why women don’t like modern men

[Raze]

This substack is an interesting insight into the subtle issues that make women lose interest from the perspective of a woman

https://aella.substack.com/p/the-difficulty-in-dating-good-men
 

Quote

So, a cousin recommends a guy. She says "He's perfect for you." He looks good enough on paper, so I sit down for dinner. He’s a little older, and shorter than me, but I don’t mind. I watch him carefully. He tells me about his life, and I imagine what it’s like to be him. A part of my brain is running a low-fi model of his emotions, and lights up with curiosity when the model runs into a place it can’t predict. I say something like:

“Wait, you just said you got fired and then moved countries? Do you think if you hadn’t had such a sudden impetus, you would have moved at all? Like, would it have eventually snuck up on you anyway?”

He answers smoothly, comfortably, like he’s relaxing into a great armchair I’ve dusted off and wheeled over to him. He partially answers the question in the first twenty seconds and then continues to talk for another four minutes.

I want to understand him fast. I am paying close attention, looking for novel words to toss at him. It feels playful for me, like wrestling, or leaning into tension. I want to see the green under his bark, the places where he’s unpracticed. I slip in fast, arrowhead questions, ones that carry intensity or exploration. “Are you smarter than your coworkers” or “When your ex broke up with you, did you deserve it?” or “So when your mom died, did you feel bad about it?”

He answers all of these with surprise, like he is a child riding on the back of my hay wagon. I’m a bit sad that he seems surprised. I would have felt safer if he seemed at home among awkward questions. 

As time passes, it becomes rapidly clear that he is not paying much attention to me. I decide to count the amount of questions he asks me, and I eventually realize with growing disappointment that he just… isn’t asking any questions at all. 

But I figure if I want something from the conversation - him to know about me - I shouldn’t sulk and be mad that he’s not giving it to me; I shouldn’t just expect him to read my mind, I should be an adult and reach for what I want. So after he finishes talking, I try to volunteer information. I force myself to ramble a bit. I tell him “yeah, my own biggest change was this time when I was nineteen in Idaho and decided to move by myself to Australia. It was real scary.” 

I’m vaguely uncomfortable talking about this, because I’m aware he didn’t ask me, and I’m not sure he wants to know. But I say it anyway. When I’m done, he replies by telling me he went to Australia once, and he liked the surfing. He tells me about the fight he had with his boss during a surfing trip. He tells me about the importance of speaking up for yourself. 

We get the check, and I offer to split but he pays. I give him a hug and leave. He seems like a perfectly nice person. No part of me feels a desire to see him again. Maybe he feels that way about me too, maybe I’m the weird question girl.

I’m discouraged. But I figure if I don’t go on dates with anyone, then I’ll never end up dating anyone. And I would like to get married + kids at some point, that seems cool. Happily married people seem like they’re having a great time, and I’d like to join their ranks.

The next guy wasn’t a date, he ended up in a uber in hour-long SF traffic with me ride sharing back from a party. I suspect he might be interested in me, because of the way he moves his hands and eyes and the quickness of his laughter. So I Investigate.

I ask him many questions - less aggressively than I did to my date last week, because I’m tired - but still ones that are gently trying to build a model of him, his desires, ambitions, insecurities. 

I like him. He is funny, and seems smart. But after many minutes I notice that, much like my last date, he has asked me no questions. I imagine his factory’s figure-out-the-gaps-in-models-of-other-people gears are rusted and covered in cobwebs. I’m sad about this as a pattern. I don’t know why this is happening. This time, instead of forcibly talking about myself, I tell him that I’m sad he’s asked me no questions.

He says “Oh, I’m sorry” and seems awkward. As our conversation continues, he starts deliberately inserting questions. 

“So, uh, what do you like doing for hobbies?”

I’m glad he’s at least trying, but his questions seem performative, like he’s searched for a premade question script and is reading down them, like I could be swapped out with any other woman and it wouldn’t change much. There is no locus of hot itching curiosity shining from behind his eyes, or at least not one that I can find here in this uber. I realize he’s not deeply trying to understand me. He's unattuned. I find my body does not trust him. I think I want a relationship where we can sink in together, touch souls or something. I imagine if I tried to date him, it'd be a lot of work to get him to understand me, like I'd have to force feed him myself. I'd rather have someone who's hungry. 

