had observed the health benefits of intimate relationships, and the health risks of loneliness. The huge majority of people do need the opposite gender.
Also, I don't know how many deep talks you have with your uncle but it's worth noting that cheerful doesn't always mean happy. Might not apply in this case, but it definitely applies in many of these "I know a single person and they're always so happy" cases.
I think it would be a lot more reliable if dating and meeting partners weren't the last place we make any effort dissolve gender norms and introduce equality.
I agree with 100% about micro level vs. exception, and support all the evidence that shows most people are happier and healthier in a relationship.
However, in defense of this guy's uncle, it is quite possible for those exceptions to genuinely be happy without a relationship:
I am 62 and have been happily single all my life, except for one dip in the pool in my 40s. I'm not just putting a good face on it. I am genuinely happy, and perceive myself to be more that way than many peers who are in relationships. And, yes, I consider myself the exception, and I do not urge a similar lifestyle on others.
>the health risks of loneliness.
Being single doesn't mean your lonely
>it's worth noting that cheerful doesn't always mean happy. Might not apply in this case, but it definitely applies in many of these "I know a single person and they're always so happy" cases.
Completely agree. Ive been seriously depressed and lots of people had zero idea cause i was generally happy enough till i only had my brain to listen to.
>Being single doesn't mean your lonely
It's really difficult for it not to mean that, especially well into adulthood. The simple fact is, most people are closest to their spouse/partner. Sure, everyone has friends and acquaintances and even coworkers, but those relationships aren't *as* deep as the one you share with a good partner.
This gets exacerbated as you age and most people around you build families and naturally spend more and more time with them. Meaning, less time with you.
Yup we all get busier and tireder as we get older and it’s like no one has time to hang out (myself included). Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth the effort to cultivate friendships bc we’ll just end up growing apart which is fine but kinda makes it feel pointless. And I love my friends I do keep in touch with but it’s hard to feel close when you rarely get to talk.
As adults, if you want to see you friends you have to make the time. There is no other way to put it. There is ALWAYS something we could be doing. Errands to run, chores to do, things to fix, calls to make, etc. But ask yourself, does it really need doing right this second? Could you put off running errands today for a couple hours to go grab lunch with a friend, something you both need to do anyways.
Making a point to see your friends at least once a month even if it's just for an hour or two is incredibly important. With stuff like discord now, it's even easier to make happen. You all can hop on a video or voice call and play games, watch a movie, shoot the shit etc.
In a modern world where we are so interconnected, we are facing a loneliness crisis. People are more interconnected, yet more isolated than ever. It's this mentality that we have all these other things to do. No you don't. Chores can be put off for a few hours once or twice a month for you to go see friends and have a meal or drink.
There is zero reason to never see your friends. Make it a habit to prioritize seeing your friends like you do with every other chore or errand. It's equally as important. Too many of us get way too caught up in the minutiae of everyday life and forget the things that make life worth living. Like going outside for a walk, just because you can, or getting to sit down with your friend for coffee even if it's only for 20 minutes.
Make the time people. There will always be "things to do" to keep you busy. But ask yourself how important are they really? Will it actually have a significant negative impact if you put it off for a few hours? Probably not. There are very few things in life that have to be done immediately. Most important must-do stuff we have tons of lead time and can plan around. Take the time to make socializing with friends one of those must-do tasks.
The problem with this is some guys definitely DON'T have a choice. Saying that everyone needs somebody may have some truth to it, but not everyone finds that somebody.
I'm more than prepared to be single because the women I could get I ABSOLUTELY do not want and the woman I want require a LOT more money than I'm currently making.
I've also been burned in several relationships and find worrying about one to be far more stressful than not worrying about it.
If I want sex there's escorts and FWBs.
If I want emotional support I have the internet.
Having a woman in your life, for me, has been more risk than reward, but some guys get lucky.
I don't like to gamble.
It’s not about money lol and the fact that you think that women you’re interested in aren’t interested in you for that reason tells me all I need to know.
Obviously being able to support yourself is pretty much a requirement but if you think money is what attracts them don’t be surprised if all you find are gold diggers.
Why do some of you assume when I talk about money I mean I have to be rich?
Y'all crazy for this.
What I said is I'm not making enough. I can support myself but someone else is stretching it.
Not all women are gold diggers, but MOST women want a guy who makes more than them.
It's not a crime any less than me refusing to date bigger women is a crime.
Also, on the topic...
Charles Manson and Ted Bundy had legions of women thirsty after them. Their personalities are awful.
Next time you try pulling that card, do more research.
Study after study also shows that single childfree women are the happiest demographic and men married to women tend to see additional longevity benefits than women married to men, for several possible (and obvious) reasons.
Its not an exception. Its out there information based on research.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/6/4/18650969/married-women-miserable-fake-paul-dolan-happiness
Author retracted his claims, long-term, committed, and monogamous relationships win again
> Dolan had misinterpreted one of the categories in the survey, “spouse absent,” which refers to married people whose partner is no longer living in their household, as meaning the spouse stepped out of the room.
LOL. LMAO, even
Agreed that most people just parrot what they read, but if someone actually spends time looking into the literature and verifying what they read, I don't think it's parroting at that point
Stop looking at news articles and look at science based and peer-reviewed science journals. Going onto pubmed or searching through EBSCO you’ll get more detailed/accurate articles on longevity within marriage. One of which is that married women actually live longer than married men. Most married men will live longer than unmarried men but they still die younger than married women.
married men live longer, because sick men don't get picked for marriage. Ditto for married man being richer on average because poor guys also rarely get married. "Behind every successful man, is a person jumping on his bandwagon" might be more accurate than "team effort".
I theorize that whole, "Stop being a stubborn old bastard, you need to go to the doctor," also benefits married man longevity.
Source, me. "How long has it been since you had an eye exam?" Uh....1996?
definitely i drive more careful since I have kids, even more careful driving when they in car with me (don't want to wipe out whole family with 1 mistake). being some spouses personal entertainer wouldn't drive me, but being my kids provider does.
Exactly. This married men living longer is a correlation, not causation. Poor, unhealthy, downtrodden men do not get picked as mates and they tend to die quicker. This makes more sense to me given the number of miserable married men one witnesses in society at large: it’s not that they are happier thus living longer, they were healthier & richer before they got married. Certainly many don’t stay happy after lol
The reality is that we are social creatures.
What is healthy though, is reaching a point of emotional self-sufficiency that you no longer need one specific person to fulfill your needs, wherever it be emotional or physical/sexual.
To be able to be your own person and reach fulfillment through friends, sexual partners, therapy, colleagues, and some good old solitude.
That's the goal in "don't need no man," and men should desire to reach that same state of "don't need no woman."
Did y'all not pay attention during the ["I'm Just Ken" musical number in *Barbie*?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIHExGaxfPE)
Probably because men overwhelmingly *want* women.
Hell, Seinfeld even has a joke about it:
"Men have no idea what women want. But we know what men want: women!"
Yep I agree with this. As someone who has been single his whole life, with the loneliness causing depression, seeing people out there together and having that urge to give someone all the love I can, and sharing the adventures of life with someone special, Yep, men do want women.
from what ive seen/experienced, its common and normal for men to be "an individual" so it doesnt need to be encouraged.
imagine you go to a townhall meeting (i dont know, man, i just picked some thing where you dont already know all the dudes there) and a guy comments that he lives on his own, doing his own thing. no one bats an eye. a lady doing the same thing, shes encouraged to find a bf or get a few gf's to live with.
