the prototypical complaints that women have about men are complaints about men with dismissive / avoidant attachment, they basically do not apply to men with anxious / preoccupied attachment (who have a totally different set of problems), and not understanding this fucked me up
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women in pop culture in the 90s and early 00s: ugh why won't men ever commit
me, an innocent who knew nothing: i literally would have proposed to my first girlfriend if i'd thought there was a chance she'd say yes 🥺
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there's this weird meta structure where securely attached people just have good relationships, avoidant people refuse to prioritize intimacy, and disorganized people are both rare and have a lot of problems
so most writing about relationships is done by anxious attachers
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and since men for various reasons write less about relationships than women, most writing about relationships is done specifically by anxiously attached women
and anxiously attached (straight) women attract and are attracted to avoidantly attached (straight) men
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when i was a tiny teenage baby the cultural messages i absorbed about What Was Wrong With Men were complaints about avoidant men: afraid of commitment, pump-and-dumpers, never listen
so i thought all i had to do was not do that stuff and i'd be set
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did not work like that. as an anxious attaching guy the girls i attracted and was attracted to were *avoidant*; opposite dynamics
my first gf broke up with me and pretended it was b/c she wasn't attracted to me; months later she admitted it was b/c she felt tied down
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this was shocking to me at the time. i literally had not considered the possibility that she could be the one who was afraid of commitment. it was in none of my cultural messaging. the love songs didn't talk about it y'know 🤔
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there are, to a first approximation, roughly three noninteracting reality tunnels when it comes to (straight) relationships:
1. securely attached couples
2. anxious women and avoidant men
3. avoidant women and anxious men
and most relationship stuff is only about #2
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huh interesting maybe it’s a generational thing, i haven’t seen this too much, or maybe i’m in different bubbles idek