Thanks man. I probably should’ve noted that some women are very purposeful about self-assessment, and obviously the post wouldn’t apply to them. But overall, the talking points slant in one direction.
I think you correctly identify something in the culture. The "he's got to improve himself/she deserves better" - that _is_ kind of everywhere.
But using DPM as an exemplar makes me think you didn't sample enough of her writing or podcast to understand her true position.
As someone subscribed to her podcast, I'd say her takes on conduct within marriage is *very very egalitarian*.
So she spends some podcasts telling men: "you can't be grumpy, mean to the kids, never do anything romantic and affectionate and expect to get laid."
But she also spends a bunch of podcasts telling women: "you can't have a marriage that's fine, except ther's no sex." or "you can't condescend and tell your husband that your lover language of words of affirmation is superior to his love language of physical touch."
Search on any podcast that involves sex (without pornography, cuz those are about the affect of pornography on sex within a marriage) and you'll find the other side of this. Her biggest rants are against the mommy-anxiety-discourse take of "because I have little kids, it's my right to be in a sexless marriage."
Besides the DPM rant/tangent, I would also say: the "you're too good for him" thing...I wonder if it is associated with *viral* discourse. You've written about social media and the distorting effect of people trying to _get attention_ as their day job.
But another aspect of social media is that it filters for the content that succeeds...in getting our emotional juices flowing.
So if you look at books for mothers, you can find Dr Becky Kennedy or Emily Oster. But if you look at what's on instagram, tiktok, etc. it's the anxiety-industrial complex, making mom feel more anxious so she'll seek certainty by binging more content. Real different from Emily Oster's "I've looked at the math, and mostly just do whatever you want, it's gonna be fine, this is all overblown."
I wonder if outrage at men is the emotional fuel for viral relationship content for women, the way anxiety is the fuel for viral parenting content mothers. Feel outraged at that guy, _he doesn't deserve you_.
I inhabit the space of books and - it's nothing like that.
I’ll look into it if I have time. My TL;DR is that marriage isn’t worth it anymore for most high quality men. There’s too little expected and not enough loyalty to make it worthwhile. I’ve been burned badly twice now. Once by my ex wife, and recently by my ex GF who I was with for 3.5 years. I trusted both of them with my soul and as soon as things got tough they left, so I’m not exactly eager to enter into another intimate relationship with a woman who only wants to be with me when things are great. Fuck that noise. I’m good looking, tall, socially adept, and I make a lot of money. Not exactly eager to get married to a chick so she can check off her box of accomplishments and then ditch me the moment she’s bored.
First, I'm sorry your long term relationships ended up that way. You sound like you still carry that hurt. But we don't hurt over things we don't care about, which makes me think that the problem is not that marriage isn't _worth it_, so much as that it isn't _working_.
Like: there's something there of value to men and it feels like it's become unattainable, and to say "it isn't worth it" is to give up on it.
I'm just a rando on the internet, and you may not want to post about this (or may not have enough information to even speculate), but I am curious about what your ex-wife's emotional journey was _really_ like. Because the story you tell here, I read other men on the internet writing similar things.
Your story is "when things got tough, she left"; do you know what your ex would say the story was?
I may share at some point. I mean, it's odd right--while I'm frustrated with both my ex-wife and ex-GF, I'm glad I'm not with either of them. So maybe I'm being a hypocrite!
In both cases, I had reached a low point: drinking too much, didn't have much of a mission or purpose, not being a great dude TBH (nothing abusive or mean of course)...but I guess that's what bugs me, and what I wrote about in my post about marriage. Everyone is going to go through rough patches in life, right, but if the other person is just going to dip out when that happens, then WTF is the point of marriage? Marriage is sought after because it's a stable, secure relationship--but like, if it's not stable or secure and chicks are just going to leave when I need them most, then...maybe it's best not to go down that road in the first place?
I'm not swearing it off altogether, and perhaps I need to read and view more of DPMs stuff, but I feel like marriage is this goal everyone is shooting for, and people are constantly pushing us toward, and yet most people don't actually respect the institution. On one hand, every women on social media who's single seems to want to get married, and then I see all these think pieces on Substack from women who say they hate being wives and are super excited to get divorced. If you haven't read it yet, here's my post on marriage: https://getbettersoon.substack.com/p/the-most-difficult-relationship-marriage
You're not a hypocrite for being glad you're separated from your exes while still not fully past the pain of the separation. That sounds exactly like somewhere in the journey. ("This hurts and I want them back" would, I imagine, be earlier in the journey.)
I think my view matches one of the comments from your "the most difficult
relationship" post - there's a specific set of relationship skills needed to keep a long term relationship healthy, and I (for one) not only had none of them for a very long time...I didn't even know what I didn't know.
If you only read _one_ thing on this topic, I would suggest Terry Real, either
"How Can I Get Through to You" or "New Rules of Marriage". The first one is probably better if you're not familiar with where he comes from. If you're triggered by a guy using the word "patriarchy", take a pill and power through it, it's worth it, or watch a video of him dropping the F-bomb as a palette cleanser.
One of his core ideas is that we (as a society) don't teach couples how to repair when there is a breach in a relationship, and without that skill, the marriage failing is a when, not if.