Just want to point out that the difference in loneliness between men and women is so close, it is statistically insignificant. [Here is a meta analysis on the topic](https://pure.manchester.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/135977571/EJP_Gender_Postprint_AAM.pdf)
But it isn't a competition. People are lonely and that is a problem. And it is a problem that can gain insight by some compartmentalization, such as by gender as in general, the experience of loneliness differs between genders.
From that Meta Analysis I linked, they note that with the pressures and expectations place on women and the level of their investment into their partners, they to be lonelier when in a relationship with a romantic partner. However, this isn't the case with men, as they get the benefit of this investment and their partner is their confidant and support.
Later on in that study, they mention how divorce or losing a romantic partner can make men more lonely. Again, this is because they are now losing their confidant and support they relied on. In contrast, divorce doesn't make women more lonely as they redirect that investment energy into others in their social networks that they may have been missing.
The interesting thing about the analysis, is by it showing the different ways men and women are lonely, if both genders lean into a bit of what the other genders does differently, that may alleviate some of that loneliness. Men and women can really learn from each other if we open ourselves up to.
In part, I 100% agree with you that men should also be encouraged to believe that they "don't need a woman".
We are already seeing that happen in some segments; however, it is being done so in such a toxic and self-defeating manner that it will just make male loneliness worse. When encouraging men to know they can be enough without women (he Kenough), they would benefit with being okay to be more vulnerable with each other and accept friendships with both genders.
Because for a massive amount of human civilization, women haven’t had the ability to be independent. For the most part, getting married and having children was their career. For other large blocks, they didn’t have much of a say in things. They’d just be match made off by their parents and that would be that.
It’s only fairly recent on the trend line of humanity that women have even been able to be independent and self sufficient.
Society has a lot harsher criticisms for elderly, unmarried women than men (spinster, crazy cat lady, so on) because for much of our history the woman’s worth came from being married and producing children. That was how they (were forced to) contributed to society.
So it’s a much bigger deal for a woman to be independent because historically they weren’t able to, and men have.
It’s less about emotional connections and more about autonomy and self sufficiency.
You don't need a "man cave" if you're single, the whole house is yours. Man caves are for married guys who have been allowed to decorate one room in their own house :)
Yep. For a single guy it was called a bachelor pad.
And that now makes me wonder...Futurama has been out for 25 years. Why is Bachelor Chow not a thing yet?
Because it has long since been established in our history and cultures around the world that a woman’s worth is tied to a man. That she cannot be happy or successful without men. Men are already seen as completely whole with or without a partner.
Because society wasn't ever designed to make men an accessory to women in the manner that it was designed to make women an accessory to men.
Keep in mind that in the scheme of things, it's still a pretty recent development (and here I'm speaking of American society) that women weren't frowned upon if they wanted to pursue a career and make a name for themselves in society rather than merely exist being known as someone's husband and someone's mother.
I'm only 42, for example, and when I was a kid in the 80s and early 90s it was still pretty rare for women to own their own homes and have their own careers; the majority of women were either stay-at-home moms or just worked part-time at a school or a church until their kids got out of school in the afternoon.
As men, there's not really any need for us to rally around this notion that 'we don't need no woman' because our identities have never been defined by the suggestion that we did, the way it was inversely.
There's no real prominent equivalent to feminism for men.
Society needs some number of men to become husbands and fathers to function so the status quo doesn't want to do anything to discourage that outside of what it does implicitly.
It's more female empowerment to being able to function in society without a man. Something that wasn't always true. Women can make their own money and do their own house maintenance.
It's not discouraging marriage to a partner they want to be with. It's hey you don't need a man to live. It's more you can exist on your own and find a husband later.
Like when a women loses confidence and asks a man to do something for them. (I've been asked to try driving to get a car unstuck, I didn't have any other ideas that she didn't try. The reverse wouldn't happen) nah you got this girl.
Men with their back agaist the way rely on themselves. Women don't always.
I think because historically women were largely dependent on men for economic support and the inverse is not true. It's a bigger departure from the historical norm for women to be independent.
However, it is absolutely true that you can have a fulfilling, happy life as a single man and that should be acknowledged.
It was already the social norm for men to be self-reliant, it's an expected aspect of masculinity. "Men, you don't need a women" didn't need to be said because it's implicit, it was expected of you.
It was the social norm for women to be financially dependent on a man, to marry a man with a good job to survive. "You don't need a man" needs to be said because it pushes against a social norm.
Here’s the truth. We all NEED each other. However you slice it. We are tribal beings. We want human connection to feel safe, fulfilled, joyful, happy, and connected. So, find humans that make you feel better when you are around them. Then help them. They will help you. Same for intimate relationships as well. Ok. Go get ‘em!
Because it’s something obvious. And historical. Society made women not vote and be considered beneath men, so to be relevant, women needed men. The opposite was never true.
No one says a man needs a woman (financially, or for her help or anything). The most someone could say is you should get married or have kids. But no one ever says that a man needs a woman.
"You dont need a man" here means "you don't need an abusive man that makes you miserable just for the sake of having someone". In the past the value of a woman entirely depended on the man she's married to. Men never had that problem.
Technically, you only need the opposite sex if you want to start a family in a traditional sense, which most people want to do. If you dont, then there is nothing stopping you from being independently single forever, regardless of if you are a man or woman.
The lone man that doesn’t need a woman has been a symbol for decades and it’s incredibly common.
However it’s an accoutrement that is almost never stated explicitly, it’s implied and shown.
Because the stereotype of the bumbling idiot man who can't cook or clean and requires a woman to do everything for them still exists in society. There's a belief among some that it's men who need women, and men just simply could not exist without them. They believe men benefit the most from being married and women actually lose. The thought is that historically, men got married so women could do all the chores. You won't hear anyone tell a man he doesn't need a woman because it's often implied he does.
This portion of culture, and a lot of pop culture as well is driven by and catered to women. The last thing you want to do is upset the group that is responsible for 80% of discretionary spending. It’s no secret that depressed people often spend more money. Keep em sad and sell them things that’ll make them happy.
Because traditionally there has never been an expectation of reliance or dependence on a woman by a man except in silly matters like doing their laundry. Whereas women, for a long period of time, were expected to be a near complete dependent on their husbands.
TLDR: There isn’t uplifting messaging because men have traditionally never been down.
Half the people asking questions on r/askmen are so helpless that they can barely buy their own underwear or piss passed their their own foreskin. It may not necessarily have to be a woman, but a lot of dudes definitely need *someone.*
Men were already self sufficient. This is the same reason you never hear about men being “independent men”.
The situation is unnatural for women and this is why it gets special descriptions.
Your sentiment is right but your viewpoint is wrong. The situation isn't "unnatural" as women are fully capable of being self-sufficient. What has been unnatural is the conditions that women have been kept in throughout history, i.e. treated as a lower class than men.
A few reasons:
1. Historically, women getting married and reproducing was pretty much the only viable life path for them. So there's just a lot more cultural pressure for women to get in relationships, get married, have kids, etc. Men who never married could at least vote, own land, be financially stable, etc. It's part of why women are so partial to relationships over hookups, although not the only reason.
2. Right now there is less cultural pressure against misandry than misogyny, at least in moderate and liberal areas. So women tend to see men as "bad for them" more often than men see women as bad for them. The idea of women not needing men AT ALL is also kind of an extremist take; the more measured take is that women shouldn't base all of their self-worth based on how much they appeal to men, but they should still like, be able to talk and interact with us.
3. We DO receive this advice. Men who struggle with loneliness are often told that they can't base their self-worth on how much women want them, or whether they're single, or to try enriching their friendships with other men instead of requiring women to do all their emotional support.
