What do you think of the stereotype that woman are deeply complex creatures with a myriad of wants and needs whereas men are simple creatures that are very easily satisfied?

trippingfingers · 2023-04-03T17:58:44+00:00

It's a stereotype. People who believe it's true will have it verified to them constantly. Any evidence to the contrary will be dismissed as an outlier.

MouthSandTeethTongue · 2023-04-03T18:04:11+00:00

I think there's some truth to it in general but the idea that women are complex whereas men are simple is too reductive and sort of implies that womens wants and needs deserves more attention or that mens desires can be easily addressed. Can lead to a bunch of problems, I think.

I think anyone who require constant stimulation and acts of devotion could use some introspection, if it causes issues in a relationship.

I think women initiate divorces to a higher degree than men because women are higher in neuroticism on average which means issues can grow into resentment quicker, once that happens it's very difficult to rewind. Just one of many reasons.

Men on the other hand can be a bit tactless and dismissive of problems, to the point where a divorce/break-up is shocking to them, when it really shouldn't have been.

RatchedAngle · 2023-04-03T20:59:56+00:00

I think men are equally as complex and difficult to understand.

The really fun thing about men is that they will describe themselves as simple…while simultaneously having their own irrational quirks. The Madonna-Whore complex is a fantastic example. Look - it’s in the name!

Madonna-Whore complex.

You could write an entire book about it. The female version of alpha fucks/beta bucks. Men were doing AF/bb long before women thought of it - they just had a different name for it.

gofigure62 · 2023-04-03T18:33:02+00:00

No. I think people tend to ignore what women want or need because they don't feel like providing it and try to shame or gaslight women into thinking their needs and wants are unrealistic or simply incomprehensible so that the woman will stop asking for it. It's just a play for a dominant person in a relationship to get what they want, and not have to be held responsible to meeting any needs or wants of their partner that they don't want to engage in.

I don't believe that men are simple at all. They're socialized to feel intellectually and socially superior to women, so they believe that their wants and needs are justified. Since they believe that they want is most important, they think it's "simple" because women are supposed to simply submit to what men demand.

This is generally speaking. Most humans are complex and highly irrational when it comes to sex, love, and relationships. I don't believe that most people posses the skills or maturity to navigate functional relationships and will always end up in a situation where they're steamrolling a weak person and sucking them dry, or being steamrolled by a dominant person and never getting one's needs met.

I believe that due to socialization it's typically men steamrolling weak women, however overly aggressive women certain steamroll weak men.

Fogofit24 · 2023-04-03T18:58:33+00:00

Idk. I am a man and I am simple. Women in my life are and have said they are more complex than men. I am not representative and maybe they are not either.

BillyPilgrim75 · 2023-04-03T19:38:28+00:00

It's not true, and it diminishes men and women.

Anxious-Tailor-7182 · 2023-04-03T20:21:30+00:00

Both are dumb and harmful for everybody.

MistyMaisel · 2023-04-04T01:53:37+00:00

Not really? I think I must echo what some of the other gals have said:

A lot of the time women have the same desires as men, but when we do, men don't like it so they make it seem like it's some outrageous and complicated impossible ask.

An example would be women wanting an attractive and put together partner. You'd think this was rocket science if you hang out long enough. I mean the majority of women manage it for men every day, but it's impossible for dudes to do?

Womens wants often get outright ignored until it is too late. In pretty much every failed relationship I've had, it was ultra clear things were off the rails and bad and I was communicating the issues. I still actually cannot figure out how the dudes always acted so blind sided unless they had just ignored every complaint, criticism, and gripe I made. And I see this an awful lot. I'm not even sure women are more neurotic or if we're just refusing to ignore problems and hope they go away the way I see so many men do.
Women are more neurotic. I do actually believe this is true, but I also think we're better at navigating our neurosis and self soothing because of this. The issue being that the best way to soothe neurosis is to remove the stimulus. And when that stimulus is a person and your man...yeah.
The flip side of this, I think men experience less neurosis, but when they do, they're terrible at dealing with it. And relationships are a source of stress and anxiety for almost everyone at least early on. So I think men cope with this by shutting down and just trying to like get through until they die. And a big part of this is pretending to want or need less relationship, etc.
I think men often naturally assume women kind of exist for their benefit. And this tends to mean that rather than asking or nagging for stuff like women do, they just assume it and then if you don't fall in line, they get bitchy or mean.
Men's idea of sexual enthusiasm seems to be largely in their own heads and have almost nothing to do with what women actually do or say. I think they mostly need a woman to project all this stuff onto and she just can't like, break the fantasy by being a star fish or crying. And this isn't because they're simple minded, it's because of porn and a natural egotistical desire to believe they're a sex machine.

