NYT: "The Trouble with Men"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a woman I do not relate to this article at all. There’s another article I could write with the same title but it’s quite different and focuses on the wanting (an action by women).

The wanting here does not seem to be for relationships but rather just a consistent fork?

Yeah, this woman doesn't really seem interested in creating a life with another person. She sounds like a classic narcissist who views other people as a means to getting her needs met and nothing more.

Like, sorry for the cliche, but marriage (or any longterm partnership) is about compromise. That's actually what makes it special. In a successful longterm relationship, you both learn to let go of your ego for the sake of the partnership. This is very powerful. It is not possible to make this happen on a short-term basis (it's the longevity of the commitment that makes a marriage what it is) and it won't be successful if one or both partners always puts themselves first.

But then, who would take relationship advice from a divorced mom who can't even figure out if she wants to be monogamous or not? There's just no point.

Men are very, very infrequently expected to make compromises in marriage. They (statistically, not anecdotally) leave when their spouses become ill, are excused for cheating if their wife isn’t conventionally attractive or gains weight, and are praised like heroes for taking on the most basic household tasks and certainly are never expected to take any career hits in pursuit of family goals. So your advice while likely accurate rarely has to do with men.

The main study that showed that was retracted: https://retractionwatch.com/2015/07/21/to-our-horror-widely-reported-study-suggesting-divorce-is-more-likely-when-wives-fall-ill-gets-axed/

And multiple new studies replaced it showing the same thing.

Link to them for me?

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/mar/30/the-men-who-give-up-on-their-spouses-when-they-have-cancer

This article links a few of the different ones.

It should also be noted, the other study was retracted due to a calculation error, but most of the data was still solid.

But the data did not support the (false, retracted) conclusion ffs.

Is your assertion that men do not desert
their sick partners at higher levels than women? Because the guardian article clearly says otherwise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This seems to be a thematic series at the NYT:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/magazine/men-heterofatalism-dating-relationships.html?unlocked_article_code=1.YU8.43pQ.EZ4bi1dHDtR_&smid=url-share

Men are just unable to operate in normal, grown up relationships - or at least that's what the these articles would have us believe.

Honestly, I think this is turning into a pretty tired trope. (guy here)

A lot of woman can't take the weaponized incompetence. "You told me to take down the xmas lights, but you did not tell me to put them away anywhere. How am I supposed to know??"

Men need to wash their own shiz and clean the house, too. They need to not say they are "babysitting" their own kids. They need to cook 50% of the time or more.

They need to hold the mental load of children's medical appts, dental appointments, school forms, field trip forms and dates, school volunteering possibilities, and carpooling if needed. They need to track the TeamSnap for the children's sports teams, bring the lasagna to the swim team potluck, and drive the kids back and forth to these events.

That's just a drop of what men need to start doing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having actually read the article, it's just clickbait for the NYT set. The author left an open marriage because she fell for one of the men she was dating and when that relationship didn't work out, she found herself in the middle aged dating pool in NYC where she goes out on dates with openly non-monogamous men. Hardly a representative sample of mainstream dating.

As a woman, the article just made me roll my eyes because the author and her friends seem to be self-selecting for these high drama relationships.

Yes, she's selecting these bad situations. She is not high value enough to land a quality man, so she is left with the choice between settling for a mid-man or being pumped by better men who have options. She chooses the latter, and this choice is repeated across the country by countless women.

Where do these phrases like "high value" and "mid-man" in this context come from?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a woman I do not relate to this article at all. There’s another article I could write with the same title but it’s quite different and focuses on the wanting (an action by women).

The wanting here does not seem to be for relationships but rather just a consistent fork?

Yeah, this woman doesn't really seem interested in creating a life with another person. She sounds like a classic narcissist who views other people as a means to getting her needs met and nothing more.

Like, sorry for the cliche, but marriage (or any longterm partnership) is about compromise. That's actually what makes it special. In a successful longterm relationship, you both learn to let go of your ego for the sake of the partnership. This is very powerful. It is not possible to make this happen on a short-term basis (it's the longevity of the commitment that makes a marriage what it is) and it won't be successful if one or both partners always puts themselves first.

But then, who would take relationship advice from a divorced mom who can't even figure out if she wants to be monogamous or not? There's just no point.

Men are very, very infrequently expected to make compromises in marriage. They (statistically, not anecdotally) leave when their spouses become ill, are excused for cheating if their wife isn’t conventionally attractive or gains weight, and are praised like heroes for taking on the most basic household tasks and certainly are never expected to take any career hits in pursuit of family goals. So your advice while likely accurate rarely has to do with men.

