Healthy Masculinity

Will564 · May 2024

Once again, @Sheena123 said it all perfectly.

Welp. Gender roles aren't disappearing in my office anytime soon. The ladies always ask me to change the water bottle and when a strange man comes in the building they come looking for me.to deal with it.

That’s not a gender role, though! Forgive me for saying so, but you’re a muscular guy. The women aren’t simply going to you for those things simply because you’re a man. There are other things about you that makes them feel that way (which is still not to say you should HAVE to do those things, on top of that, they shouldn’t be expected of just any man).

And here’s the thing that I think gets misconstrued sometimes with all of this. It’s a very good thing to have strong men in society. I like having strong men, and I would imagine most people feel the same. I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with the idea that many if not most men have the natural tendency to want to be strong.

And some men feel like the whole idea of being against gender roles or toxic masculinity is basically saying, “Men can’t be strong any more! They’re saying that’s wrong!” That’s not it at all. It’s saying they don’t HAVE to be if they don’t want to be.

I honestly think so much of the problem is people judging others and expecting them to be a certain way out of a need to be in control.

A relationship is whatever two (or more) people decide it to be. While observing the relationships of friends - they seem to go downhill when the man is making less money, the man is less masculine than his partner, or when they try to go 50/50. I'm sure there are success stories I just haven't personally witnessed them.

Relationships can be complicated, but I think the key thing is the two people have to give each other what they need. If the man is making less money, he has to be giving her something else instead. The relationship can’t be one sided where she’s doing everything for him. I think part of the problem is that some men don’t know how to do anything else besides make money and “be masculine”. So if they aren’t in a position to do those and also have nothing else to offer, they are destined to fail with any woman.

I have six pretty close male friends, and all six are in relationships with women. Two are ones where the woman makes more money, three are about 50/50, one is where the man makes more (I don’t know the exact numbers, but based on professions or living situations, it’s about that). I don’t know exactly how to define what makes the man “more masculine”, but only two of them strike me as guys who are particularly masculine in the traditional sense. All six have been in their relationships for at least ten years.

So I think it’s more about the people in the relationship being honest with their expectations. If the woman clearly values a man that makes more money and is more masculine, and if that’s not going to change, then yeah, the relationship is going to fail if he doesn’t live up to those expectations. But if she doesn’t have those expectations, then it’s something else that’s the problem.

Or, the other thing could be his own mentality. Some men can’t handle the idea of the woman making more money or it being 50/50. If he has the mentality that this makes him “weaker” (especially if he has other people in his life that he listens to makes him think that way), he’s never going to be happy with himself and he’s going to be holding her back and pulling her down.

So both people have to have the right mindset to make it work out.