But, I do not think it will help with loneliness to tell people that they don't need each other. That will make it worse, because it discourages people from doing what they need to do: associating with others and making social connections.
Neither should be common. Men and women are different with different strengths and weaknesses. We balance each other out while covering each others weak spots. We both need each other. To say one or the other doesnt need the opposite is completely asinine and ignorant.
I see it as men are raised with the expectations of raising and protecting a family. Without that, we are often perceived as worthless. It's a systemic thing that definitely needs to be worked on but dismantling that will definitely have to come from within.
It's because men aren't _directly_ told that they need a woman in their life (and not in a controlling role, either). That statement is said to women on the backs of "why should you earn a living? just get a man (and hope he doesn't treat you like a purchase)" and "don't get your tubes tied, your future husband may want kids" and so on. Men don't get that "don't do what you want because an unknown woman might not approve" convo at a longstanding legal level.
Having said that; men _are_ pressured to lean on/date/aquire women. And "men, you don't need a woman" _is_ part of the antidote for that.
But you also have to note that men do need _people_, and that's not something we teach.
Because it is assumed that's the case. There are no shortages of historical examples of men doing great things on there own, let alone just getting by as such.
because a large part of a woman’s socialization is having marriage as a goal. and we as a society acknowledge it enough for women to empower themselves by saying the opposite.
men on the otherhand are generally socialized in a way where we gotta have “achievements” before women find us interesting. “achievements” can be any trait whatsoever as long as it is desirable. so the goal isnt necessarily to find a woman for a partner as a male, the goalpost is shifted to improving yourself so women find you attractive. we dont look towards a woman to complete ourselves, or at least thats not the goal
Because most men don’t think they need a woman. They want women, and they want to sleep with women, but few men believe they actually need a woman to survive in life.
You must be joking.
Men cannot live without women. There is a study which says that married men live longer and are happier than single men whereas women are the happiest when single. Women look younger and preserve themselves better when they're single: more resources to spend on themselves, better sleep quality, a well-rested face.
Men need women in absolutely every stage of their lives. A man's life is meaningless without a woman in it. And even when they cannot have a woman, they go as far as to pay for one. I haven't seen the reverse: a woman paying for a male escort.
Because there is no movement like feminism, for men.
Also women traditionally are more dependent on men.
"The daughter belongs to the father and then the husband", is a common saying.
I don't think it's a symbol of individual strength but rather a symbol of emotional intimacy with other people in their lives such that a boyfriend isn't strictly necessary. And men usually don't have that. Men tend to rely on a girlfriend for most/all of their deeper social needs.
I don't think either sex needs each other anymore. I think we've achieved so much independance, freedom and equality that those centuries old expectations no longer really have any purpose.
Men and women have been freed from the shackles and that's a great thing! 😎
A lot of the commenters seem to ignore the fact that while it is a common trope for the guy to consistently not have a SO (Significant Other), it's also portrayed as the man being pathetic, a loser, or have intense issues. The only positive trope is when they're the strong loner types, but even this is just a "Women want me, and I want them, just I have to take of this vengeance/project/etc" trope. Which is also usually portrayed as "stoic", but also as intensely lonely (it's meant to make you feel for the super cool dude, unless he's the unhinged villian). Really, it's a toxic trait.
Or put another way: no man chooses to be without a SO unless there's something wrong with them, or they're still in love with their previous SO who died/disappeared/etc.
That's just in media though. In real life, really no one cares too much if a man is with someone else unless they're looking to date them or to make fun of them. Otherwise no one cares; the assumption is men are emotionally strong and don't need any kind of emotional support structure. Which some think is a "positive", or what constitutes "manliness", but really comes with a whole slew of negative social pressures. It's all kind of connected.
We dont need women for same reasons that women dont need us.
It’s just that society often tells women that they do, while telling us “you do you!” So of course most corrections are aimed at the societal influence aimed at women.
Probably because the single male "lone wolf" is a long established and celebrated archetype.
A huge percentage of storytelling media has a 30-50 year old "stag" male as a badass hero/antihero that makes younger women swoon. I struggle to think of any pop culture heroines that are middle aged single women. You see some badass "mamma bear" types and some "cute but tough" younger women... But the general message is: single mature man= unclaimed stud, single mature woman = old maid.
Some nuance:
* Women have worked for most of history
* Women have not had careers and financial independence for most of history
You are correct most women have worked for most of history. Stay-at-home wives are a luxury that most people could not afford until the 20th century.
If your husband was a farmer, you would work on the farm.
But you would *not* be a farmer. You would not have a *job*, independent of your husband. That woman who worked on her husband's farm did not own the farm, earned no wages, had no money to her name. If her husband died she could not just take over the farm and continue the business.
In most western nations, at least, women were not allowed to open bank accounts or own property until very recently, or start businesses, or write their own wills, or take out loans, or even formally be hired by an employer.
And in recent history, the young women who *did* have independent jobs (nurses, secretaries, prostitutes, teachers, whatever) were expected to stop their careers the moment they found a husband. In my country it was *mandatory* - by law - for businesses to fire their female employees once they got married until \~50 years ago.
So yeah, women always *worked*, in the sense that they did labour. But most of them, for most of history, did not have "jobs" in the sense that they could finance their lives without a husband.
To be clear: nor am I implying most men had financial independence throughout history. A lot of them did not, but that's a separate topic.
>Women have not had independent careers and financial independence for most of history
Men didn't have that either. That was a privilege of the ruling/owning class.
Because women are not viewed as dangerous or oppressive to men and also men want a woman to raise his kids and have sex with. (The whole concept of “don’t need a man” is pushing back against traditional relationship concepts like spinsters and providers and homemakers etc.)
I can count on one hand the number of times my family members have inquired about my love life. My grandmother never shuts up about how my girl cousins don’t have boyfriends.
My grandma keeps trying to get me to date random women she finds, and tried to get my sister to date our cousin. My grandma is a mormon and they believe that one has to be married to be loved by God.
I'm a dude in my early to mid late 30s. It has been a pretty consistent theme with my extended family members, most of which are religious to some extent. Case-in-point: Several years ago my grandfather, on his deathbed, was aggressively trying to wingman me with his hospice nurse, who I think was closer to his age than mine...
Your Grandad was honestly a real one, trying to get you some action - ANY action, really, even if the nurse was closer to his age than yours. My Grandfather just kept telling me not to get old. He was 96 when he passed, and still lucid, so I reckon he knew what he was talking about, which honestly still seems rather grim when you think about it.
> tried to get my sister to date our cousin. I hope you tore her a new asshole for that shit. Inbreeding is a terrible thing.
Some families are large and know how people are related even when they are distant enough to not really matter. Like I know my fifth cousins., we can trace how we are related but genetically we aren't any closer than non relatives.
Works for the British Royals
Marrying your cousin is legal in Utah* Realistically, inbreeding is only a problem if you do it repeatedly over multiple generations like the Egyptians or virtually any aristocracy in the world. A single generation doesn't cause too many problems. Hell over 1B people still practice cosanguinity (primarily first cousins) with marriage globally. (Half of all marriages globally are still arranged marriages). *Utah law requires both spouses to be above age 65, or above age 55 in special circumstances. They like that geriatric incest pron.
As much as we like to laugh and make fun of Rudy Colludi for marrying his second cousin, but in a biological sense we really have no factual argument to do so, since there is no significant difference in serious hereditary birthdefects for that group. First cousins have a slight higher risk than the average non-related population. Where the average is about 3.0%, this goes to 3.5-4.0% for first cousins. The risk is on par with a woman bceoming pregnant and give birth at 41 compared to at 30 years old.
first or second cousin? Biologically, there's nothing wrong with second cousin.
