On (the Absence of?) Good Men

Reaching across the gap

For some reason, I’ve recently been seeing videos and essays by strong, independent, successful, and - allow me a moment of shallowness - beautiful women lamenting the lack of good (male¹) partners. “Where,” the virtual world cries, “are all the good men?” A common trend in the comments to those pieces takes it up a notch and questions the existence of those rare creatures. “Are there still any good men?” (Single good men is the unspoken qualifier here.)

I have a confession to make. I’m a man. *audience gasps* Worse, I’m a currently single man. Don’t worry, I don’t pretend to be a good one and acknowledge that I’m not entitled to anyone’s attention. Also, I’ll try not to make this too much about me. (That’s what guys do too much already, right?) To the extent that my male self can relate to those female expressions of frustration, I feel the anger, disappointment, tristesse, and - dare we say - romantic loneliness vibrate in their words.

And the responses to those essays/posts. Oh dear algorithmic gods, the responses.

Some reply guys will say that it’s fake engagement bait. In our online age, that may be so, but that’s a facile, dishonest dismissal. The fact that these reels/essays generate such engagement in the first place implies that many people feel the need to share it or respond. Perhaps because it’s relatable, perhaps because it induces anger, perhaps both. The perceived lack of good guys seems to land at a striking distance from something that at least sounds true. Let’s assume these posts/essays express a sentiment that some of their readers and viewers struggle with².

The second common reply from reply guys: women’s standards are too high. My extensive and eloquent response: no. Slightly less concise and more nuanced: not necessarily. But I understand the male perspective on this (obviously). It’s hard not to get wrapped up in the ‘tall, dark, and handsome³’ trope and not feel despondent when a specific type of man seems to get all the attention. I’m not convinced, though, that this is the issue. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure ‘tall, dark, and handsome’ is a nice-to-have, and women have every right to have their physical partner preferences — we all have them. Physical attraction matters, certainly, but neither tall, dark, nor handsome make you a good partner. No, if I’m reading between the lines correctly, the women lamenting the lack of good men seek kindness, support, intelligence, commitment, playfulness, and positively challenging each other. It’s about not having to make themselves small to appease someone else’s ego. It’s about being seen, heard, and encouraged to be their full selves, including doubts and fears, laughter and tears, messy hair and morning breath.

It’s a sad truth that, even today, even in so-called developed countries, women still do most of the housework and emotional labor in a romantic relationship. Reply guy pounds his hairy chest. “But I provide!” My brother, the provide, protect, and (soon?) procreate mandate is dying. That doesn’t mean those things are ‘bad’, but they are not enough to make you a great partner, nor do they need to be exclusively ‘masculine’. The mostly Western, Anglophone, relatively well-off women who decry the lack of partners are perfectly capable of providing for themselves. Protection? I suppose you could make the argument, but 1) in a well-run society, protection shouldn’t be a woman’s main concern and 2) no man is stronger than a taser or a gun. Still, if protection is all you offer as a male partner, she might as well hire a bodyguard (or a bear).

I’m not pointing fingers at either women or men here; it‘s a cultural issue amplified by the nature of online engagement and rhetoric. But I am trying to understand.

Another prevalent response: it’s the fault of social media in general, and dating apps in specific. My intuition tingles to tell me there’s probably something to this. Social media, with its filters, curated feeds, and engagement traps exposes us to (probably) unrealistic standards of our own bodies and desirability, of what partners should be and do, of what relationships should be, and so on.

Dating apps eagerly latch onto this game of unsustainable comparison. I’ve written before about how those apps instrumentalize (often physical) preferences and turn them into deal-breakers. On (most?) dating apps, men fire off as many DMs as they can in the hope that a woman will reply. Women, at least those few who still wander the apps’ bot-infested hinterlands, have to wade through all those DMs hoping to find one that speaks to them in more than cliché pickup lines. (Let’s assume relationship goals here, not looking for casual hookups.)