Or maybe there’s something wrong with me. Have I been misled by some romance-movie ideal of becoming As One, where two people deeply understand each other down to their cores, where the fibers of their minds get woven together? I sort of think that’s what love is. But maybe this idea just comes from porn, a fantasy meant to get women off but is not a realistic idea of men’s wants or needs. Am I the girl equivalent of a gooner who locked on hard to the notion he deserves a perfect fucktoy and won’t settle until he has it? 

Not sure. I gently watch this theory out of the corner of my eye.

At social events, I keep lowkey evaluating lots of men I have faint brushes with. I notice signs of coolness - competence or bravery or something - and any time a whiff of it floats by I follow it to chat with them at parties. 

But my body does not like them. One man talks about his failures in a tone that implies he's uncomfortable with himself, like somewhere deep down a part of him believes he's a bad person, and it seems that many of his bids for social approval are attempts to be reassured that he is in fact okay.

I get it, humans - me included - are like this sometimes, and I have a great deal of compassion for it, but I do not want to be in a relationship with someone who's straining against themselves. Judgment is never isolated; if I become one with them, their inward violence will slam up against me, too. I don't want to be put in a position where my affection is the thing they use to prove to themselves that they are worthy. I want to be an equal, not a crutch.

Another guy… I’m not sure what his problem is exactly, but he seems to warp around me. He agrees with what I say a little too fast. He laughs at my jokes immediately. His hands twitch with nervous energy. He seems nice enough, but he seems afraid of me, and like he’s putting in a huge amount of effort to make himself seem not afraid of me. His body tension reminds me of the way I feel when I’ve appeared on high-pressure public shows and I don’t want people to know that I’m really scared right now. I feel as though my presence towers above him, and I have to be delicate with him, like if I speak too honestly he'll crumble in my hands.

My next date reassures me. I offhandedly mention something bad that happened to me, and he pauses me and goes "that is so terrible, I'm sorry that happened to you." It's nice of him, but he does this a little too often, and something in his tone and much of our following conversation makes me feel defensive. I feel like my own grief is a pool that I swim in often and easily, but it seems like he’s come in and begun building important Walls of Protection around the shores, and I’m like - wait, hey, I am okayhere, I don’t need you do all this - but he somehow can’t hear me. I realize probably he has really huge Walls of Protection around his own pool. He is an expert Walls of Protection builder, his mind just automatically lays them out upon his own landscape in the same motion he uses to look at the landscape. He has not come to terms with his own suffering. 

It seems like there’s a whole swathe of human experience he can’t see clearly. I think the part of me that is intertwined with pain will feel forever alone with him. I imagine for him, coming into contact with the darkest part of me will be like touching a hot stove. 

This is.... pervasive. Most people with whom I sit down and dig show devastating cracks in their psyche. They are not whole. 

It’s not that these men aren’t good people. They seem very disproportionately good. They have learned that the goodest thing to do is to reassure people when they hurt, to demonstrate self-flagellation upon failure, to say a lot of interesting things for many consecutive minutes when a woman asks them a question. Pain is bad, ew, grrr. Nice things are good, yay! They are top tier, A+ at being Good People.

While I might be assessing them for a marriage I’d be happy in, I rarely feel judgment towards them. It makes a whole lot of sense to be a primate with ancient hardware that’s learned from thousands of generations of violence that social ostracization means death, that showing vulnerability will not pass on your genes, that you had better know your place in the hierarchy or else. It’s probably very hard to be a man, who by default are thrust into the sea and told ‘swim or die.’ I don’t fault them for it. If I were born them, I would be uttering the exact same words and flinching away from the exact same mind-pieces as they are. I would be, very reasonably, attempting to be the Goodest Person too. Perhaps this is a strategy that’s already worked well for them and they have no reason to try anything else.

But next to them, I feel like a sprawling seeping hunk of organic flesh with tendrils that uncurl into horror as readily as they do loveliness. I am uncultivated.

