Okay, so I was talking recently to one of my strong, beautiful, intelligent friends about our issues with dating, and I came to a realization. I knew some of the components of this prior, but something snapped into focus for me. We were talking about how men seem to resent (even hate) strong women, as if it's an affront to them. They call us unfeminine or try to belittle us if we are strong and intelligent and capable.

Here's the thing: men have extremely powerful but fragile egos. Their ego tells them they deserve the hot supermodel, but their ego is also extremely sensitive to criticism or challenge. So when men are confronted with whip smart, ambitious, career driven, well read women they think "oh shit. I am lazy, I have no career ambition, I'm a mess and my finances are not in a good place" so they resent that women because she's succeeding in "masculine arenas" where he is floundering. Her corporate job highlights his retail job. Her intelligence highlights his mental laziness. Her activities hobbies highlights his video game and porn addiction. And so on.

So he has three options:

  1. seek out a less quality partner who also doesn't have her shit together,

  2. belittle the strong woman so she seeks his approval, or

  3. become better himself.

Option 3 is out because that requires effort and effort is hard. Option 2 is the easiest - destabilize her, keep her guessing about the status of the relationship, put her down for trying to make improvements in her life and get her to be complacent. We see this a lot, and FDS is all about not putting up with this fucking BULLSHIT anymore. Or there's Option 1 - date a lower quality partner.

We see a lot of incel or MGTOW guys do this -- seek out a woman who is a mess: financially, mentally, emotionally. She is not working on herself, she is in constant chaos and relies on other people. She's a user, she's irresponsible. She's the prime target for a man who has very little to offer, except maybe a little money or time.

And that's why so many men complain that women take advantage of them. Because their sense of inadequacy and complacency drives them to women who don't have their lives together, they rescue her out of some White Knight ego-driven complex to save and be a Big Strong Man(TM), and then resent her for it. They grow bitter that they seek out women who don't challenge them, and are shocked when the woman cheats or uses him or does one of many irresponsible behaviors, even though he sought her out for those exact low-quality reasons.

It's unfair to say that all men are "bad", and it's equally ridiculous to say that there aren't women out there that take advantage and use men. There are. But in the same way that men seek out dysfunctional women to fuel their egos, we women settle for dysfunctional men because we've been socially conditioned to accept less than what we deserve and we've been taught that our strengths are unfeminine or need to be tempered to not alienate or emasculate weak men.

So what's the solution? Well a lot of men aren't stepping up to the plate to better themselves, but generations of women have positively reinforced this idea that inadequacy, abuse, mistreatment, negging -- all of these things are okay, and that has to stop. Maybe if we take stock of our weaknesses and become even stronger and more attractive, and we stop taking shit, men will slowly improve themselves. They'll go to therapy, they'll seek out higher education and become more empathetic and well-rounded people. Or, maybe not. But that doesn't mean we need to settle. I would rather be single forever with my beautiful, strong friends than be beholden to a man that drags me down and dims my light.

Thoughts?