Women get treated as complicated because we haven't been conditioned to lie to ourselves about men finding us sexually appealing and nature makes it a lot harder for us to find sexual satisfaction without a good partner. I don't think this is us being complex, it takes way more complicated mind games to pretend a woman is sexually enthusiastic because she gave you a blow job than it does to admit maybe a dude isn't really into you, he just wants to get off.

If you asked most women would the be happy if a man was pleasant to her, cooked/did tasks for her, and sexually pleased her, the answer would be yes. The thing is, most dudes aren't that pleasant to be around (see your trait disagreeableness that almost no one mentions), don't perform tasks for us unprompted (see higher trait disagreeableness), and struggle to please us sexually (still higher trait disagreeableness). So he better listen to our problems and have a pay check and take us nice places, because he is a disagreeable cunt place and we need a distraction from that.

Mostly, my point is, men fail to meet their own simple requests. Women fail to meet their complicated requests often.

SDinAsia · 2023-04-04T04:47:01+00:00

Yes, men and women are different. Women are more complex and emotive than men. Just compare the number of words spoken per day between men and women.

AquaChip · 2023-04-03T18:01:09+00:00

I think at the macro level, men and women want the same things from relationships. Companionship, Peace, Sex and Laughs. At the micro level, we go about getting these things very differently.

bluemooncookiedough · 2023-04-03T20:13:26+00:00

Everyone is complex. There are people in the comments saying different things about who is better at what. They are mostly non malicious but also mostly baseless.

In a psychology class my teacher told the class that there had actually been research done and surprisingly people with brown eyes had more emotional stability than people with blue eyes. She had a fake research page she had made that looked pretty real. Everyone scanned it over but people with brown eyes just kinda assumed what they where reading was probably true. People with blue eyes wanted to question everything right away.

It was super inpactful for me as a teen honestly. And I still see it everyday. People are desperate to feel special and easily buy in to ideas that promote that. They are not doing it because they hate the other people but because their own need is clouding their introspection.

SeemedGood · 2023-04-03T18:19:46+00:00

It is in error.

Women are not actually more complex, they are just significantly less objectively self-explored and self-critiqued so there is a much greater gulf of cultural understanding between what they say about themselves and how they actually behave (which may give the appearance of complexity).

Once you can see through the BS, they’re just as simple as men, and even more predictable.

HighestTierMaslow · 2023-04-03T18:19:30+00:00

Generalizations are never good. Many of my exes I would describe as critical and demanding...nowhere near simple. When I first started dating them they appeared in be simple. My husband is probably more leaning towards simple.

I dont buy into any of the gender wars on this site because in terms of research, there is more variance among individuals of the same gender than there are overall between the two genders.

grown_folks_talkin · 2023-04-04T04:20:45+00:00

There used to be a lot more consequences for being high-conflict for a man than for a woman. That is going away now, I find that dudes 35 and under are more extra than previous generations,

I’d say the gap in extra between genders is narrowing but still exists.

WebBorn2622 · 2023-04-04T10:45:32+00:00

I think it’s made up to excuse abusive behavior from men. “He doesn’t understand why he hurt you because men are simple creatures” when you know very well that the exact same thing done towards him would have him crying.

enzoGrimm22 · 2023-04-03T19:46:15+00:00

Men being simple ? No, this has never been the case. What I see here, the men telling everyone how simple they are , how simple is to please them ... Its all virtue signaling. Holier than thou tipe of beat.

