Men, Where Have You Gone? Please Come Back

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

She did it. She really did it.

She did the Who Killed Hannibal Meme.

I’m fairly certain that the flipside of this could easily be written (Women, Where Have You Gone?), and I would be equally off the mark.

I will respond to some of the author’s text below. My comments are based on my experiences as well as those of my male and female friends and professional acquaintances. Note that I’m a male in my 50s in Northern California.

Note that I’m typing this on my phone, so please ask for clarification if something seems weird.

> You’ve retreated — not into malice, but into something softer and harder all at once: Avoidance. Exhaustion. Disrepair.

Mostly exhaustion, but some folks are squarely in the avoidance and disrepair modes. Holds for both male and females imho.

> Maybe no one taught you how to stay. Maybe you tried once, and it hurt.

While there are men and women who are dysfunctional and can’t sustain a long-term relationship, I think that this is only part of the problem.

I think that there are two other main issues:

1. Visions of “living the good life” that are not aligned.

2. Scars from being financially burned (true for both males and females, although sometimes through different mechanisms).

Heartbreak doesn’t seem to be high on the list.

> Maybe the world told you your role was to provide, to perform, to protect — and never to feel.

I’m from the same generation as the author. “Feeling” was pushed on us quite aggressively (at least in the upper middle class world that she and I live in).

Then women started asking where the real men were.

Women seemed to expect men to feel in just the specific way that the woman wants the man to feel, and no others. Otherwise they are seen as less manly.

Note that this type of expectation was good for me personally due to the specifics of how I was raised, but I saw a lot of men and women really struggle to balance these expectations.

> But here’s what’s real: We never needed you to be perfect.

Often the expectations are unreasonably high.

I have straight up heard women I know create a list of the best traits in all of the men that they have dated, and genuinely say that they just want a man who has all of those traits. These are women who, imho, are not bringing much to the table. Their expectations are unreasonable. They will be forever single.

I imagine there are men who do the same, but I’ve never heard that line of thinking directly.

> We needed you to be with us. Not above. Not muted. Not masked. Just with.

If only…

I think most women expect much more. Whether they admit that to themselves or not is a different issue.

One of the questions I ask people (both women I’ve dated as well as people around me who are dating) is what the ideal relationship looks like for them. The answers are incredibly diverse, and sometimes folks don’t communicate their somewhat esoteric expectations to potential partners.

> And you can still come back. Not by becoming someone else, but by remembering what connection feels like when it’s honest and slow.

Many/most women I dated were expecting magic on the first date.

I’m more of a slow simmer type. The number of “honest and slow” women was very low in my dating pool.

That said, the most active men on dating apps who I know are just looking to add a notch to the headboard, and they will be as charming as needed to make that happen… and then they disappear. No “honest and slow” with these guys.

> When it’s earned and messy and sacred.

I know of very few women who are actually willing to tolerate anything approximating “messy” in a relationship, especially early.

> We’re still here, those of us who are willing to cocreate something true. We are not impossible to please. We’re not asking for performances. We are asking for presence. For courage. For breath and eye contact and the ability to say, “I’m here. I don’t know how to do this perfectly, but I want to try.”

I am certain that these women exist. I know quite a few of them. That said, many of them are not accessible socially.

It’s not that they are anti-social — quite the opposite. But you won’t find them if you don’t already have direct access to their pool of family and friends.

> Come back. Not with flowers or fireworks,

The most active women in dating sites seem to want flowers and fireworks or some variation thereof.

> but with willingness. With your whole, beautiful, imperfect heart.

This is a nice thing to say. It’s not something I’ve seen actually happen very often in the actual dating world.

I hear a lot of “I don’t have time for that” over small things.

> We’re still here. And we haven’t stopped hoping.

I think many of the women actually have stopped hoping.

Certain categories of social mechanisms for meeting people have become commoditized in an unhealthy way.

“Putting yourself out there” these days requires a fairly high degree of extroversion, pro-active behavior, and a thick skin (women get hit on a lot, men get rejected a lot).

As such, I think that there are a lot of highly desirable folks out there who are here and are maybe still hoping (with lowered expectations), but are largely inaccessible by the opposite sex.

My comments above come across as fairly cynical.

I think social media and the commoditization of the major dating sites have had a lot of negative impact on our collective ability to engage in socially constructive ways.

All that said, I think that society has a way of self-correcting. I have a strong belief that the suboptimal environment that we are currently in will be the catalyst for something more robust and dynamic in the next few years.

A lot of men are just tired of it and have better things to do than sit there and be an object of ridicule and accusation. This entire article there is zero self-reflection on women's contribution to the withdrawal of men from the dating scene. This kind of attitude and her own admission where her life has been spent toward the manipulation of men. Men recognize this and at some level they were willing to go along with it if they felt there was some sort of reciprocity but in my own personal experience over the last decade of trying to date there isn't anymore.

