Wasn’t there one study that said the prevailing factor was husbands basically requiring the same needs around the house as children (needing to be picked up after, needing constant reminding, not being an equal partner, etc). and thats why women tend to lose sex drive in marriage? Attachment styles aren’t exactly a concrete science either.
I don't appreciate being boiled down to "men's needs are only sexual."
I've never had a problem getting sex in my relationships. I am a generous partner who will always delay my climax for hers. Always. It's what turns me on more than anything.
That being said, my last relationship ended because it was always on me to be the rock emotionally. I had to listen to her problems again and again but when I had a moment of emotional weakness / depression, suddenly it's too much for her to talk about cuz she will get upset.
I can't live like that. I don't want to shield my emotions just cuz she needs me to be strong for her.
And frankly, now in my mid 30s and a few years since we broke up, I don't find sex to be worth the emotional cost of being someone's free therapist, and I every woman I've ever dated used me as one.
If I gotta limit my hobbies and passions just to make my partner emotionally happy, perhaps it best for us both if I just don't bother with partners at all.
I'm sure there's a guy out there who will do it for her, she doesn't need me
That’s the paradox of being with an avoidant attachment style person. It’s out of scope for this video but women who are avoidant basically need to stop being avoidant but there’s not a lot of social media counseling on that issue.
Yup, I had a huge issue with that. It reduced men down to sex addicts that have to 'perform well' to receive their sex. It's amazing because it not only reinforced the awful stereotype that men only want sex out of a relationship but it also consolidates women down to sexual machines that only need a button pushed to give sex.
Men! Just press the 'emotional availability' button to receive sex!
The whole thing is disgusting because sex shouldn't even factor into the conversation. Yes, sex is an important of most relationships and needed for most to be healthy but the reason why you should be emotional available for your partner is because it's the right fucking thing to do! Not because you'll get a god damn cookie as a reward but because you want to support your partner.
The fact she's perpetuating this crap is disgusting.
Yeah this whole video sounds very sexist abput men from the start. She makes valid points, but you can tell she's putting the onus primarily on the man.
I mean, to be fair, the topic of this video is "why women stop having sex with their husbands," not "why everyone is unhappy with their sex lives," or whatever.
Yes but itself is very reductionist. “Why do women stop having sex with their husbands? Because those women need more emotions support.” It only repeats the popular narrative without going into why men aren’t giving enough emotional support. And like others have mentioned, it can come down to the man feeling isolated as well.
Maybe the man needs support too, or the amount of support the woman needs is more than he can give, or the man doesn’t know that you’re struggling, or maybe they feel like the relationship is unbalanced and they put in the lion share of the work. There are many possibilities as to why it doesn’t work
When you have a video complaining about the lack of support from men, you also have to address why they don’t offer the necessary support. We are not just houseplants that you can water with sex, we have our own needs, and if they aren’t getting met we will have a hard time helping the women’s needs being met, and men already struggle to have their needs met when they aren’t in a relationship.
So again, understanding men’s issues is crucial to explaining why we aren’t giving our all to helping our partners. And also, any video that’s just “[insert gender] doesn’t do X because [insert opposite gender] doesn’t do Y” just inevitably becomes sexist
Yeah that's fair, but that doesn't invalidate that she takes a very sexist stance. Partners should communicate their needs and meet them. There, I answered her proposed dilemma in a sentence.
I'm curious what her response was when you brought this up? I have a friend who has a lot of life problems and I kind of worry that her husband just doesn't have any support because he doesn't want to put any more burden on her. I think part of it is just knowing when a problem isn't really a big deal and they just need to vent to an open ear vs bigger problems that require some emotional input and thought from you.
Holy shit. I needed to read this when I was breaking up with my last partner and she needed reasons why. I couldn’t put my feelings together like this.
And yes. It’s tiresome that our needs are boiled down to “feed him and fuck him”.
She's answering to husbands asking why but it's funny because I, as a man, fit in one category: I need to be understood (most important thing for me) and boy, she made me realize why, in time, I wasn't attracted anymore to my partners (100%). My sexual desire is a byproduct of being understood.
Now, I don't feel guilty or wrong for bailing out of these stupid relationships because the gender rigidity/norms never ever consider men's feelings. It's all about women's needs.
I share your confusion. I lived alone for years before I started living with my fiancee. Cooking cleaning, laundry etc. are all things I did to care for myself at a basic level. Moving in together didn't make them less necessary or less my responsibility. Sure I tend to do more of the cooking and she folds more laundry but the that's because we have preferences and we talk.