The main study that showed that was retracted: https://retractionwatch.com/2015/07/21/to-our-horror-widely-reported-study-suggesting-divorce-is-more-likely-when-wives-fall-ill-gets-axed/

And multiple new studies replaced it showing the same thing.

Link to them for me?

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/mar/30/the-men-who-give-up-on-their-spouses-when-they-have-cancer

This article links a few of the different ones.

It should also be noted, the other study was retracted due to a calculation error, but most of the data was still solid.

But the data did not support the (false, retracted) conclusion ffs.

Not really. The study was retracted because some who "left the study" (aka didn't complete the entire study) were coded as "divorced". It was then recoded and republished. It still showed husbands were more likely to leave in certain cases.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having actually read the article, it's just clickbait for the NYT set. The author left an open marriage because she fell for one of the men she was dating and when that relationship didn't work out, she found herself in the middle aged dating pool in NYC where she goes out on dates with openly non-monogamous men. Hardly a representative sample of mainstream dating.

As a woman, the article just made me roll my eyes because the author and her friends seem to be self-selecting for these high drama relationships.

Yes, she's selecting these bad situations. She is not high value enough to land a quality man, so she is left with the choice between settling for a mid-man or being pumped by better men who have options. She chooses the latter, and this choice is repeated across the country by countless women.

Where do these phrases like "high value" and "mid-man" in this context come from?

It’s red piller language that is becoming common lingo being used in dating.

[Anonymous]

Define settling. If you are a 5 and you partner with a 5 (when of course you'd rather have an 8-10), is that settling?

And yeah, I know the number thing is stupid, but humor me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a woman I do not relate to this article at all. There’s another article I could write with the same title but it’s quite different and focuses on the wanting (an action by women).

The wanting here does not seem to be for relationships but rather just a consistent fork?

Yeah, this woman doesn't really seem interested in creating a life with another person. She sounds like a classic narcissist who views other people as a means to getting her needs met and nothing more.

Like, sorry for the cliche, but marriage (or any longterm partnership) is about compromise. That's actually what makes it special. In a successful longterm relationship, you both learn to let go of your ego for the sake of the partnership. This is very powerful. It is not possible to make this happen on a short-term basis (it's the longevity of the commitment that makes a marriage what it is) and it won't be successful if one or both partners always puts themselves first.

But then, who would take relationship advice from a divorced mom who can't even figure out if she wants to be monogamous or not? There's just no point.

Men are very, very infrequently expected to make compromises in marriage. They (statistically, not anecdotally) leave when their spouses become ill, are excused for cheating if their wife isn’t conventionally attractive or gains weight, and are praised like heroes for taking on the most basic household tasks and certainly are never expected to take any career hits in pursuit of family goals. So your advice while likely accurate rarely has to do with men.

The main study that showed that was retracted: https://retractionwatch.com/2015/07/21/to-our-horror-widely-reported-study-suggesting-divorce-is-more-likely-when-wives-fall-ill-gets-axed/

And multiple new studies replaced it showing the same thing.

Link to them for me?

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/mar/30/the-men-who-give-up-on-their-spouses-when-they-have-cancer

This article links a few of the different ones.

It should also be noted, the other study was retracted due to a calculation error, but most of the data was still solid.

That article cites two studies. The 2015 retracted study and a 2009 study. That isn't "multiple new studies" it's the retracted study and one older study. The rest of it is anecdotes.

The 2015 study was retracted due to a serious coding error which led to erroneous conclusions. They were miscoding people who left the study as getting divorced. The republished study found no statistically significant gender difference except in the case of heart disease. That's a BIG difference from what was originally published (and reported) (and quite possibly random).

The 2009 study was much smaller (515 people, around 50 divorces, total). Why would you trust the results of a tiny study when a much larger study couldn't replicate those results?

How we use data in these conversations is important. If you state that men "statistically" leave when their partners are ill, on the basis of two contradictory studies, you're not describing the data honestly. This is especially true when the original study made huge headlines, but not the retraction.

[Anonymous]

If you are a 5 and you partner with a 5 (when of course you'd rather have an 8-10), is that settling?

And yeah, I know the number thing is stupid, but humor me.

I think that comes with the presumption that people would rather have someone higher "rated" than them. I'm average looking and so is my spouse, but I am happy being paired with someone about the same attractiveness as I am. I'm

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Define settling. If you are a 5 and you partner with a 5 (when of course you'd rather have an 8-10), is that settling?