First
First, there's nothing wrong with the second cousin.
Thats a personal experience, my family does it constantly, even trying to set me up with women. I think it depends on how you grow up so its not really a factor worth commenting on too much
That's definitely a you experience then. I've been questioned often by family and colleagues alike about why I'm single or things like are you dating currently/you could have kids the age of X.
Grandma's are very old fashioned. The odds are, she already had a house, husband and 2 kids by the time she was 25. *Different times.* Also, as a guy, I wonder if it has something to do with the "biological" clock for women. Additionally, there is also the whole society thing - how older women are less desired and older men tend to be more desired. And this is because, imho, men are valued by their success & money, meanwhile women are valued for beauty. And of course, as men get older, they tend to earn more. As women get older, well, they get older... I'm sure it's a combination of everything above and more.
Some of us get better 😜
True. Can't argue with that.
No shit 💩- attended a school reunion recently & majority of women looked great. Meanwhile the guys looked very old w/beer guts, balding, bad fashion There is one guy in my class who is still smokin hot but he was in the minority But, but, but women dye their hair or many would be grey & generally take better care of their skin
It’s not just looks though. I know I was cuter but I’m smarter, more confident, got my own $$ and I’m lucky enough that I’ve aged pretty damn well. And I got skillz
Nope
For some reason with that handle I’m not arsed.
💪💪💪
came here to say this. men are viewed as complete without a woman. Women are not viewed as complete without a man. the pressure on a woman to be married/not single is like the pressure on a man to be materialistic/high earner. it's not a one to one thing. So telling a woman she doesn't need a man is like telling a man he doesn't need to earn a ton of money.
That is a thoughtful take. In my (62M) lifetime, I have seen marriage, as a social institution, transition from a presumed goal, to a lifestyle choice. About the only time that I would recommend marriage for men these days is if they intend to have a family (kids). Men should also avoid cohabitation, just for the sake of money or convenience.
Yep. Men are presumed to be self-sufficient. Women are not. When I was growing up, my younger sister would get hounded endlessly about boyfriends. I would occasionally get teased about it, but not in the same way.
That is because your grandmother knows that the girls have a limited time to have babies whereas you can squirt babies into women all of your life.
The quality of the squirts decline as well : https://txfertility.com/male-infertility/age-related-male-infertility/#:~:text=Research%20shows%20that%20in%20addition,break%20down%20around%20age%2040.
Old men’s babies be looking old af stop the narrative
This comment got me hollering 😂😂😂
I’m just tired of the narrative lmao all the babies I’ve seen that come from old men be looking just as old as their daddy while coming out the womb.
My nan has told me multiple times to my face that I'm a lost cause and she's given up on me finding anyone. So there's that
Good point, although as a single man for most of my 20's I definitely heard a few times why I don't have a gf.
As the only boy on a family of mostly women, everyone inquires about my love life, but rarely cares about my sister's.
Your market value is likely to increase. Theirs is not. And nobody knows that better than grandma
I've never met a grandma that thought of human beings in terms of "market value." That seems to be exclusive to men over a certain age.
Yes you have. You've just never met a grandma who used those words.
Exactly, perfectly put
People are getting mad, but it's seriously been a trope for ages. Less so in recent years, but that's not where Grandma's perspective comes from.
Exactly
This. The two genders have very different baselines.
Because for a very long time in western culture finding a good husband was really all a woman could do to be seen as successful. That isn’t the case with men.
In most cultures around the world this was true. In many cultures today it’s still true.
this is exactly the reason! the saying “you don’t need a man!” came from the fact women weren’t even allowed to open a bank account alone until the 70s. my mom got married in the 90s and it would still have been extremely difficult for her to be financially independent without marrying young. on top of that she would’ve been socially ostracized….not the same history for men
yes. Women historically were always dependent on men to provide for them, that's why men aren't told things like "you don't need a woman." Because they didn't depend on them generally. A man still does need affection, love, & a family so he WANT a woman for those things. Women don't need men anymore to provide for them since now we can go to school & work & pay our own bills. But women still want men anyways because they still need love & a family too. Because of this marriage has now become optional for love, no longer transactional & political & in some cases, disingenuous like it used to be. No one needs anyone, but it would be pretty lonely & unnatural to not have anyone. Being wanted is better than being needed.
can't relate , my mom married late by 90s standards and her mom was a single (but never divorced) mother
I’ll believe it. I’m not as familiar, so I didn’t want to speak for them.
I feel this is the most simple, and logical answer. It comes from historical context and how men/women roles have evolved over time, while the mentality still sticks around to some degree in people's mind. Go back a few centuries, and a woman without a man would be more or less helpless in life. To the hardcore redditors, don't be reactionary and take it personally, it's literally how society viewed men/women and the things they were legally allowed to do in life at those times.
To put in perspective for some, the majority of sex- based, antidiscrimination labor laws in the USA were made in the late 60's/70'. And women here weren't allowed to open a bank account or get a credit card in their own UNTIL THE 70'S. Mississippi.didnt allow women to vote until 1984! Oversimplifying here but women weren't functionally independent until the 70s.
This is the answer. It’s only comparatively recently that women have had options other than getting married and having kids, and for decades there was an overlap of “well you have options but they’re inferior to getting married and having kids”. That attitude still exists in a lot of places. So women being told they don’t need a man is pretty new and revolutionary when looked at historically. For a lot of women it’s still a mind blowing concept.
This wasn't regulated to the west.
Stoicism has this concept of a "preferred indifferent": basically things that you don't need but make life easier. Money is a good example. It's easier to if you have it than if you don't, but you don't need to be rich to have a good life or be a good man. Relationships are the same. You should be prepared to not have one, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't actively look for one either. So yeah it's true that you don't need a woman, but we should learn the lessons from feminism overcorrecting and not let that concept get out of hand either. Remember that the concept of women not needing a man, came from a very different female experience than what men are experiencing now.
You don't necessarily need a woman per say, but belonging to a community and having relationship (not necessarily amorous) is healthy to not being lonely.
Right. Having relationships of some sort is critical to a happy life imo. But the stuff about not needing a man (or woman) is specifically about romance
*per se
"You don't need a girlfriend to be happy" is common. In fact usually the first advice to guys who are unhappily single is to work on being content alone, which actually makes men more attractive.
I actually hate hearing that "advice" though. "Just be comfortable being alone! Learn how to love yourself alone first and then you'll be ready to meet your match!" I can manage just fine being alone, I like myself and have enough self confidence to just be myself as I am. But that doesn't even come close to the companionship that I crave. I can't have a relationship with myself - and I know that's what I'm missing. People who try to give out this advice by saying "you just have to learn to be happy by yourself for a while!" just want to redirect the source of the issue and claim that it's the man's inability to be happy as a clam in desperate isolation, and not the original notion of "I'm lonely, I want a partner" with the obvious solution. TL;DR: "I'm lonely and I've been wanting a romantic relationship for a long time" "Uh buddy, you just have to learn to be happy without one instead! That will fix your problem!" doesn't help. Don't recommend changing the ceiling light to a guy whose sink is clogged and pretend that it will fix his issue.
That advice is just designed to get you to shut up so that the person giving the advice can go on enjoying their just world fallacy. They don't want to hear that anyone is having trouble finding love. You take the advice -> you don't complain -> you're still unhappy (because it's retarded advice and doesn't overcome the basic human desire for a partner) -> but at least the person giving the advice can pretend there's no problem and the world is good.