I think that a way things have gotten worse is that the zeitgeist of our culture has, recently, moved in a direction of people avoiding discomfort. "If anything about being with him makes you uncomfortable, dump him, enforce your 'boundaries', you deserve better." Maybe our idea of how much our partners should 'be perfect for us' comes from a world where we can live in a bubble where our preferences are always catered to.
But it's an absolute disaster of a formula for a relationship because we are
involved with other humans, who are imperfect and messy, and frankly not even there to be unconditionally loving parents or some other kind of perfect emotoinal support. I wonder if now when things get even slightly rough, instead of what my generation would do (I'm a Gen-Xer) - namely try to repair but do it badly and maybe make it worse, perhaps now there's an impulse to just flee. "If this feels uncomfortable, that's how I know I should not be doing it."
And fighting that last idea is the thing I think DPM does...her audience is mostly married couples for whom things are not going well, but one of them is at least committed to trying to make it work, maybe because they still love their partner, maybe for the kids or life they share. So she takes an axe and tries to smash the cult of "I shouldn't have to feel any discomfort", e.g.
- No you can't be married and just decide unilaterally that there's going to be no sex.
- No you can't be a jerk to your wife all the time and then expect there will be sex.
- Yes you should make an effort to show love for your partner in the way he or she appreciates, even if it isn't easy.
- Yes you will have to do some things that require effort and are uncomfortable.
- Yes you have to own your own side of the interpersonal dynamic.
I would say she is the *opposite* of "if things seem to be getting hard, that's how you know to pull the eject handle."
I haven’t done a deep dive on DPM, but if you look at the titles of her posts, and read the first few paragraphs, it’s basically entirely reasons men shouldn’t get married. If her general message is different, she needs to rebrand. But I suspect my assertion is correct: she doesn’t want to say women are wrong because that’s not as socially acceptable as saying men are wrong.
But the TL;DL is the scarymommy link says that it's fine for the mom to leave dad sex starved cuz she's wiped out after all day with kids but then also masturbate on her own in the AM, and DPM spends 15 minutes saying the women are all totally wrong.
Another banger. I'm in the on-line dating space right now and can confirm the double standard is real
Thanks man. I probably should’ve noted that some women are very purposeful about self-assessment, and obviously the post wouldn’t apply to them. But overall, the talking points slant in one direction.
I think you correctly identify something in the culture. The "he's got to improve himself/she deserves better" - that _is_ kind of everywhere.
But using DPM as an exemplar makes me think you didn't sample enough of her writing or podcast to understand her true position.
As someone subscribed to her podcast, I'd say her takes on conduct within marriage is *very very egalitarian*.
So she spends some podcasts telling men: "you can't be grumpy, mean to the kids, never do anything romantic and affectionate and expect to get laid."
But she also spends a bunch of podcasts telling women: "you can't have a marriage that's fine, except ther's no sex." or "you can't condescend and tell your husband that your lover language of words of affirmation is superior to his love language of physical touch."
Search on any podcast that involves sex (without pornography, cuz those are about the affect of pornography on sex within a marriage) and you'll find the other side of this. Her biggest rants are against the mommy-anxiety-discourse take of "because I have little kids, it's my right to be in a sexless marriage."
Besides the DPM rant/tangent, I would also say: the "you're too good for him" thing...I wonder if it is associated with *viral* discourse. You've written about social media and the distorting effect of people trying to _get attention_ as their day job.
But another aspect of social media is that it filters for the content that succeeds...in getting our emotional juices flowing.
So if you look at books for mothers, you can find Dr Becky Kennedy or Emily Oster. But if you look at what's on instagram, tiktok, etc. it's the anxiety-industrial complex, making mom feel more anxious so she'll seek certainty by binging more content. Real different from Emily Oster's "I've looked at the math, and mostly just do whatever you want, it's gonna be fine, this is all overblown."
I wonder if outrage at men is the emotional fuel for viral relationship content for women, the way anxiety is the fuel for viral parenting content mothers. Feel outraged at that guy, _he doesn't deserve you_.
I inhabit the space of books and - it's nothing like that.
I’ll look into it if I have time. My TL;DR is that marriage isn’t worth it anymore for most high quality men. There’s too little expected and not enough loyalty to make it worthwhile. I’ve been burned badly twice now. Once by my ex wife, and recently by my ex GF who I was with for 3.5 years. I trusted both of them with my soul and as soon as things got tough they left, so I’m not exactly eager to enter into another intimate relationship with a woman who only wants to be with me when things are great. Fuck that noise. I’m good looking, tall, socially adept, and I make a lot of money. Not exactly eager to get married to a chick so she can check off her box of accomplishments and then ditch me the moment she’s bored.
First, I'm sorry your long term relationships ended up that way. You sound like you still carry that hurt. But we don't hurt over things we don't care about, which makes me think that the problem is not that marriage isn't _worth it_, so much as that it isn't _working_.
Like: there's something there of value to men and it feels like it's become unattainable, and to say "it isn't worth it" is to give up on it.
