i’m not male or insecure but i can definitely see how this compliment might come across as her telling him he’s not hot/she isn’t crazy about his looks or his personality, but that he’s “a good guy” and “marriage material”- which yes, those are also compliments, but in this context could be taken as backhanded. i feel like maybe she should have just said something else. i also feel like acting like men aren’t allowed to have feelings or insecurities or be upset is absurd.
Lots of people in here just acting like Men aren’t ever insecure about their bodies.
Hexbear: men should shirk toxic masculinity and embrace their emotions!
Also Hexbear: this man, who I have one (1) data point about, is clearly upset here because his ability to control women through sex is being undercut. This is why dating men is the worst, just toughen up and take the compliment bro!!
I think you see this reflected in media too when women in a heterosexual relationship who have a crisis over not feeling desired or something along those lines, is displayed in a sympathetic way.
“Women like to feel chased and desired.” Is a common through line in stories in which romance needs to be re-injected into the relationship. However here, a potentially miss worded compliment which states how they like their fulfilling stable relationship but also decenters the importance or existence of physical attraction towards the man can’t possibly be understood that way. Naturally stories are maybe more dramatic in their portrayal, but I think this this issue can be common in long-term relationships. Regardless of gender composition of the relationship or the gender of the person who may be feeling that way.
Or that men are unaffected by negging. Like if you break it down, this could easily be interpreted as negging, even if that was not the intention.
Male, not insecure much to my knowledge; I think the split here is “I wouldn’t just fuck you”. As far as I understand the world attraction for women to men is much less based on “beauty standards” and more other factors.
Everytime I said to the women in my life “That guy’s hot, isn’t he?” on the basis of what I think would be an attractive man I get back “God, no”. Think like, I don’t know, Ryan Gosling or Alan Ritcherson or and then Jack Black comes up and their heart beats ouf of their chest, their eyes get comically large and they go “AWOOOOOOOOOOOOGA”. I’ve since learned I have no idea what hetero women find hot and that people like Ryan Gosling or Alan Ritcherson are, going by looks, more like a male fantasy of how and what to look like.
So coming from the womens POV that sounds like a compliment, but to the guy it sounds like “I don’t think you’re physically that hot.”, because he’s Jack Black and not Ryan Gosling if that makes sense. I think the ire here is in large part that women are often complimented on their looks, rarely on their skills and it’s vice versa for men, which is why he probably wants to hear he’s Ryan Gosling and not Jack Black.
All very much generalized and such, but that’s what I figured. Given her version of the story I think storming out is a bit much, though.
i mean no disrespect when i say this, it’s absurd to believe women don’t actually think ryan gosling and dudes like that are hot. that is literally 90% of their appeal and why they’re rich and famous- women pay to see them in movies because they’re hot. i know they’ll say that if you ask them, but my brother, come on. they certainly probably find jack black more entertaining and “huggable” but if we’re being honest with ourselves, and you ask 10 women which of these two men they find more attractive, do you honestly, HONESTLY think most of them would pick jack black?
also, “i find you attractive like jack black, not like ryan gosling” isn’t a nice compliment.
i think people really just have trouble admitting that women can be insensitive and shitty just like men can, and that men can have insecurities and feelings and it isn’t invalid. there are so many people in here acting like “you just haven’t read enough feminist theory” to justify taking the girlfriend’s side in this post, but that’s just mental gymnastics. i love shitting on men all day, i will shit on men like nobody’s business, but i can not read this post and not think her boyfriend was right to be upset
It feels odd to presume every women that I talk about such topics with because we have close, personal friendships would lie to me about it. It’s not like I haven’t heard them saying things about Jack Black not suitable to be repeated in polite company after some drinks. And hell, on the scale of Ryan Gosling to Jack Black I definitely trend towards Gosling, not jack.
it’s not that they’re lying, it’s that wE LiVe iN a SoCiETy that makes women feel bad for lusting after hot men, so they would reflexively say that jack black is more attractive to them when put in that situation.
Perhaps we should consider that both things can be true: she intended the compliment of “I am sexually AND emotionally to you to such a great degree that I want nothing less than marriage”; and his reaction was valid because he perceived the meaning as “I’m settling for you”.
We don’t know how this miscommunication happened. She could have phrased it poorly or said it in a weird tone. He could have misheard. He could have a ton of pre-existing conditioning and pressures that led him to place her comment in a social context that she doesn’t share.
Neither of them have to be in the wrong here. Both of them should do the work and try to understand each other better.
CW: manospere/incel brainworms
This is what the manosphere chuds call “alpha fux, beta bux”. They believe that when women are in early adulthood, they take advantage of their high sexual market value to go around riding the “cock carousel” - that is fucking many alpha chads. However, as women approach their 30s and beyond, their sexual market value diminishes significantly. As this happens, the alphas lose interest in her as a piece of meat, choosing younger and more nubile women as their source of poontang. This leads the woman into a crisis, as she can’t get by from chad (because, you know, women don’t actually work in the eyes of incels). Her biological clock is also ticking, as she knows that her window of fertility is reaching its end. Because of this, she goes for the only choice left to her - settle down with a beta so she can have stability and fulfill her biological imperative. Betas, low SMV soyboys that they are, leap at the opportunity to accept the woman since they can’t get any puss otherwise. This leads to a marriage where the only sex the beta gets is infrequent and unentusiastic as the woman mooches off of his stable income to survive.