The Problem Isn't Just Men

Immature women contribute to the chaos too, and it's ok to say so.

At the core of all our social problems is a deeper problem we’re ashamed of.

No one wants to talk about the fact that few of us feel loved, that so few of us experience the peace and safety in our relationships we long for. We mostly avoid speaking directly about this for fear of seeming sentimental or needy, two qualities that, in our heartless time, have come to be seen as death knells for romance. We’ve been taught that speaking directly about what we hope for is a surefire guarantee we won’t get it. This is only one of the love defeating lessons of our culture.

So, we talk around the issue. Constantly. Anxiety about our lovelessness gives rise to interminable levels of discourse around attraction, dating, and maintaining relationships. Naturally, some of what’s been produced is good and some disastrous. When you survey the discourse around these topics on Twitter it becomes obvious how much of it is the same tropes endlessly repeated.

A tweet from writer Rose Lyddon shows what I mean. She wrote :

At the time of this writing, her tweet has over two million views and almost 3000 likes.

The tweet’s popularity isn’t surprising since she’s repeating one of the oldest cliches in the Twitter dating lexicon: that women can’t respect and therefore lose attraction to men who show their emotions. Lots of people like that message. It implies an arrangement where women don’t have to deal with full human beings and where men can be certain their women won’t leave if they just keep their mouths shut. Simple. But also fatal.

The problem with this oft repeated advice is that when put into practice, it produces the opposite of the promised effects. Relationships conducted under this paradigm tend to be undermined by currents of fear and entitlement, like a stone wall is brought low by an underground stream.

The unpopular truth of this matter is that a woman who cannot handle a man’s full self, can’t love her partner even when he is sad is not a mature adult. A woman incapable of that kind of commitment has not yet developed the character and outlook necessary for lasting and fulfilling relationships. And thus, often finds herself rootless, empty and longing for love. All because our culture has failed to help her move beyond an adolescence spent flirting with the quarterback excited by the way he ignores her. She deserves better.

To be fair, relational and emotional immaturity is not just a female affliction. The disease is widespread in our culture today. Men are just as affected by it as women. Too many men arrive in early adulthood unable to regulate their inner lives, passive, uninvested in their futures. Those who don’t end up perpetually stoned in front of a screen, end up pursuing consumerist careerism with few plans for wife and family and home. Either way, many men end up disconnected from their interior lives, distracted, self-involved and unable to connect.

No, the plague of emotional immaturity doesn’t discriminate on the basis of sex. Both men and women fall victim to it. In fact, the condition is so common that its symptoms: self-centeredness, superficiality, reactivity and cynicism are taken as normal rather than indicators that something is wrong. But, something is wrong, really wrong.

The difference is that men are told to grow up frequently and loudly. I’m not sure that’s the case with women. The default assumption seems to be that maturity is women’s native land, somewhere they dwell simply by virtue of being female. Men’s immaturity is often louder and more obvious, expressing itself in explosive and dangerous ways. Society therefore clamps down on it when it reaches threatening levels. Women’s immaturity tends to be more covert and indirect, and therefore more socially tolerated, but that doesn’t make it less relationally corrosive.

Maturity requires accepting that other people are real, complex, vulnerable beings with needs and agendas. Most of us have a tough time with this, and it isn’t even necessarily our fault. It is a consequence of coming of age in a culture that does not value coming of age, that encourages everyone to mature slightly beyond childhood and then says, “alright, that’s plenty.”

It never fully explains what we need to know. Never mentions that mature people give up trying to force others to be the embodiments of their fantasies. Never says men must give up expecting women to be always nurturing, always pure, ever sexually available and playful. Neglects to mention that women must give up the fantasy of expecting men to be always competent, always unaffected, forever stoic. Just like no man finds a manic pixie dream girl in real life, so no woman ever bumps into a King Leonidas in freshman comp. Everyone’s lot in life is to only and forever meet other real, flawed human beings.

Men need to hear the truth. Men have to accept the facts about women. We’re can’t to expect her to behave like a porn star, must accept to understand that stress and time and age will eventually wear away her youthful beauty. We must be encouraged to love something in her that is deeper than these superficial, if attractive, qualities.

And yet, Lyddon’s tweet suggests many women need similar messages, but receive them even more rarely than men. Something in the cultural and emotional upbringing of these women prevents them from suffering the disillusionment that real love requires, and so they approach prime marriage years frustrated by being unable to find a man emotionally repressed enough to fulfill their fantasies. They keep running into guys who eventually want to talk about their feeling, even though they’ve been conditioned to expect Christian Gray.

The only way out of this trap is for all of us, even women, to grow up. It’s something we all have to do. Becoming adult hurts, I won’t deny it, but it is the only path to the kind of fulfillment these women (and men) are longing for. And the first step is understanding that, sometimes, when a partner gives you the ick by talking too much about his feelings or failing in some other way, he or she is only offering you an invitation to mature into a version of yourself no one has offered you before.

P.S.

I understand that this essay leaves unaddressed the question of how much emotion a man should show in a relationship with a woman and how that dynamic should be navigated. I addressed that issue in this post and will address further in the future.