Why Must Men Work So Hard for Women? Are Women Worth It?

A reader wonders why men must “jump through so many hoops” to get women. Are women even worth it? Why can’t men just be themselves?

Commenting on my article “What Women Want”, a reader from Bengaluru, India remarked:

I read this with an open mind but was kind of let down by the final conclusion. "What do women want? They want a man who has become what they want. And need." It made me wonder if thats the highest goal in life for a man?? I've chased women and I've jumped through the hoops. But its never enough, what work do they put in to impress or woo us that we need to bend over backwards to woo them. Change my whole being just to be whoever or whatever the fuck she wants me to be just so that I can experience some sex and physical love?? To feel that I too am wanted loved and desired? That I am beautiful too?
Isn't my masculine essence enough for them?? Can I not just be who I am in my essence and attract from there?? why do I need to jump through so many hoops??

He might hail from India, but he may as well be from the West, because I’ve been getting comments like these from men in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and Western and Eastern Europe. I get them from other parts of the world as well, like Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and South America.

The remarks all condense down to sentiments such as:

• “Women aren’t worth all this work.”
• “Women aren’t worth the effort.”

Sometimes women are said to be not worth it “anymore”, implying they once were, but no longer are. Other times women are implied to have always not been worth the effort.

When I read old books (as I am wont to do), I come across the sentiment sometimes there, too – men, hundreds or thousands of years ago, writing that in effect “women aren’t worth it.”

A sentiment this broad, held by so many men, across the world, across time, beggars the mind as one wonders how humanity could have survived with so many men considering women so “unworthy of it.”

Why must men work so hard for women? Are women worth the work?