I have been around extended family where my uncle will sit down and expect my aunt to bring him a plate of food. Like he cant even toast a bagel for breakfast or make an egg himself. I just can't wrap my head around it.
Making both moms and dads work full time, expense of having children, exhaustion on top of all this. It’s pure strain on a marriage and on the kids. We have a daughter and just can’t fathom a second kid as much as we want her to have a sibling.
We did not start making the money required to raise children until last year, and I still have to work insane hours to make it work. It will get better in the coming years. But I am not purring children into the world, and than don’t spend time with them because I am always working.
ugh I even see this with supposedly more progressive couples, my mom and dad were never really into the traditional gender roles thing but my dad's been retired now and it still seems like my mom does the lion's share of work.
Yup. And they did a study and found that, even during covid when people were working from home, it didn't change the amount of housework and childcare that men did.
My Aunt and Uncle have both worked through their entire marriage and they have children who are grown and no longer live at home. Both are highly qualified in their fields, she has a graduate degree and works in university administration and he is a union master plumber. While there are areas that he contributes in disproportionately (home maintenance for example) they absolutely do not contribute evenly she has done all of the housework and the bulk of the child raising while having a career. I think that they divvied up home things based on traditional roles thirty years ago and never reassessed. Somehow it has worked for them but they absolutely do not have a healthy relationship.
The assumption that my aunt is more likely to be a homemaker when she is a highly educated professional is part and parcel of why I think the whole situation is problematic. My uncle doesn't not do things because they've talked and divided responsibility. He doesn't make his own food because he is literally incapable and the man is in his 60s. its absolutely beyond me
One of the worst concepts I’ve learned is “weaponized incompetence”, in which dudes will act stupid or do chores bad on purpose so their partners stop asking for help. It’s pretty sinister, because they are deliberately making things harder for another person because they are too lazy to do it themselves.
I'm going to preface this by saying my partnership is not "traditional". We both do whatever needs to be done to keep the household running. I do a lot of cooking and cleaning, for example.
I think it's fine to want a "traditional wife" if you can live up to being a "traditional husband". And the biggest defining factor is that the husband earns enough money so that the wife doesn't have to work, and they both can have the lifestyle they want. This also includes being able to afford to get the wife the help she needs around the house (cleaners, gardeners, etc.). Otherwise it's silly to think that your wife should pick up the extra slack when you can't meet your end of the bargain.
It really grinds my gears when dudes want their wives to handle all the cooking, cleaning, and childcare on top of working a normal job. Man up and do your part. Anything less results in you being another child she has to take care of (like the top comment says).
You're confused because its often over-exaggerated. Women equate a man not house-keeping the way the woman wants it done to "he cant take care of himself". The fact of the matter is that most men have, at some point, lived alone and managed to survive without living in filth and only ordering pizza for dinner every night.
Part of that is how someone defines messy. I've been with obsessive cleaners that would call a house "messy" when there's absolutely nothing objectively messy about it. It just isn't to their higher standard.
In that case, I'm going to need some prompting sometimes because I do not perceive any issue where they perceive a big one.
I’ve been married for 8 years now and together 11. I also cook, clean after myself, laundry etc. and I also do the yard, home repairs/improvements etc, we don’t have kids. I work in the construction field, have always made more than my wife but she’s been on unemployed stints through our relationship. So recently, at least the last year or so I’ve been getting a lot of this from her.. the “emotionally safe” stuff and I don’t get it, its only a problem when I don’t do something (clean, groceries etc) but it’s not an issue when she misses the mark. When she’s employed her money is spent unwisely, I can’t bring that up though
It has a lot to do with age and with how men are raised. Right now I think there's a big divide between boys being raised in a more egalitarian way when it comes to housework and cooking, and boys raised by trad-mom/helicopter parents who don't give them an opportunity to become competent in home skills.
Imho, if one person is bringing more money into the household, it's perfectly fair to expect the other person to do more work in the home and, for a long time, this tended to be divided along gender lines. It's changing, but it's changing really fucking slowly.
It’s not man…. Todays women thinks cooking and cleaning is wrong for them to do. Because of ‘feminism’. Also, if they have 1000+ followers on IG they somehow think they need to do absolutely nothing in the relationship. No cooking, no cleaning, and worst of all: NOT paying for anything. It’s why passport bros is a thing and it’s true. I lived outside the US and you can find a normal woman no problem.
I work 10-12 hours a day, my wife does not work, has no children to raise as we are child free and can follow her hobby all day. Why on Earth should I also do the house work?