Why is this ? Women ALWAYS have to be the bad one. Always have to be the harder one to please, in order to show how "hard" they have it in life. Remember , women always bad , no matter what.

Thats where this "idea" of simple men comes from, gender wars

katyushas_boyfriend · 2023-04-03T23:17:05+00:00

It's funny how some of the users rushing to deny this were literally the same people that were saying how husbands needed to keep wooing and dating their wives in the recent post about sexless marriages. Without holding wives to the same standard.

SalvageProbe · 2023-04-03T17:58:36+00:00

It's just a marketing/propaganda ploy presenting inherent feminine instability as a positive trait.

ilovesoundtracks · 2023-04-03T18:45:58+00:00

What do you think of the stereotype that woman are deeply complex creatures with a myriad of wants

That's a lot of words. You could shorten it to a chronically miserable person.

Chikoswe2022 · 2023-04-03T18:38:11+00:00

Wasn't this thesis supported by Norah Vincent's experiment living as a man? IIRC, she said women's desires could be kaleidoscopic and sometimes unreasonable.

Camera_Dizzy · 2023-04-03T17:51:03+00:00

I think those stereotypes are a generalization, it is no secret that men and women want different things in the context of a relationship. I know men who look for a lot more than just the basic needs in a woman.

Some men will want the simple things and others will stick by high standards. There is some truth to the stereotypes but those stereotypes are not the defining factors for many men and women.

januaryphilosopher · 2023-04-03T17:56:00+00:00

The truth is that we're all deeply complex creatures, but men's complexities have been studied more and are treated as more understandable. Women are constantly othered and seen as confusing simply because they're not men. In a culture where the default is male, women can be seen as complex beyond understanding.

Guilty-Instruction60 · 2023-04-04T00:57:59+00:00

Women are not complex, they are just complicated.

I think it largely due to the fact man are direct, while women are indirect.

Lovers691 · 2023-04-03T18:00:35+00:00

In general I think it is true because you rare hear of men cheating on a woman because of lack of emotional or intellectual stimulation. For most men it is pretty simple not that doing more won’t make them more attracted to you but it just isn’t a requirement

gymbronyc718 · 2023-04-03T18:39:16+00:00

Women are not hard to figure out. The problem is men are not willing to accept what women really want. Women are inherently security seeking creatures. Everything they do is looking for security one way or another.

She dresses up to the t and goes out clubbing just to get attention? Attention = security. Guys who pay attention to them will be willing to step up and provide them with security.

She gets annoyed and cranky on her period = she wants you to remain emotionally cool and tell her everything will be okay (bringing wine and chocolates is a plus).

She wants someone tall, sociable, powerful. All of this has to do with security. A woman feels more secure wjth a man who knows what he wants and has the power and authority (bosses and secretaries, pilots and flight attendants, football players and cheerleaders, etc.).

It's the way of the world. But the majority of men don't want to accept this reality because they themselves are looking to women for security. The security of regular sex. The security of social approval because he has a gf or a wife.

JNRoberts42 · 2023-04-03T18:04:57+00:00

Do you think there is any truth in the idea that essentially all a man requires from a woman is being pleasant, sexual enthusiasm making him a sandwich every once in a while?

No, that's how conservative men feel about women. They don't give a fuck about her life outside of what services she can provide for them.

New_Hat8820 · 2023-04-03T19:52:45+00:00

It’s true but in modern times in America women are starting to only want guys that are either hot or famous

Express-Response-108 · 2023-04-03T18:41:10+00:00

Humans are walking contradictions because we have our own needs and negotiate with the world about what it needs from us. Women are just humans with a little less in the prefrontal and a little more volatile in the emotional and better acting skills so it looks like a mystery when really it's just another selfish creature

warramite · 2023-04-03T20:03:32+00:00

I think its oversimplification... The thing is men take more risks, so there's way more men aggressively stating what they want than women.. it isn't that what women want is hard to define but that people want to put women on a pedestal because of Women are Wonderful effect

You can predict whether a guy is gonna be successful easily by tweaking specific variables just like with women

For men its her being: clearly open to sexual and romantic connection and being within a couple magnitudes of average looking (5/10).

