Hey all, I’ve been chewing on these thoughts for a while, and thought they might be helpful to share. First let me say that I do not want to fall into the red pill trap of over-generalizing men and women or using anecdotal experience as evidence of hard rules, so disclaimer that these thoughts are base on trends that I have noticed but most likely do not apply to everyone!

One persistent red pill idea is that women are not attracted to vulnerability and that you have to maintain stoicism or “hold frame” at all times in order to keep a woman’s interest or respect. That is so backwards, as vulnerability is essential for developing a trusting and intimate relationship, it’s one of the bedrocks of a healthy long term relationship. And many (most?) women (myself included) are absolutely attracted to men who are able to show their emotions. HOWEVER, I do think that men sometimes have an unhealthy and overly dependent view of the emotional intimacy within a relationship, which can be harmful to them and their partners. My theory is that this pattern is related to men not having enough opportunities to develop emotional intimacy outside of romantic relationships.

(Again, these are trends I’ve noticed, not hard-fast rules for men and women). In my experience, women develop deeply intimate and emotional relationships with their friends. We confide in each other about our feelings and insecurities, the hardships in our lives, the ways we are working on ourselves, and our experiences of relationships (familial, romantic, and platonic). We provide substantial emotional support to each other when we’re going through things. And as a result, maybe we are not as dependent on a romantic relationship to provide ALL of the emotional intimacy we need. On the other hand, from what I’ve observed, it is fairly rare that men develop emotionally intimate relationships with their male friends, in which they are able to freely express and process their feelings, struggles, and relationships.

To provide examples of how I feel this is harmful for men and the people they date, I believe this applies to both of the serious relationships I’ve had. The two relationships were very different from each other but in both cases I don’t think they had good outlets to process their feelings outside of me. Both times, after we broke up, we continued having intense emotional conversations processing the relationship and the breakup--I think they felt they needed to have these conversations with me because they didn't have others to talk to. In the first case, I knew that my ex lived with two of his best friends, and I asked him if they had checked in with him at all or if he had tried to open up to them about what he was going through, and he/they hadn’t. In the second case, in addition to our intense conversations my ex was demonstrating some worrying behavior and I ended up texting a mutual friend asking him to check in because I didn't think I could manage it on my own. Both times, I had multiple close friends that I was able to talk to about everything I was going through with the breakup and seek support from, and I felt genuinely sad for my ex-boyfriends that they didn’t have those outlets.

But on top of it being harmful to each of them to not have emotionally intimate friendships to turn to, it also placed a huge strain on me. It is impossible to heal from a break up yourself and still provide some emotional support to the person you are breaking up with. In the case of my second serious relationship, it was a horribly unhealthy relationship (which I have posted about here before, it is what brought me to this exredpill community), and what I needed more than anything in order to start to heal from it was distance. In trying to draw boundaries around some of those emotional conversations to achieve that distance, he said that I was proving that men couldn’t be vulnerable with women or they’d get abandoned. He had said similar things in the course of our relationship when him getting “emotional” also meant him berating me or holding me responsible for his extreme suspicions/insecurities. That was a manipulative tactic for sure, but it also represents some of the skewed ideas about vulnerability and intimacy that the red pill pushes. The thing is, while it is essential to a healthy relationship to be vulnerable and develop emotional intimacy, it is also not fair make someone else *entirely* responsible for your emotions, and someone drawing boundaries around that is not the same as them not allowing you to be vulnerable.

I personally feel that I have grown so much emotionally as a result of my romantic relationships AND my friendships. Having so many intimate connections has made me better at recognizing, processing, and communicating my own needs and emotions over the years. Now, I think I’m pretty good at being vulnerable with romantic partners in a way that expresses whatever emotions or insecurities I’m having without holding them entirely responsible for fixing them, and at asking for what I need while still respecting their needs. I truly do not know what I would do or what kind of person I would be without the intimacy and support I’ve received from my female friends! I really, really wish more men got to experience this with their male friends. Many men do get it with female friends (tbh, this is one of the reasons that I see it as a “green flag” when a guy I’m interested in has close female friends), but there is something to be said for being able to relate to someone on a gender-level and develop that intimacy.

TL;DR: Anyway, that’s a lot of words to say, guys: open up to your friends!!!