Loved this post (all credit goes to the OP):
“I just realized that the reason the “male loneliness epidemic” discourse is so infuriating is because it’s basically a collective version of something that always happens to me in my serious relationships with straight men - men asking for sex via asking for “intimacy” and “companionship”, and being forced to take the “bid for intimacy” topic seriously when you know what it’s really about.
Everyone has run into an internet misogynist, who seems to hate women so much that women can no longer provide him with the patriarchal validation he craves to the point where people openly dunk on him for potentially being gay, but centering convos about the worst assholes on the planet isn’t very productive. Especially because even Good Men do this.
Have you ever been dating a decent man exclusively when he starts a conversation about “needs” and “physical intimacy” and “just wanted to make sure things are okay” and “just checking in” and while you’re waiting for him to spit it out, you realize… this is about how we haven’t fucked in X days. And even he hasn’t made that connection.
Have you ever dated a mostly ok man who talked a big game about consent and never pouted or guilted you when you aren’t in the mood, but if that goes on for a couple of days, he will start a conversation asking if “everything is okay” and “just wanted to communicate” and “things have seemed off recently”, and you’re like…. things seem off because we haven’t fucked in X days?
But you can’t say that!!! You’re painting him as a sex-crazed monster!!! He was talking about intimacy!!! How is he supposed to communicate about his needs if you’re just gonna call him a horndog???
“Needs”? Ooops, he meant, uh… things he enjoys doing only when I am comfy and safe and enthusiastically consenting.
But you haven’t wanted to do them in X days and now he feels like you don’t love him anymore 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺Some assurance would go a long way. Assurance and a fuck even further. And if you fuck him, this conversation gets dropped entirely. At least for the next X days.
This pattern of men being so emotionally backed up by patriarchy that they can’t recognize that they aren’t “putting out bids for intimacy”, they want to fuck and anything else is an emotional and physical cop out that doesn’t soothe the wound, is why I flip my lid at the first talk of “male loneliness”.
Men aren’t deconstructing why they have been groomed to be emotionally and sexually dependent on women to the point where friendship and familial support doesn’t soothe their loneliness; they are just finding new and creative ways to continue nagging us for not supplying them with the sex they have been told they need to feel whole.
We women allllllllllll know what men mean when they say “loneliness”. They don’t want friendship with any gender, the don’t want to get a massage to sate their touch starvation, they don’t want companionship with a woman: they want a woman to fuck and nothing else will do, and we have to therapy-speak our way around these conversations because they’re framed as anything but a request for sex, and I have fucking had it.
Men grow the fuck up and confront patriarchy directly without making women do it for you, challenge level: impossible”
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