Maybe in their eyes, I’m a girl with a weird digging compulsion. Maybe they very much enjoy casual, lighthearted questions, and conversations where both people ramble over each other, where their idea of love is something like sitting next to each other on a beach in old age, existing comfortably adjacent to someone whose insides you don’t need to know, because whatever they are is good to you and leads to a beautiful life, and that’s what matters.

Probably my desires are arcane. Dating men who are curious and self-accepting doesn’t mean the relationship works out, and of course there’s lots of things on topthat are important too, like being really kind and competent and compatible with me in general lifestyle and values. And it’s true that people with huge cracks in their psyche go on to live happy lives with long, fulfilling relationships. 

So maybe my desire is luxurious. Maybe I should lower my standards? But this is a clean, sleek thought, which is sensible to look at and interacts with nothing else. The physical wariness creeps into my muscles without me asking for it. I’m a slave to my own desire.

This is why in-spite of what Leo says I still respect rsd tyler as the best PUA. His emphasis on the attractive qualities of a man being freedom from outcome + self amusement + clarity of intent & social acuity embody this and so much more in what women find attractive, while other PUAS will give techniques that imitate it he has synthesized it into core traits. 

Edited Tuesday at 10:55 PM by Raze

[Emerald]

I wouldn't say this is an issue specifically with contemporary men. I actually assume the issue to be much worse in the past and to be moving in the direction of getting better.

Now, first off... I think her questions make these men feel uncomfortable because she's asking very sharp and pointy questions. And if you want someone to open up to you, that doesn't indicate that you're a safe person to do that around.

In this sense, I suspect some of this is a projection of her own issues opening up that she's seeing reflected back to her in the men.

But even with that said, men do often have issues of disconnection from their feelings and an awkwardness around articulating their inner world and vulnerabilities.

But women really need that to feel connected to men and to bond and to feel intimacy. But this isn't possible if a man is not integrated with his own Feminine side. 

So, women are frequently unhappy and alone in their relationships because men are trained to disconnect from these Feminine princpled parts of themselves from a young age... and are shamed for vulnerability and "weakness".

And just about every single insult towards men is just another way of saying "You're too Feminine. Stop being Feminine."

Yet, vulnerability is necessary for connection. But boys/men are taught, "You have to be strong and stoic all the time or women won't like you. Women will laugh at you if you have no armor on"

So, it creates dynamics where a man is disconnected from his feelings and in a comfort zone within a relationship because he is numbed out, and the woman is starved of the deeper connection because he's disconnected and numbed out.

But she is not numbed out. She feels the desire to go deeper but comes up against a huge block.

And often times this leads to the dissolution of the relationship. Or it could potentially prevent the formation of a relationship in the first place.

 

[Raze]

13 minutes ago, Emerald said:

Now, first off... I think her questions make these men feel uncomfortable because she's asking very sharp and pointy questions. And if you want someone to open up to you, that doesn't indicate that you're a safe person to do that around.

That’s because it’s a test to probe for the trait 

17 minutes ago, Emerald said:

But even with that said, men do often have issues of disconnection from their feelings and an awkwardness around articulating their inner world and vulnerabilities.

But women really need that to feel connected to men and to bond and to feel intimacy. But this isn't possible if a man is not integrated with his own Feminine side. 

So, women are frequently unhappy and alone in their relationships because men are trained to disconnect from these Feminine princpled parts of themselves from a young age... and are shamed for vulnerability and "weakness".

And just about every single insult towards men is just another way of saying "You're too Feminine. Stop being Feminine."

Yet, vulnerability is necessary for connection. But boys/men are taught, "You have to be strong and stoic all the time or women won't like you. Women will laugh at you if you have no armor on"

So, it creates dynamics where a man is disconnected from his feelings and in a comfort zone within a relationship because he is numbed out, and the woman is starved of the deeper connection because he's disconnected and numbed out.

But she is not numbed out. She feels the desire to go deeper but comes up against a huge block.

And often times this leads to the dissolution of the relationship. Or it could potentially prevent the formation of a relationship in the first place.

 

The issue with that is, women also want strength and stoicism, so much so that their is a trend to call mens vulnerability as emotional labor. 

[OmniNaut]

She reminds me a little of this. I would loose interest in a woman if a date goes like this.