Women that I've tried to date, and you can go look at the dating profiles, seem too largely be concerned with how men can act as a court jester and entertain them. So many are filled with don't be boring, I'm sorry if you find me boring but that seems to reflect more upon you and having no actual hobbies or interests or things that you know how to engage with than it does with me. My personal experience is that women seem to be obsessed with the pageantry of a relationship and of dating. Of going out and being seen on a date rather than actually engaging in any meaningful way with a partner. When they're obsessed with taking selfies to put on social media to proclaim that they're dating or worse yet to shame that they're on a date and it's boring that shows that they don't really have any desire to engage with the other person they just want other people to know what's going on in their life.

So the men aren't jerking off at home they're just asking what happened to the women. Because most men have hobbies and interests and other things to do that don't involve bragging on social media to make themselves feel important. They genuinely enjoy their hobbies because they genuinely enjoy them. Sometimes they find groups and other people that they can share them with sometimes they're happy to do them alone. Because they're not bored with themselves because they themselves are not boring people. They know how to engage and take an interest in someone.

So the men are here but they're asking the same question where have the women gone that are genuinely interested in a relationship. The women that aren't interested in having arm candy for their pictures or how much money a man can spend. The men want to know where is the good woman that is going to be interested in what he has to say and she is going to have something to say as well that doesn't involve attention on social media from thousands of other men.

So this is a two-way street here. The women have changed and so the men have changed. If you look at the studies you'll find women's happiness has gone down over time but men's has remained the same or gone up. So I think instead of complaining where the men have gone a bit of self-reflection, you know that thing you've asked men to do to get in touch with themselves, women need to do that as well.

We have a wildly successful woman (used to “work” at playboy, uses Raya as a dating app for Christ’s sake) suddenly concern with where all the men are when dating stops being trivially easy for her. She looks for them at her haunts… in her 50s.

For women in your 50s looking for men. Take up golf. I’ve been a member of a public golf club since my late 30s. It’s just mostly single men in their 50s and 60s who don’t have other places to be. They have friends, get exercise, have fun.

The men aren’t behind their screens… they just don’t want the life you want. You have to meet them where they are: at their clubs, doing things they like to do.

And the NYT should know better, but writing a column that fits the vibes is infotainment in a way that sending a reporter out to actually figure out what is going on isn’t… and is honestly probably pretty banal.

Dating is hard. It’s work for the people who aren’t being chased. We all need to be easier on each other and stop assuming the worst because you personally aren’t getting what you want.

"The infrastructures of intimacy — slowness, curiosity, accountability — have been eroded by haste, convenience and a kind of sanctioned emotional retreat."

I loved her writing but I really wished she had gone on to ask "Why?" Why have men retreated as she says not with hostility but with indifference?

I'm in a decades long loving marriage and have a bunch of loving kids who all want to get married and raise their own families. I am proud as a father to have been a good role model in that manner. I married a woman who was sure she never wanted to marry or have kids. We were married just prior to what I feel was the popularization of the term "toxic masculinity" first coined in the 80s to name (and counter?) the rise of the men's metal health movement. A movement that I freely admit has hyper-toxic off-shoots today.

Here is the thing though. For a generation boys and men have been told that masculinity is toxic not that some extreme elements and fringe behaviors are toxic just as some fringe beliefs of many sub-cultures are toxic but all masculinity. We were told that women didn't need men and in fact preferred if we did not interact with them at all under almost any circumstance. Girls were better off in gender segregated classrooms, boys needed to be medicated at school just to be teachable. Women just wanted to go out in public and do their own thing without being "creeped on". Are there creeps out there? Is sexual assault a problem, sure, absolutely but again, the message from society was not that fringe inappropriate behavior was toxic, but that everything male was toxic.

So, what did men, particularly the "good" ones, do? They retreated, not with hostility but indifference. The last thing "good men" wanted was to offend or be label as a toxic problem. Since any interaction with a stranger was bad and sometimes you needed a written contract to kiss after a date, good men got the message and heeded it. I'm not saying an unwanted kiss is a good thing, but what was the larger message being sent to the "good guys" who might actually care how women feel? The message to those "good guys" was "we don't need you, we don't want you around, you're disruptive in the classroom and at work and we would all be better off if you did not exist.".

One of the more positive vestigial remnants of the men's mental health movement teaches/talks about Stoicism. The retreat of men from social places and society is not due to a desire for haste or convenience. It is a stoic reaction to being told for a generation that being a man was bad for society. The sad truth today is that men don't need women or in fact other men to find purpose or diversion. A hard lesson well taught to us by society.