Our Burden as Men to Be Strong

We typically advise against men opening up about their weaknesses to women they date. But won’t showing a little insecurity strengthen a relationship? No, and here’s why.

As a follow up to my article on the right and wrong ways to be vulnerable, a reader was curious why it’s important not to be vulnerable about certain things in your own life when dealing with women.

The anonymous reader commented on vulnerability below:

“So the thesis of the article is that it’s best not to be vulnerable unless it’s occasional and share something that you can easily attribute to something external? I wouldn’t be able to talk about what a struggle my adolescent life is because of depression? Or how my Asian parents did a poor job raising me, and it led to me having low self-esteem? We really can’t share our past traumas under any circumstance without losing our women? We have to pretend like everything is okay, and we never had any struggle in our lives past or current even if that’s not the case? What if you just make it seem like it was in the past, but you’re a different man now, and the only reason you’re actually telling her is because it feels good to share it with someone else instead of keeping it bottled in? I feel like men constantly have to do a lot of posturing just for the sake of attracting and keeping women interested in them whereas women don’t really have that concern.”

On the boards the other day, I read two similar comments about how unfair and inferior it is to be a male in today’s society.

The first comment:

“Women date up. Men date down. Men have to fear that their penis doesn’t [measure] up. Women can be relatively skinny and have unlimited abundance with[out] having to work for it. Men have to work to be providers. Women have so many options that they can choose and compare between looks, social status, wealth, dick size, confidence, and alpha male [status]. Women only seem to compete for looks, sometimes status, and only provide pussy. Being feminine does not seem to add any additional value to our lives. Yet we have to compete on various levels of value just to be good enough. Social media and Tinder has made 5/10s with unlimited abundance.”

HOW IS THIS FAIR?

And the second comment:

“Men are expected to give women pleasure, strength, attention, validation, and security to prevent them from cheating, etc. Yet, women basically give nothing in return besides pussy. That is what bothers me the most. Not only do women reap more rewards in the sexual marketplace, they don’t even have to try as much.”

Is this really how it works?

In this article, I want to dive in further and discuss what this means. I’ll clarify and expand on my response to the comments about the article.