People will rightly point out that this conflict of strategies (an icky term in this context, isn’t it?) is not limited to the virtual world. True, but I think dating apps amplify the conflict. Swiping is faster and requires less effort than starting a conversation, and the recent use of AI bots by guys to message a lot of women simultaneously isn’t helping the overall swiping mismatch either⁴. To add insult to injury, dating apps, which are the main source of potential partners for many of us, are not in the business of helping you find love; they’re in the business of keeping you on the app and getting you to pay for premium features. These are not the profiles you’re looking for, oh seeker of love, but pay a little extra and we’ll show you the good ones… maybe.

Two smaller, unfinished thoughts on social media’s role in this context:

One, as more of our social interactions shift online (guilty as charged), we spend less time interacting in real life. Meeting in real life is still the best way to get a feel for someone, I think, even if many online options have made it possible to get to know and keep in touch with people across the globe. Along those lines, meeting someone through a mutual friend is number two on the earlier linked list of how people meet a romantic partner, but with a friendship recession, that option is shrinking.

Two, social media encourages silofication (come on spellcheck, it sounds cool). The more we hear, “all men are assholes” and “women should lower their standards”, the more we start to believe that this dichotomy is all there is. Yet, the truth usually lies somewhere in the nuanced gray zone that social media expertly silences into oblivion⁵. I suspect the good guys hang out in that zone. Our online world rewards a women vs. men discourse built on false or exaggerated foundations. I’m so tired of that.

I want to close with possibly the most important point, which will cost me subscribers and might become troll bait. Even if there are a few interpretative freedoms in the essays on women’s relationship woes⁶ and the disappointment of single women in men, we shouldn’t dismiss them. I don’t want to go all #NotAllMen here (still couldn’t resist), but I can imagine that, if you want an honest, healthy relationship and all you end up in are situations that range from unfair and unfulfilling to downright abusive, you’ll be justifiably angry-sad. Another sad truth is that, no matter how much the more entrenched reply guys want to deny it, we live in a social system mostly designed for men, with all the assumptions about gender dynamics this implies. This is not to deny real gender differences⁷, but those differences are often interpreted at women’s expense.

As hairline fractures appear in glass ceilings, women increasingly find themselves in positions where they no longer need a man. This should be beautiful. Imagine building a committed, mutually supportive relationship because you both freely choose to and because you both freely choose each other. No expectations of entitlement, no unequal division of relationship labor (love is a verb), no emotional constipation…

I know.

I know men are not supposed to write about this. I know I’m probably wrong about several points. I know some people will get butt-hurt reading this and might try to be snarky (good luck with that). I know I’m just a single fool trying to make sense of all this with an open mind. [insert fancy quote about an unexamined life]

I know this is not about me, so I’ll shut up and listen.

1. Most of these pieces are from a heterosexual, monogamous perspective — if any reader wants to chime in with a different point of view, I’d love to hear it. Comment, or if you (understandably) want to keep it a bit more private, send me a message. Seriously.

2. I must note that what we see online is only a skewed slice of life. People in a happy, healthy relationship are less likely to write long-form essays or record themselves talking about the challenges of finding a partner.

3. Okay, because I like rabbit holes... The phrase - lexically and sequentially fixed, if you're into that kind of thing - originated in romance novels in the early 1900s. Some linguists propose that ‘tall, dark, and handsome’ is actually a mild, ironic insult.

4. Although the guy claims it helped him find his wife, so maybe I’m the weirdo who values human-produced words too much...

5. This might sound as if I’m against social media. I’m not. I think it has a lot of potential. I also think the engagement-driven, controversy-slobbering way it functions now is not the best way to realize that potential.

6. This is not to say that men don’t have relationship woes or are treated unfairly sometimes. I’ve not seen a lot of essays/viral videos on this, though. Of this, I suppose, we shall not speak.

7. The usual caveats apply: population averages, outliers exist, nature and nurture matter, etc.