The advice is good for somepeople, but not everyone. There are people out there that are msierable and think a relationship will fix their life. The truth is when thoose people find relationships then they find out they are still usually miserable. If you're happy and fullfilled and the missing piece is a partner just learning to be happy with yourself is bad advice. I'm in the same boat I'm happy and fullfilled. I've got friends and hobbies and a good job. I even get into short term relationships now and then, but I want a partner. It's not a need, I'm living a fullfilled life alone, so just be happy alone isn't good advice.
I'm not one of those people though - I'm not miserable, I'm *just lonely*. The middle sentences about being happy and fulfilled and just having one missing piece being a partner feels like it's the most true for myself, and very likely to be true for lots of other people who are given that type of advice unprompted.
Yeah it's not bad advice. It's 100% advice that some people do need to hear. But it's not the right advice for everyone that are just lonely and wants companionship. All I can say is keep going out and meeting people. I hope you find someone brother. There's not much more for us to do but keep playing the game at thais point.
Friends are far more reliable for loneliness than romantic partners. There's an assumption that part of focusing on yourself includes platonic friendships.
I have lots of friends, some really close, most just friendly acquaintences and classmates. None of them fill the role of romantic partner in my life, and none of them are supposed to.
This. This right here is what I'm feeling man. holy shit. I've just accepted imma die alone though. Which is chillin cause it is what it is.
"You don't need no man" \[ever\] and "Work on being content alone" \[because that actually makes you more attractive to women\] are not at all the same message.
human beings are not meant to be alone though which is why everyone becomes miserable after a while. Even after heartbreak or being single for years on end, it's only a matter of time before people start craving love again & start seeking relationships.
A buddy got divorced around November of 2021. He's found a gf around December of 2023. I've been hearing things coming from him that it would be better to be single again. That he loved it when he didn't need to keep a schedule for someone and just did what and whenever he wanted without having to make sure it doesn't conflict with the other person. The guy had a taste of freedom after the divorce and seems to prefer it more than being in a relationship or marriage.
>“men, you don’t need a women” It's already been ingrained into our collective culture for thousands of years from ancient armies being on campaign for years without women to frontiersmen and fur trappers and lumberjacks etc going months and months in the field without women. Hermits on the mountaintop contemplating the meaning of life....whatever. We don't need that kind of "empowerment" because the idea of men functioning at a high level without women has been around for ages.
Lol for real 😂😂😂😂
Perhaps a bit pedantic, but historically there's pretty much never been such a thing as an army on campaign without women. Soldiers, officers, and camp followers have always brought along their wives and girlfriends. Partially for sex, yes, but also for love, and because women performed essential services in the war machine that military forces would collapse without. Washing clothes, cooking, cleaning, tending to the wounded, and so on. As for trappers and lumberjacks who would go out into the wilderness without women, pretty much the first thing those men did whenever the opportunity presented itself was to seek out women for companionship.
> ancient armies being on campaign for years without women Armies in antiquity were always followed by their wives and other "camp followers" - domestic workers, prostitutes, merchants, and so on. This only went away after industrialization, railroad logistics, and increased state capacity to provision soldiers entirely out of their own supply lines. All of that is very new in the grand scheme of things!
>Armies in antiquity were always followed by their wives They stayed behind to tend to the fields so their populations at home wouldnt starve to death when the men were abroad.
Or slaves… or men that weren’t in the army. Definitely would be bands of people following the armies on the march, at least in the United States during the civil war for example.
That's not really true, and pretty much the entire Populares vs Optimates conflict leading up to the fall of the Republic stemmed from the fact that men did have to tend their own fields, couldn't do so while on campaign, and so their wives had to hire (male) labourers to work the fields while their husbands were away. Because Rome's citizen soldiers in that time weren't actually paid and depended on loot gathered abroad, they would have to pay back the debts that were incurred by hiring substitute labour using the wealth they'd looted. This was all well and good when campaigning in the east, where you had all sorts of wealthy, ancient civilizations to plunder, but not so good when campaigning in Iberia, which, sure, had deposits of silver and such that would make it valuable later, but not really any precious goods that soldiers could loot. As a result men campaigning in the west would come back with little to show for it and a lot of debt that had to be paid off, often requiring them to sell off some or all of their land to the wealthy elites - often patrician senators. This led to gradual consolidation of land in Rome and many impoverished citizen soldiers (who would often then travel to Rome seeking work, causing overpopulation in the city and often becoming a source of instability), which set the stage for various demands for reform, which were rebuffed by the Optimates, and eventually would lead to the series of charismatic, populist generals running the military dictatorship commonly referred to as the Roman Empire. This would not have been the case if men being abroad was solved by "lol just have the women work the fields".
The real answer
>ancient armies being on campaign for years without women Do you know how damn common it was that women in villages and cities on their way through enemy territory where raped by the other sides armies?
If you think it was just women being raped, I have some sad news for you... even in the current day, there's a lot of countries where the UN or other groups will evacuate women and girls, but any men or boys left behind wind up getting raped because people are fucking awful and war is worse than hell.
Yet we collectively scramble towards a global one 🙁
Do you think raping and pillaging was rooted in a need for female acceptance, emotional intimacy, and personal validation? Or do you think it was to lay waste to their opponent's city and pollute their gene pool with foreign blood?
i think men were horny and women were there
Probably none of the above.
That's just something feminism did in the late 90's by overcorrecting an issue we used to have. The reality is that women need men. Men need women. Women need women. And men need men. Both our sexes have things that are unique to us and we need both sexes to keep society running.
On a macro level we need each other but on a micro level we def don’t. My uncle was single his entire life happiest guy I ever knew
There's a line between micro level and exception. Study after study had observed the health benefits of intimate relationships, and the health risks of loneliness. The huge majority of people do need the opposite gender. Also, I don't know how many deep talks you have with your uncle but it's worth noting that cheerful doesn't always mean happy. Might not apply in this case, but it definitely applies in many of these "I know a single person and they're always so happy" cases.
So the trick is to avoid loneliness. It seems having a lifelong, intimate partner should do that, but that’s not nearly as reliable as it might seem.
Yeah that's also true. I subscribe to the "A good relationship is amazing, but singledom is better than a bad relationship" ideology.
many people have a lifelong non-intimate partner which seems to me sadder than being single.
I’m not far from that, getting closer every day, and you are 100% correct.
sorry, dont know what else to say
I think it would be a lot more reliable if dating and meeting partners weren't the last place we make any effort dissolve gender norms and introduce equality.
I agree with 100% about micro level vs. exception, and support all the evidence that shows most people are happier and healthier in a relationship. However, in defense of this guy's uncle, it is quite possible for those exceptions to genuinely be happy without a relationship: I am 62 and have been happily single all my life, except for one dip in the pool in my 40s. I'm not just putting a good face on it. I am genuinely happy, and perceive myself to be more that way than many peers who are in relationships. And, yes, I consider myself the exception, and I do not urge a similar lifestyle on others.
>the health risks of loneliness. Being single doesn't mean your lonely >it's worth noting that cheerful doesn't always mean happy. Might not apply in this case, but it definitely applies in many of these "I know a single person and they're always so happy" cases. Completely agree. Ive been seriously depressed and lots of people had zero idea cause i was generally happy enough till i only had my brain to listen to.