For women its him having : high status, high income and much harder to find highly above average in face and prefarably body.

Put a guy on a street in front of a lamborghini and tons of women will COME to him.. same as if a woman makes a tinder..

fupadestroyer45 · 2023-04-03T21:36:17+00:00

I wouldn't say very easily, but much easier than women? Objectively true. Women on average on higher are higher in negative emotion, that alone will take more to satisfy the average women. Women are also the natural choosers due to their sexual access being worth more. At a macro level it's not really even debatable that overall it's true.

social_mule · 2023-04-03T23:09:34+00:00

Women are complicated but they're not complex.

TurtleDickSlap · 2023-04-04T03:28:07+00:00

The only people who think men are simple are people who never took the time to understand men.

wtknight · 2023-04-03T18:21:18+00:00

It’s nonsense. Men who are able to be choosy are very choosy when it comes to the women whom they want relationships with. Almost all men would be if they thought that they could be choosy.

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gate18 · 2023-04-03T18:29:03+00:00

There is truth is so far as if you are a man/woman and don't act according to the stereotype you are "punished" by society.

Is self-fulfilling.

Mwn require so much more, but because that's what society says, when men require emotional support they pretend they don't.

When women don't require financial support, they pretend they do.

Imagine a man that is dating a woman that can't do food. She has always eaten out of her parents made food. If the man is going out with her, he is fine with her not making a sandwich. But if his surroundings tell him that a woman should, it will effect his views.

Then, therefore, both sexes shut thing up. Men shut things more than women as not showing emotions is supposed to be manly

Radiant_Specific6542 · 2023-04-03T18:37:11+00:00

It's true.

Gone_Rucking · 2023-04-03T18:57:42+00:00

Is there any truth to this stereotype or is it complete nonsense?

If you have a culture which inherently teaches men that they should only be looking for a limited number of things from women then why would it be a surprise that most men exhibit such a behavior pattern? This would only be due to cultural indoctrination though, not any sex-essential traits.

Marzipan-Happy · 2023-04-03T19:18:01+00:00

I've known some pretty complex men. I just think it's an unfair (to men) stereotype.

Dependent-Tomato-534 · 2023-04-03T19:46:09+00:00

humans are more complex and we all have different journeys in life before we arrive at realising what actually makes us happy.

Many women experiment more and earlier than men, they learn their likes and dislikes earlier. Men go through various other ways and usually takes longer.

Our experiences and ability to self reflect grow over time, which help us figure out who we truly are and what our heart/soul really needs. For many it comes too late because they just don’t put time in to self discovery and take lots for granted.

Until that point, many compensate with whatever society had taught us to a point (knowledge from stories/movies/magazines etc).

draiki13 · 2023-04-03T22:56:54+00:00

In the context of relationships I think men are just more straight forward.

If I want or need something, I’ll just say it. While with women half of the value is lost, if they have to say that they want something. That is if they know at all what they want.

In the end it all comes down to attention, food, sex and face/status.

Chemical_Major_1403 · 2023-04-04T01:24:04+00:00

We grow up in a culture full of complex men that become the standard , the thing that further the gap between women and average men since the expectation become higher for men , So men needed a narrative that involve women this is why every women complain about how male characters are completely comply in the writing domain

RealAmericanWeasel · 2023-04-05T00:48:54+00:00

I don't know. They're not interested in letting me find out.

Reasonable_Volume_96 · 2023-04-05T19:40:59+00:00

I think the woman stereotype is only considered a stereotype on this and red - pill subs.

That's just what all humans are. We are all deeply complex.

RocinanteCoffee · 2023-04-06T02:47:58+00:00

I have not found it to be true and also there doesn't seem to be much data to support this. I think it's misandrist to think men are simple creatures without depth and complications compared to women.

There's also a lot below the surface for most people.

Most people are complicated, even as children.

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