And yeah, I know the number thing is stupid, but humor me.

Settling is personal and different for each person. To me settling is ignoring traits or things that deeply bother you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Define settling. If you are a 5 and you partner with a 5 (when of course you'd rather have an 8-10), is that settling?

And yeah, I know the number thing is stupid, but humor me.

Settling is personal and different for each person. To me settling is ignoring traits or things that deeply bother you.

If the only reason you’re with someone is to have children in wedlock, you’re settling. Doesn’t matter if they’re a 2 or a 9, settling is being with someone you don’t want to be with for an external reason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Often its the case of too many choices and too high expectations lead to waste of too much time and in too much desperation women settle for who ever says yes before fertility window closes otherwise keep dating until a divorced dad comes along.

I'm a shorter, single 39 year old man with a pretty wide friend group. The same single women that didn't pay any attention to me 10 years ago are now showing interest in me. It seems like they're trying to lock down somebody "good enough" before their fertility window closes. I'm not falling into that trap. I'd rather be single and live on my own terms.

It bears repeating that women can get men to sleep with them but not commit to them. The men who are passed over while the women are passed around understands that women are marking him as a second choice. No man wants to be considered a second choice, so they exit the market when they grasp this reality. For attractive women, there is always another man to be had. For most women, however, they are not attractive enough in their mid-30s to get men to overlook the years of riding the carousel.

The dynamic still holds that women gatekeep sex and men gatekeep relationships. If women want relationships, they have to stop chasing sex and they have to lower their standards to their relationship-match, which is much different than their sex-match. For reasonable evolutionary reasons, I don't expect it to happen, so the status quo will prevail.

As women gain economic power, they no longer need to settle for sexually unattractive partners just to have kids. Marriage is hard, living with someone you don’t desire, enduring sex every week, birthing kids with him. Are you f…g joking ? Do you yourself want to sleep with a woman you don’t desire just to have a “family”? Most marriages are unhappy for that very reason -people “settling”.

Most women would rather stay single or have kids on their own.

No, they don't need to settle if they want to have sex. They need to settle if they want to have children in wedlock.

Marriage is great so long as husband and wife are on the same page, especially if that page is traditional.

And then, he decides he needs a younger model and the current wife should gracefully withdraw into genteel poverty.

+1
There is no point in settling.

It is mentally difficult to try to marry someone that you aren’t all that interested in. You’re expected to have sex with that man for decades, and eventually you will run out of steam pretending you like it and end up with some messed up dead bedroom marriage. I’ll pass.

Agreed. I wonder about the people who tell others to settle. Did they settle? Are they happy? Did their partner settle for them? Do they not believe that real love and compatibility is possible? Do they believe having a home and children with a subpar man/partner is "worth" being unhappy for? Idk.

"Do they believe having a home and children with a subpar man/partner is "worth" being unhappy for?"

You almost never see a truly mismatched couple, in the wild, where she clearly settled and he is "subpar". It just doesn't shake out that way because in real life, a woman who truly "can do better" will do better because a better man will approach her. Women who conclude "they settled" are just fantasizing about a choice they never actually had, where they married some imaginary superstar rather than one of the men who was actually in her social orbit. (The male equivalent of this is his fantasy where he coulda shoulda married a supermodel but "settled" for the woman he met at the office.)

But anyway. Let's say you don't settle. You marry your soulmate, you are passionately attracted to him. Is it guaranteed that you will never get annoyed with him, lose interest in him, find sex with him tiresome, and end up in a dead bedroom marriage? No. We see this in DCUM Relationships all the time. (And of course, that's when you mentally rewrite the entire marriage and decide that you settled.)

Now let's say you settled. He's not a superstar, he's just OK. We could question whether you realistically had any better options when you settled, but whatever. Things with him aren't great, but you have fantastic children who love you. Is that a fate worse than death or something? Would you really prefer to restart your life from the save point before you got married, and not have your children on the replay? OK you got bored and divorced him. But that also happens to plenty of women who married their "soulmates".

[Anonymous]

I know this forum is a bubble, but let's not pretend that SMBC is a viable option for the vast majority of women for logistical and financial reasons. That doesn't mean you should settle for a loser, but for most people the choice is settle vs. no kids, not settle vs, SMBC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Define settling. If you are a 5 and you partner with a 5 (when of course you'd rather have an 8-10), is that settling?