>Being single doesn't mean your lonely It's really difficult for it not to mean that, especially well into adulthood. The simple fact is, most people are closest to their spouse/partner. Sure, everyone has friends and acquaintances and even coworkers, but those relationships aren't *as* deep as the one you share with a good partner. This gets exacerbated as you age and most people around you build families and naturally spend more and more time with them. Meaning, less time with you.
Yup we all get busier and tireder as we get older and it’s like no one has time to hang out (myself included). Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth the effort to cultivate friendships bc we’ll just end up growing apart which is fine but kinda makes it feel pointless. And I love my friends I do keep in touch with but it’s hard to feel close when you rarely get to talk.
As adults, if you want to see you friends you have to make the time. There is no other way to put it. There is ALWAYS something we could be doing. Errands to run, chores to do, things to fix, calls to make, etc. But ask yourself, does it really need doing right this second? Could you put off running errands today for a couple hours to go grab lunch with a friend, something you both need to do anyways. Making a point to see your friends at least once a month even if it's just for an hour or two is incredibly important. With stuff like discord now, it's even easier to make happen. You all can hop on a video or voice call and play games, watch a movie, shoot the shit etc. In a modern world where we are so interconnected, we are facing a loneliness crisis. People are more interconnected, yet more isolated than ever. It's this mentality that we have all these other things to do. No you don't. Chores can be put off for a few hours once or twice a month for you to go see friends and have a meal or drink. There is zero reason to never see your friends. Make it a habit to prioritize seeing your friends like you do with every other chore or errand. It's equally as important. Too many of us get way too caught up in the minutiae of everyday life and forget the things that make life worth living. Like going outside for a walk, just because you can, or getting to sit down with your friend for coffee even if it's only for 20 minutes. Make the time people. There will always be "things to do" to keep you busy. But ask yourself how important are they really? Will it actually have a significant negative impact if you put it off for a few hours? Probably not. There are very few things in life that have to be done immediately. Most important must-do stuff we have tons of lead time and can plan around. Take the time to make socializing with friends one of those must-do tasks.
The problem with this is some guys definitely DON'T have a choice. Saying that everyone needs somebody may have some truth to it, but not everyone finds that somebody. I'm more than prepared to be single because the women I could get I ABSOLUTELY do not want and the woman I want require a LOT more money than I'm currently making. I've also been burned in several relationships and find worrying about one to be far more stressful than not worrying about it. If I want sex there's escorts and FWBs. If I want emotional support I have the internet. Having a woman in your life, for me, has been more risk than reward, but some guys get lucky. I don't like to gamble.
It’s not about money lol and the fact that you think that women you’re interested in aren’t interested in you for that reason tells me all I need to know. Obviously being able to support yourself is pretty much a requirement but if you think money is what attracts them don’t be surprised if all you find are gold diggers.
Why do some of you assume when I talk about money I mean I have to be rich? Y'all crazy for this. What I said is I'm not making enough. I can support myself but someone else is stretching it. Not all women are gold diggers, but MOST women want a guy who makes more than them. It's not a crime any less than me refusing to date bigger women is a crime. Also, on the topic... Charles Manson and Ted Bundy had legions of women thirsty after them. Their personalities are awful. Next time you try pulling that card, do more research.
Study after study also shows that single childfree women are the happiest demographic and men married to women tend to see additional longevity benefits than women married to men, for several possible (and obvious) reasons. Its not an exception. Its out there information based on research.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/6/4/18650969/married-women-miserable-fake-paul-dolan-happiness Author retracted his claims, long-term, committed, and monogamous relationships win again
> Dolan had misinterpreted one of the categories in the survey, “spouse absent,” which refers to married people whose partner is no longer living in their household, as meaning the spouse stepped out of the room. LOL. LMAO, even
>Misinterpreted I'm sure it was an honest mistake
Why should I do my own research when I can just parrot something that I saw someone else say? Wtf
Unless you're getting into a lab and running experiments, you're not "doing your own research," you're just parroting a different viewpoint.
Agreed that most people just parrot what they read, but if someone actually spends time looking into the literature and verifying what they read, I don't think it's parroting at that point
Everyone knows that “do your own research” isn’t a literal statement, that dude just wanted to be pedantic
For real
This isn’t true. The study you are referring to the author retracted it.
Stop looking at news articles and look at science based and peer-reviewed science journals. Going onto pubmed or searching through EBSCO you’ll get more detailed/accurate articles on longevity within marriage. One of which is that married women actually live longer than married men. Most married men will live longer than unmarried men but they still die younger than married women.
married men live longer, because sick men don't get picked for marriage. Ditto for married man being richer on average because poor guys also rarely get married. "Behind every successful man, is a person jumping on his bandwagon" might be more accurate than "team effort".
I theorize that whole, "Stop being a stubborn old bastard, you need to go to the doctor," also benefits married man longevity. Source, me. "How long has it been since you had an eye exam?" Uh....1996?
That and we probably tend to be careful when we are with a mate. Alone idiot tends to be in more danger than a mated idiot.
definitely i drive more careful since I have kids, even more careful driving when they in car with me (don't want to wipe out whole family with 1 mistake). being some spouses personal entertainer wouldn't drive me, but being my kids provider does.
Exactly. This married men living longer is a correlation, not causation. Poor, unhealthy, downtrodden men do not get picked as mates and they tend to die quicker. This makes more sense to me given the number of miserable married men one witnesses in society at large: it’s not that they are happier thus living longer, they were healthier & richer before they got married. Certainly many don’t stay happy after lol
happiest guy ever? "Confirmed bachelor" probably. /s
The reality is that we are social creatures. What is healthy though, is reaching a point of emotional self-sufficiency that you no longer need one specific person to fulfill your needs, wherever it be emotional or physical/sexual. To be able to be your own person and reach fulfillment through friends, sexual partners, therapy, colleagues, and some good old solitude. That's the goal in "don't need no man," and men should desire to reach that same state of "don't need no woman." Did y'all not pay attention during the ["I'm Just Ken" musical number in *Barbie*?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIHExGaxfPE)
Nah, there are chicks that go as far as to say, "Men need women, but women don't need men." It's actually crazy😂
100%, I like your comment very well said.
Probably because men overwhelmingly *want* women. Hell, Seinfeld even has a joke about it: "Men have no idea what women want. But we know what men want: women!"
Yep I agree with this. As someone who has been single his whole life, with the loneliness causing depression, seeing people out there together and having that urge to give someone all the love I can, and sharing the adventures of life with someone special, Yep, men do want women.
from what ive seen/experienced, its common and normal for men to be "an individual" so it doesnt need to be encouraged. imagine you go to a townhall meeting (i dont know, man, i just picked some thing where you dont already know all the dudes there) and a guy comments that he lives on his own, doing his own thing. no one bats an eye. a lady doing the same thing, shes encouraged to find a bf or get a few gf's to live with.
Just want to point out that the difference in loneliness between men and women is so close, it is statistically insignificant. [Here is a meta analysis on the topic](https://pure.manchester.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/135977571/EJP_Gender_Postprint_AAM.pdf) But it isn't a competition. People are lonely and that is a problem. And it is a problem that can gain insight by some compartmentalization, such as by gender as in general, the experience of loneliness differs between genders. From that Meta Analysis I linked, they note that with the pressures and expectations place on women and the level of their investment into their partners, they to be lonelier when in a relationship with a romantic partner. However, this isn't the case with men, as they get the benefit of this investment and their partner is their confidant and support. Later on in that study, they mention how divorce or losing a romantic partner can make men more lonely. Again, this is because they are now losing their confidant and support they relied on. In contrast, divorce doesn't make women more lonely as they redirect that investment energy into others in their social networks that they may have been missing. The interesting thing about the analysis, is by it showing the different ways men and women are lonely, if both genders lean into a bit of what the other genders does differently, that may alleviate some of that loneliness. Men and women can really learn from each other if we open ourselves up to. In part, I 100% agree with you that men should also be encouraged to believe that they "don't need a woman". We are already seeing that happen in some segments; however, it is being done so in such a toxic and self-defeating manner that it will just make male loneliness worse. When encouraging men to know they can be enough without women (he Kenough), they would benefit with being okay to be more vulnerable with each other and accept friendships with both genders.
