This is mainly a rant post but does anyone else feel this way? (I use air quotes around male of course because there isn’t any inherent reason it has to be that way, just like with most gender roles.)

My whole post-puberty life, I’ve felt so dissatisfied with the fact that I’m expected to strive hard to impress girls/women, but they don’t have to do the same for me. Sometimes it feels like I’m jester, desperately trying to perform for the favor of a dispassionate monarch. Hoping against hope that I’ll be the one that gets picked. It’s not exciting. It’s really stressful, actually, and I don’t know how many women realize just how stressful it is.

If I could flip the gender roles and get to be the one that gets approached, gets made to feel special and desired, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Anyone would be crazy not to.

I wonder why this isn’t being talked about more in society. Do other guys just not care about this? That certainly seems to be the case. Most seem to content to constantly go “on the hunt” as they say. But I really don’t get it. It gets incredibly dull.

Im not shy about admitting that I’m not a guy who has had a successful record with women (to put it mildly). So maybe I wouldn’t feel this way if my feelings had ever been reciprocated? I just don’t know. The way many relationships are depicted on TV make it seem like romantic gestures in the context of a relationship are still mainly done for a man to show his love (re: Valentine’s day but no equivalent Holiday for men) but not the other way around. One might say that romance as well as desire are processes only women get be beneficiaries of, I suppose.

Feminists love to talk about how objectifying it is for women to be sexualized but I’d imagine it must actually feel very empowering and validating. Knowing that you are loved or at least wanted.

Sometimes being a man feels like being a boring gray blob to me that just gets to sit there and want but doesn’t have ever get to be wanted because there is nothing desirable about him. Of course I think there are objective reasons why I have value, but I have flawed human psychology like anyone else that requires validation from other humans. I wish I didn’t require it, but I do.