The girl from the OP is over-analysing too much. I agree with @Emerald post on this.

[Emerald]

6 minutes ago, Raze said:

That’s because it’s a test to probe for the trait 

The issue with that is, women also want strength and stoicism, so much so that their is a trend to call mens vulnerability as emotional labor. 

First off, if that's her test to probe for that trait, then she shouldn't be surprised when she gets to opposite of what she's looking for.

No one feels comfortable opening up and being vulnerable with a person who is asking attack questions. People naturally will sense "This person isn't safe to open up to." And they will put up armor... men and women both will.

Like if I asked... “Are you smarter than your coworkers” or “When your ex broke up with you, did you deserve it?” or “So when your mom died, did you feel bad about it?”.. it would be very foolish of me to expect that people would feel comfortable opening up to me.

I'd be like a cactus asking, "Why don't any balloons I talk to want a hug?"

The cultivation of strength and emotional regulation skills are not in opposition to the development of vulnerability. They go together quite nicely. And you can sense when a man is well-integrated in that way or if he's polarized into one pole or another.

But I would venture to guess that some of the men she speaks to would feel a lot more comfortable opening up to a woman (or anyone) who demonstrates that they're going to handle their vulnerabilities with care.

Edited Tuesday at 11:33 PM by Emerald

[OmniNaut]

3 minutes ago, Raze said:

That’s because it’s a test to probe for the trait 

The issue with that is, women also want strength and stoicism, so much so that their is a trend to call mens vulnerability as emotional labor. 

But in this case the woman in the story takes on the role of strength and stoicism, which puts off the men. 

[Emerald]

8 minutes ago, OmniNaut said:

She reminds me a little of this. I would loose interest in a woman if a date goes like this.

The girl from the OP is over-analysing too much. I agree with @Emerald post on this.

There's definitely a lot of over-analysis there... which seems like a way for her to avoid opening up and being vulnerable herself.

And I sense that she sees her own closed up-ness and unwillingness to be vulnerable projected out onto these guys.

She may even find herself attracted to closed up guys... as that can also be a pattern.

Basically, the call is coming from within the house. But she doesn't realize it yet.

That said, the dynamic of men being disconnected is also a common pattern that can be observed. 

[Lyubov]

she’s 33 years old with frozen eggs.

everything you need to know about her right there. 

she sounds insufferable. 

god speed to the man that settles with her. 

[OmniNaut]

28 minutes ago, Lyubov said:

she’s 33 years old with frozen eggs.

everything you need to know about her right there. 

she sounds insufferable. 

god speed to the man that settles with her. 

Also this:

"This isn’t a “true story”, but rather a collection of tiny true details from lots of different interactions, strung together for a vibe."

For me this already an indication that giving this story anymore attention in this forum does not serve any purpose. We don't know what parts of the story we can trust.

It's fiction, treat it as such.

Edited yesterday at 01:13 AM by OmniNaut

[Hojo]

Whoever wrote this is insane.

Imagine going on a date with someone and asking if their mother being dead made them sad and then being upset that they dont instantly respond with a question back.

Then asking someone tonnes of questions on a car ride with a stranger and then saying im upset you arent asking me questions then when they do you are upset cause they feel preformative?

If this is how women think they have major problem.

The men - 'Im just trying to exist'

This is what self sabotage looks like for a woman.

Edited yesterday at 01:21 AM by Hojo

[gambler]

Isn’t Aella an autistic pornstar that comes across as a psychopath? Wasn’t she the same girl from jubilee who said that, as a working prostitute, it felt good having sex with married men without the wife ever knowing because the cheating with prostitutes can “save relationships”? Framing it like prostitutes are out there doing God’s work for the benefit of the wives getting secretly cheated on?

Edited yesterday at 01:36 AM by gambler

[BlessedLion]

3 hours ago, Emerald said:

Yet, vulnerability is necessary for connection. But boys/men are taught, "You have to be strong and stoic all the time or women won't like you. Women will laugh at you if you have no armor on"

I used to think this, and I still think it’s important. Yet it’s also important that a man is able to self regulate his emotions and let them go. If he is too reactive and emotional, she will feel the burden of his emotions and like she is mothering him too much. 
 