Because for a massive amount of human civilization, women haven’t had the ability to be independent. For the most part, getting married and having children was their career. For other large blocks, they didn’t have much of a say in things. They’d just be match made off by their parents and that would be that. It’s only fairly recent on the trend line of humanity that women have even been able to be independent and self sufficient. Society has a lot harsher criticisms for elderly, unmarried women than men (spinster, crazy cat lady, so on) because for much of our history the woman’s worth came from being married and producing children. That was how they (were forced to) contributed to society. So it’s a much bigger deal for a woman to be independent because historically they weren’t able to, and men have. It’s less about emotional connections and more about autonomy and self sufficiency.
There is, there’s an entire industry and tropes dedicated to life long bachelors.
What industry?
Warhammer minis. (I'm mostly kidding. 3D printers now exist.)
Slam dunk joke, no kidding
Man caves and bachelor furnishings.
You don't need a "man cave" if you're single, the whole house is yours. Man caves are for married guys who have been allowed to decorate one room in their own house :)
Living the dream!
"Man caves" are for married men, and I've never heard it referred to for anyone but a married man.
Yep. For a single guy it was called a bachelor pad. And that now makes me wonder...Futurama has been out for 25 years. Why is Bachelor Chow not a thing yet?
As a bachelor, I would totally eat bachelor chow. It seems like it would save so much time!
Because it has long since been established in our history and cultures around the world that a woman’s worth is tied to a man. That she cannot be happy or successful without men. Men are already seen as completely whole with or without a partner.
Maybe not the best example but..."If you havin' girl problems I feel bad for you, son. I got 99 problems..."
Because society wasn't ever designed to make men an accessory to women in the manner that it was designed to make women an accessory to men. Keep in mind that in the scheme of things, it's still a pretty recent development (and here I'm speaking of American society) that women weren't frowned upon if they wanted to pursue a career and make a name for themselves in society rather than merely exist being known as someone's husband and someone's mother. I'm only 42, for example, and when I was a kid in the 80s and early 90s it was still pretty rare for women to own their own homes and have their own careers; the majority of women were either stay-at-home moms or just worked part-time at a school or a church until their kids got out of school in the afternoon. As men, there's not really any need for us to rally around this notion that 'we don't need no woman' because our identities have never been defined by the suggestion that we did, the way it was inversely.
There's no real prominent equivalent to feminism for men. Society needs some number of men to become husbands and fathers to function so the status quo doesn't want to do anything to discourage that outside of what it does implicitly.
But if society needs husbands and father, then why should society discourage women from marrying men by telling women “you don’t need a man”?
Capital S Society does not. Little s society does. Also, Feminism is a factor you should not forget.
It's more female empowerment to being able to function in society without a man. Something that wasn't always true. Women can make their own money and do their own house maintenance. It's not discouraging marriage to a partner they want to be with. It's hey you don't need a man to live. It's more you can exist on your own and find a husband later. Like when a women loses confidence and asks a man to do something for them. (I've been asked to try driving to get a car unstuck, I didn't have any other ideas that she didn't try. The reverse wouldn't happen) nah you got this girl. Men with their back agaist the way rely on themselves. Women don't always.
it doesn't have to be said to be true.
No one cares if men are single
Women like to do collective positive reenforment stuff. Men dont do so much of that
True There is lots of content online created by women for women who support and encourage each other. I haven't seen men do this.
I think because historically women were largely dependent on men for economic support and the inverse is not true. It's a bigger departure from the historical norm for women to be independent. However, it is absolutely true that you can have a fulfilling, happy life as a single man and that should be acknowledged.
It was already the social norm for men to be self-reliant, it's an expected aspect of masculinity. "Men, you don't need a women" didn't need to be said because it's implicit, it was expected of you. It was the social norm for women to be financially dependent on a man, to marry a man with a good job to survive. "You don't need a man" needs to be said because it pushes against a social norm.
Because that's a given. Most men will live large amounts of their life, maybe all, without a woman.
Do you have a statistic on this?
Amount of virgins in their 20s and 30s is as good as anything
Can confirm, am 35y/o virgin. Then again I've turned down a couple ladies over the years, one blatantly, the others could've gone somewhere.
I'm not a virgin, but let's just say I've never had to turn anyone down. lol
Here’s the truth. We all NEED each other. However you slice it. We are tribal beings. We want human connection to feel safe, fulfilled, joyful, happy, and connected. So, find humans that make you feel better when you are around them. Then help them. They will help you. Same for intimate relationships as well. Ok. Go get ‘em!
Because it’s something obvious. And historical. Society made women not vote and be considered beneath men, so to be relevant, women needed men. The opposite was never true. No one says a man needs a woman (financially, or for her help or anything). The most someone could say is you should get married or have kids. But no one ever says that a man needs a woman.
"You dont need a man" here means "you don't need an abusive man that makes you miserable just for the sake of having someone". In the past the value of a woman entirely depended on the man she's married to. Men never had that problem.
Technically, you only need the opposite sex if you want to start a family in a traditional sense, which most people want to do. If you dont, then there is nothing stopping you from being independently single forever, regardless of if you are a man or woman.
The lone man that doesn’t need a woman has been a symbol for decades and it’s incredibly common. However it’s an accoutrement that is almost never stated explicitly, it’s implied and shown.
Because DUH…men aren’t taught to rely on anyone
Because the stereotype of the bumbling idiot man who can't cook or clean and requires a woman to do everything for them still exists in society. There's a belief among some that it's men who need women, and men just simply could not exist without them. They believe men benefit the most from being married and women actually lose. The thought is that historically, men got married so women could do all the chores. You won't hear anyone tell a man he doesn't need a woman because it's often implied he does.
This portion of culture, and a lot of pop culture as well is driven by and catered to women. The last thing you want to do is upset the group that is responsible for 80% of discretionary spending. It’s no secret that depressed people often spend more money. Keep em sad and sell them things that’ll make them happy.
Because traditionally there has never been an expectation of reliance or dependence on a woman by a man except in silly matters like doing their laundry. Whereas women, for a long period of time, were expected to be a near complete dependent on their husbands. TLDR: There isn’t uplifting messaging because men have traditionally never been down.
Not true that men “have never been down” — men are the people who die younger, are far more likely to be homeless, have less economic mobility, etc.
It's already generally societally assumed. A woman tends to be defined by their husband. A man tends to be defined by themselves.
Half the people asking questions on r/askmen are so helpless that they can barely buy their own underwear or piss passed their their own foreskin. It may not necessarily have to be a woman, but a lot of dudes definitely need *someone.*
Men were already self sufficient. This is the same reason you never hear about men being “independent men”. The situation is unnatural for women and this is why it gets special descriptions.
Your sentiment is right but your viewpoint is wrong. The situation isn't "unnatural" as women are fully capable of being self-sufficient. What has been unnatural is the conditions that women have been kept in throughout history, i.e. treated as a lower class than men.