I'm just a rando on the internet, and you may not want to post about this (or may not have enough information to even speculate), but I am curious about what your ex-wife's emotional journey was _really_ like. Because the story you tell here, I read other men on the internet writing similar things.
Your story is "when things got tough, she left"; do you know what your ex would say the story was?
I may share at some point. I mean, it's odd right--while I'm frustrated with both my ex-wife and ex-GF, I'm glad I'm not with either of them. So maybe I'm being a hypocrite!
In both cases, I had reached a low point: drinking too much, didn't have much of a mission or purpose, not being a great dude TBH (nothing abusive or mean of course)...but I guess that's what bugs me, and what I wrote about in my post about marriage. Everyone is going to go through rough patches in life, right, but if the other person is just going to dip out when that happens, then WTF is the point of marriage? Marriage is sought after because it's a stable, secure relationship--but like, if it's not stable or secure and chicks are just going to leave when I need them most, then...maybe it's best not to go down that road in the first place?
I'm not swearing it off altogether, and perhaps I need to read and view more of DPMs stuff, but I feel like marriage is this goal everyone is shooting for, and people are constantly pushing us toward, and yet most people don't actually respect the institution. On one hand, every women on social media who's single seems to want to get married, and then I see all these think pieces on Substack from women who say they hate being wives and are super excited to get divorced. If you haven't read it yet, here's my post on marriage: https://getbettersoon.substack.com/p/the-most-difficult-relationship-marriage
You're not a hypocrite for being glad you're separated from your exes while still not fully past the pain of the separation. That sounds exactly like somewhere in the journey. ("This hurts and I want them back" would, I imagine, be earlier in the journey.)
I think my view matches one of the comments from your "the most difficult
relationship" post - there's a specific set of relationship skills needed to keep a long term relationship healthy, and I (for one) not only had none of them for a very long time...I didn't even know what I didn't know.
If you only read _one_ thing on this topic, I would suggest Terry Real, either
"How Can I Get Through to You" or "New Rules of Marriage". The first one is probably better if you're not familiar with where he comes from. If you're triggered by a guy using the word "patriarchy", take a pill and power through it, it's worth it, or watch a video of him dropping the F-bomb as a palette cleanser.
One of his core ideas is that we (as a society) don't teach couples how to repair when there is a breach in a relationship, and without that skill, the marriage failing is a when, not if.
I think that a way things have gotten worse is that the zeitgeist of our culture has, recently, moved in a direction of people avoiding discomfort. "If anything about being with him makes you uncomfortable, dump him, enforce your 'boundaries', you deserve better." Maybe our idea of how much our partners should 'be perfect for us' comes from a world where we can live in a bubble where our preferences are always catered to.
But it's an absolute disaster of a formula for a relationship because we are
involved with other humans, who are imperfect and messy, and frankly not even there to be unconditionally loving parents or some other kind of perfect emotoinal support. I wonder if now when things get even slightly rough, instead of what my generation would do (I'm a Gen-Xer) - namely try to repair but do it badly and maybe make it worse, perhaps now there's an impulse to just flee. "If this feels uncomfortable, that's how I know I should not be doing it."
And fighting that last idea is the thing I think DPM does...her audience is mostly married couples for whom things are not going well, but one of them is at least committed to trying to make it work, maybe because they still love their partner, maybe for the kids or life they share. So she takes an axe and tries to smash the cult of "I shouldn't have to feel any discomfort", e.g.
- No you can't be married and just decide unilaterally that there's going to be no sex.
- No you can't be a jerk to your wife all the time and then expect there will be sex.
- Yes you should make an effort to show love for your partner in the way he or she appreciates, even if it isn't easy.
- Yes you will have to do some things that require effort and are uncomfortable.
- Yes you have to own your own side of the interpersonal dynamic.
I would say she is the *opposite* of "if things seem to be getting hard, that's how you know to pull the eject handle."
I haven’t done a deep dive on DPM, but if you look at the titles of her posts, and read the first few paragraphs, it’s basically entirely reasons men shouldn’t get married. If her general message is different, she needs to rebrand. But I suspect my assertion is correct: she doesn’t want to say women are wrong because that’s not as socially acceptable as saying men are wrong.
Sorry, I got one more. It's a podcast, I don't think there's an article version of it.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3JncpTGRQnPWjXIvK7Td4i
But the TL;DL is the scarymommy link says that it's fine for the mom to leave dad sex starved cuz she's wiped out after all day with kids but then also masturbate on her own in the AM, and DPM spends 15 minutes saying the women are all totally wrong.
Here's a few:
https://www.drpsychmom.com/when-women-consider-physical-touch-to-be-a-less-real-or-important-love-language/
https://www.drpsychmom.com/is-physical-touch-the-most-important-love-language/
https://www.drpsychmom.com/being-in-a-sexless-marriage-is-as-bad-as-being-in-an-emotionless-one-and-your-therapist-should-agree/
https://www.drpsychmom.com/sexless-qualitative-quantitative/
BUT...she's a couple's therapist, and, like many couple's therapists, when she sees a dynamic she suspects both partners are doing half of the dance.
https://www.drpsychmom.com/if-you-accept-crappy-sex-youre-part-of-the-problem/