And yeah, I know the number thing is stupid, but humor me.

Settling is personal and different for each person. To me settling is ignoring traits or things that deeply bother you.

If the only reason you’re with someone is to have children in wedlock, you’re settling. Doesn’t matter if they’re a 2 or a 9, settling is being with someone you don’t want to be with for an external reason.

DP

What is a good enough reason for marrying someone? And are you implying that good enough not subjective?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Often its the case of too many choices and too high expectations lead to waste of too much time and in too much desperation women settle for who ever says yes before fertility window closes otherwise keep dating until a divorced dad comes along.

I'm a shorter, single 39 year old man with a pretty wide friend group. The same single women that didn't pay any attention to me 10 years ago are now showing interest in me. It seems like they're trying to lock down somebody "good enough" before their fertility window closes. I'm not falling into that trap. I'd rather be single and live on my own terms.

It bears repeating that women can get men to sleep with them but not commit to them. The men who are passed over while the women are passed around understands that women are marking him as a second choice. No man wants to be considered a second choice, so they exit the market when they grasp this reality. For attractive women, there is always another man to be had. For most women, however, they are not attractive enough in their mid-30s to get men to overlook the years of riding the carousel.

The dynamic still holds that women gatekeep sex and men gatekeep relationships. If women want relationships, they have to stop chasing sex and they have to lower their standards to their relationship-match, which is much different than their sex-match. For reasonable evolutionary reasons, I don't expect it to happen, so the status quo will prevail.

As women gain economic power, they no longer need to settle for sexually unattractive partners just to have kids. Marriage is hard, living with someone you don’t desire, enduring sex every week, birthing kids with him. Are you f…g joking ? Do you yourself want to sleep with a woman you don’t desire just to have a “family”? Most marriages are unhappy for that very reason -people “settling”.

Most women would rather stay single or have kids on their own.

No, they don't need to settle if they want to have sex. They need to settle if they want to have children in wedlock.

Marriage is great so long as husband and wife are on the same page, especially if that page is traditional.

And then, he decides he needs a younger model and the current wife should gracefully withdraw into genteel poverty.

+1
There is no point in settling.

It is mentally difficult to try to marry someone that you aren’t all that interested in. You’re expected to have sex with that man for decades, and eventually you will run out of steam pretending you like it and end up with some messed up dead bedroom marriage. I’ll pass.

Agreed. I wonder about the people who tell others to settle. Did they settle? Are they happy? Did their partner settle for them? Do they not believe that real love and compatibility is possible? Do they believe having a home and children with a subpar man/partner is "worth" being unhappy for? Idk.

"Do they believe having a home and children with a subpar man/partner is "worth" being unhappy for?"

You almost never see a truly mismatched couple, in the wild, where she clearly settled and he is "subpar". It just doesn't shake out that way because in real life, a woman who truly "can do better" will do better because a better man will approach her. Women who conclude "they settled" are just fantasizing about a choice they never actually had, where they married some imaginary superstar rather than one of the men who was actually in her social orbit. (The male equivalent of this is his fantasy where he coulda shoulda married a supermodel but "settled" for the woman he met at the office.)

But anyway. Let's say you don't settle. You marry your soulmate, you are passionately attracted to him. Is it guaranteed that you will never get annoyed with him, lose interest in him, find sex with him tiresome, and end up in a dead bedroom marriage? No. We see this in DCUM Relationships all the time. (And of course, that's when you mentally rewrite the entire marriage and decide that you settled.)

Now let's say you settled. He's not a superstar, he's just OK. We could question whether you realistically had any better options when you settled, but whatever. Things with him aren't great, but you have fantastic children who love you. Is that a fate worse than death or something? Would you really prefer to restart your life from the save point before you got married, and not have your children on the replay? OK you got bored and divorced him. But that also happens to plenty of women who married their "soulmates".

Or you have those fantastic kids who love you on your own and don’t risk losing them 50% of the time when you get bored and divorced. Not seeing the benefit of settling in your story?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know this forum is a bubble, but let's not pretend that SMBC is a viable option for the vast majority of women for logistical and financial reasons. That doesn't mean you should settle for a loser, but for most people the choice is settle vs. no kids, not settle vs, SMBC.

With all due respect, yes it is. IVF may be prohibitively expensive but that’s not the only route to SMBC. Most households with children are headed by women, so while how much of that is “choice” is anyone’s guess, there’s no overwhelming financial or logistical hurdle here.