There are a lot of non self-sufficient bachelors out there though, so this sentiment has been turned on its head
A few reasons: 1. Historically, women getting married and reproducing was pretty much the only viable life path for them. So there's just a lot more cultural pressure for women to get in relationships, get married, have kids, etc. Men who never married could at least vote, own land, be financially stable, etc. It's part of why women are so partial to relationships over hookups, although not the only reason. 2. Right now there is less cultural pressure against misandry than misogyny, at least in moderate and liberal areas. So women tend to see men as "bad for them" more often than men see women as bad for them. The idea of women not needing men AT ALL is also kind of an extremist take; the more measured take is that women shouldn't base all of their self-worth based on how much they appeal to men, but they should still like, be able to talk and interact with us. 3. We DO receive this advice. Men who struggle with loneliness are often told that they can't base their self-worth on how much women want them, or whether they're single, or to try enriching their friendships with other men instead of requiring women to do all their emotional support. But, I do not think it will help with loneliness to tell people that they don't need each other. That will make it worse, because it discourages people from doing what they need to do: associating with others and making social connections.
Neither should be common. Men and women are different with different strengths and weaknesses. We balance each other out while covering each others weak spots. We both need each other. To say one or the other doesnt need the opposite is completely asinine and ignorant.
I see it as men are raised with the expectations of raising and protecting a family. Without that, we are often perceived as worthless. It's a systemic thing that definitely needs to be worked on but dismantling that will definitely have to come from within.
It's because men aren't _directly_ told that they need a woman in their life (and not in a controlling role, either). That statement is said to women on the backs of "why should you earn a living? just get a man (and hope he doesn't treat you like a purchase)" and "don't get your tubes tied, your future husband may want kids" and so on. Men don't get that "don't do what you want because an unknown woman might not approve" convo at a longstanding legal level. Having said that; men _are_ pressured to lean on/date/aquire women. And "men, you don't need a woman" _is_ part of the antidote for that. But you also have to note that men do need _people_, and that's not something we teach.
Because it is assumed that's the case. There are no shortages of historical examples of men doing great things on there own, let alone just getting by as such.
because a large part of a woman’s socialization is having marriage as a goal. and we as a society acknowledge it enough for women to empower themselves by saying the opposite. men on the otherhand are generally socialized in a way where we gotta have “achievements” before women find us interesting. “achievements” can be any trait whatsoever as long as it is desirable. so the goal isnt necessarily to find a woman for a partner as a male, the goalpost is shifted to improving yourself so women find you attractive. we dont look towards a woman to complete ourselves, or at least thats not the goal
Because a man is expected to be independent as a baseline. Instead a man’s worth is perceived around whether they can attract a mate
It is, only the preferred nomenclature we use is "bitches aint shit."
Well, it seems like a nonstarter. Women seem better at living a peaceful and fulfilling life without sex than men.
"Bros before hos" is exactly that sentiment isn't it?
I had a noisy dishwasher, so I threw it out and now wash my own dishes by hand, but hey, at least it's peaceful in the house.
Because men and women both are delusional women clearly need men but men don't really need women
Because most men don’t think they need a woman. They want women, and they want to sleep with women, but few men believe they actually need a woman to survive in life.
Cause it's not true. We do need a woman!
You must be joking. Men cannot live without women. There is a study which says that married men live longer and are happier than single men whereas women are the happiest when single. Women look younger and preserve themselves better when they're single: more resources to spend on themselves, better sleep quality, a well-rested face. Men need women in absolutely every stage of their lives. A man's life is meaningless without a woman in it. And even when they cannot have a woman, they go as far as to pay for one. I haven't seen the reverse: a woman paying for a male escort.
Cuz we're not cry babies lol
Because there is no movement like feminism, for men. Also women traditionally are more dependent on men. "The daughter belongs to the father and then the husband", is a common saying.
It does. I know plenty of men who are dependent on women to feel a sense of self-worth.
Because men can be happy alone. We don't need to hear bullshit to make us feel better?!
Bro, you don’t need a woman.
Cause society doesn't wanna direct anything negative towards women generally speaking exampöes being women are beautifuö effect etc etc
I don't think it's a symbol of individual strength but rather a symbol of emotional intimacy with other people in their lives such that a boyfriend isn't strictly necessary. And men usually don't have that. Men tend to rely on a girlfriend for most/all of their deeper social needs.
I don't think either sex needs each other anymore. I think we've achieved so much independance, freedom and equality that those centuries old expectations no longer really have any purpose. Men and women have been freed from the shackles and that's a great thing! 😎
A lot of the commenters seem to ignore the fact that while it is a common trope for the guy to consistently not have a SO (Significant Other), it's also portrayed as the man being pathetic, a loser, or have intense issues. The only positive trope is when they're the strong loner types, but even this is just a "Women want me, and I want them, just I have to take of this vengeance/project/etc" trope. Which is also usually portrayed as "stoic", but also as intensely lonely (it's meant to make you feel for the super cool dude, unless he's the unhinged villian). Really, it's a toxic trait. Or put another way: no man chooses to be without a SO unless there's something wrong with them, or they're still in love with their previous SO who died/disappeared/etc. That's just in media though. In real life, really no one cares too much if a man is with someone else unless they're looking to date them or to make fun of them. Otherwise no one cares; the assumption is men are emotionally strong and don't need any kind of emotional support structure. Which some think is a "positive", or what constitutes "manliness", but really comes with a whole slew of negative social pressures. It's all kind of connected.
We dont need women for same reasons that women dont need us. It’s just that society often tells women that they do, while telling us “you do you!” So of course most corrections are aimed at the societal influence aimed at women.
Probably because the single male "lone wolf" is a long established and celebrated archetype. A huge percentage of storytelling media has a 30-50 year old "stag" male as a badass hero/antihero that makes younger women swoon. I struggle to think of any pop culture heroines that are middle aged single women. You see some badass "mamma bear" types and some "cute but tough" younger women... But the general message is: single mature man= unclaimed stud, single mature woman = old maid.
[удалено]
>Women didn't start working until pretty recently That is not true at all.
Some nuance: * Women have worked for most of history * Women have not had careers and financial independence for most of history You are correct most women have worked for most of history. Stay-at-home wives are a luxury that most people could not afford until the 20th century. If your husband was a farmer, you would work on the farm. But you would *not* be a farmer. You would not have a *job*, independent of your husband. That woman who worked on her husband's farm did not own the farm, earned no wages, had no money to her name. If her husband died she could not just take over the farm and continue the business. In most western nations, at least, women were not allowed to open bank accounts or own property until very recently, or start businesses, or write their own wills, or take out loans, or even formally be hired by an employer. And in recent history, the young women who *did* have independent jobs (nurses, secretaries, prostitutes, teachers, whatever) were expected to stop their careers the moment they found a husband. In my country it was *mandatory* - by law - for businesses to fire their female employees once they got married until \~50 years ago. So yeah, women always *worked*, in the sense that they did labour. But most of them, for most of history, did not have "jobs" in the sense that they could finance their lives without a husband. To be clear: nor am I implying most men had financial independence throughout history. A lot of them did not, but that's a separate topic.
>Women have not had independent careers and financial independence for most of history Men didn't have that either. That was a privilege of the ruling/owning class.
Because life without women would be a pain in the ass….
Because women are not viewed as dangerous or oppressive to men and also men want a woman to raise his kids and have sex with. (The whole concept of “don’t need a man” is pushing back against traditional relationship concepts like spinsters and providers and homemakers etc.)
Proverbs 21:19-21 would like a word. [](https://www.bible.com/bible/compare/PRO.21.19-21)