The best thing is to be in touch with the emotions and also able to share them in a calm and collected manner, not needing anything from her, but just sharing “hey, this is going on right now”

 

Women say that want men in touch with emotions and feminine side but there is a shadow there, and if the man is too feminine or more feminine than her, she will lose attraction and run away.

 

Honestly the woman who wrote this article OP shared sounds like a nightmare and she seems very disconnected from her heart. Just sitting around and judging men for every little imperfection in their personalities, while she paints herself as this deep, unseen victim. Spare me 🙏

 

 

[BlessedLion]

3 hours ago, Emerald said:

The cultivation of strength and emotional regulation skills are not in opposition to the development of vulnerability. They go together quite nicely. And you can sense when a man is well-integrated in that way or if he's polarized into one pole or another.

 

Exactly, agreed

[Miguel1]

@Emerald you make solid points here.

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

I was trying to give her a huge benefit of the doubt while reading this, seeing as I'm ussually automatically internally biased towards anything a woman has to say about dating, but this is just a classic case of losing oneself, as a middle aged woman, in your own little self absorbed maze in which your fickle emotions are your God (while they're all just a result of some temporary hormonal fluctuations masking themselves as some deep understandings of human psyche or something), and you're putting the blame on men for not understanding these emotions (but nobody really can, not even yourself). And since she's almost middle aged already, this probably means she'll make herself be single forever, unlike if she was younger. Not because she wouldn't be able to find a man, but because she makes the whole process unnecessarilly complicated for herself. Dating shouldn't be complicated like this at all, it should be simple and smooth

It does kinda come off as a dry egg syndrome

Edited 19 hours ago by NewKidOnTheBlock

[meta_male]

10 hours ago, Raze said:

And I would like to get married + kids at some point, that seems cool. Happily married people seem like they’re having a great time, and I’d like to join their ranks.

Very dumb reasoning. This is why she suffers.

[something_else]

Quote

The issue with that is, women also want strength and stoicism, so much so that their is a trend to call mens vulnerability as emotional labor. 

If you trauma dump on someone that's obviously not attractive, but it doesn't mean you're not allowed to be vulnerable as a guy.

Showing a certain amount of humanity can be wildly attractive. Most women know that showing vulnerability is often stigmatised for guys, so if you find an elegant way to do it then it can come off as extremely confident. Talking about struggles with social anxiety and how I overcame it is weirdly one of the things that has worked really well for me, which goes against most traditional pickup advice.

---

I'm not really sure what to make of the lady in the post, I get the sense she's twisting the truth a little for the sake of the story. It's hard to tell. I'm also not even really sure what her point is to be honest. It feels like she's trying to make a broader point about men in order to shift any responsibility off herself, but can't work out exactly what that point is.

Her point about guys not asking questions is not a gendered thing. I've got plenty of experience of women doing the same. Some people just don't really ask questions, it annoys me too and so I agree with her on that point. I also know that there are plenty of guys who do ask questions on dates, so if she's not finding them I'm inclined to believe she has to take some of the blame for that.

[LastThursday]

From an emotionally detached viewpoint isn't a date really about information gathering?

You're trying to work out if the person opposite you is attractive to you, attracted to you, has a compatible personality, decent background, money, status, isn't a psycho and on and on. For some, part of that information gathering is asking questions, and it also signals that "I'm interested enough in you that I want to know more".  Obviously, there's an art to asking questions, you don't want to get too deep and personal straight away, it's a turn off or just weird because they are effectively a stranger. I think men or women like to be shown interest on a date, otherwise what's the point?

 

 

[Schizophonia]

@Emerald

If I let myself go, I would actually be more stoic and caricaturedly masculine.

[Raze]

1 hour ago, Schizophonia said:

@Emerald

If I let myself go, I would actually be more stoic and caricaturedly masculine.

In truth that is closer to what most women actually want aside from when they are looking for a man they see as an easy target to get commitment from after failing to lock down previous men, you should let yourself go.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/women-really-dont-go-for-nice-guys-study-indicates/

https://www.psypost.org/wives-masculine-husbands-satisfied-peak-fertility-study-finds/

https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-pitfalls-and-power-of-masculinity

Edited 10 hours ago by Raze