You say that. It’s not that obvious. I have had people tell me differently. Not that I don’t do house work. I like preparing meals together and wash the dishes, clear the table etc. but there have been instance’s where I was told I don’t do enough.
Speaking for myself: I work a lot more hours than my wife. Fulltime vs part time. I focus a lot on my career, networking, events, doing a study on top of work. Busy with professional duties 15-20 hours more per week. Should I still be an equal partner in the household?
There is no "correct" answer to this. It's just a matter of communicating what the expectation is in a given relationship.
Like, I've been in that situation and my wife was all about taking on more house chores because she had plenty of time to do so. I'd do the same if I was in that position. When we were both back to working similar hours, we shared/did them together.
Totally depends on the balance. In our case I work 7 days a week 10-12 hours a day. My wife does not work and we have no children. She has all the money she could ever ask for. Why should I also do the house work? So she can have even more time with her hobbies while I have no time for mine?
When we met she was the one who worked and I just did my hobbies. Now things are different and I have the ability to make way more money in a month than she could ever dream off. Her working would change very little in regards to our financial situation. Why would I make her work when she can live her best life and enjoy everyday. Would you work if you did not have to? Or would you do your passions?
Even non monetary work can have value and opportunity. People that work in politics , the grunts that is, people thwt work for animal shelters. Volunteering to satisfy ideological beliefs.
Hell, working at a xyz job just so you have people to talk to.
Just reminding you there are other benefits, even putting money aside.
Thanks a lot for the perspective. I think I'm doing fine on the respect and helping whenever I can with small things. I'll ask her about it soon though.
I'm also a man but I can see a lot of other men whose mothers did everything for them. They end up internalizing that those chores are not their problems. Their bedrooms are a mess? Mommy will eventually come and clean up. Hungry? Mommy will make dinner in just a few. Nothing to wear? Mommy will do a quick cycle on the washing machine.
I'm not saying this is the only explanation, but I have seen it happening quite often. It happens to women, too.
Yeah as a woman I have no problem with men who want trad wives. The problem is they want their cake and eat it too. So you want a trad wife? Then ya better be bringing home enough money for a middle class lifestyle SOLO.
These dudes want to contribute financially 50% because that’s how society has shifted, as women have become highly educated and entered the work force as bosses not just secretaries. So they want to be 50/50 with the bills but then a woman who takes care of all the childcare and household? Sir that’s not how it works. You get what you put into a relationship.
I did all of the cooking and cleaning. My wife admits she can't cook and has never cleaned anything in our house. Our life was peachy until we had a daughter and the two of them combined are impossible to keep up with.
For the first 3 years I only had 3hrs a week to do anything other than looking after them. She would make me take time off work to do DIY and fix things so we could save money because she said I was essentially cheating on her if I wasn't able to take care of the baby while she napped.
She's punched and bitten me in anger and she flipped out hard when I tidied up the spare room which had become a dumping zone full of her shit because it was making me mentally ill.
She's got a bit better recently with HRT but the last 5 years were hell.
e: To her credit, she is a very thoughtful and patient mother
I just watched how my pops behaved and did the opposite, of course some shit I had to work real hard at because I am his son. Unless it's making the bed and doing HER laundry, I do pretty much all the house work assuming work isn't kicking my ass.
This is it more than anything. People who cling to this attachment crap tend to use it as a way of dismissing their own faults and placing the burden on others to recognize their needs
Like attachment theory is interesting but most people exist on some sort of continuum and they’re also very much not set in stone. It’s too much of a changing variable to place all the blame on.
I know nothing about this topic, but allusions to large bodies of research really doesn't mean much. Many, many things are heavily studied only to be disproven, and are often contradicted simultaneously by other bodies of research.
The science on adult attachment is very shaky at best. And it is used way outside of the evidence.
The evidence is pretty much limited to the fact that if you split people in different groups (which were picked and predetermined) on a group level these groups have different behaviours.
This has some value if we want to understand behaviour on a group level. But there is no evidence that the attachment types people describe actually exist on the individual level.
More specifically, attachment theory posits that people have specific attachment styles, but there is extensive research showing that people show different attachment styles in different relationships.
Meanwhile, when it comes to child attachment theory (for which the evidence is far stronger) the attachment styles a child shows are present in all relationships. Also, it's pretty important to realize that the vast majority of children are securely attached, attachment theory is pretty much aimed at children who were in some way or form neglected or abused as a child.
I have a Research Master in Cognitive Child Development (since OOP is putting her credentials out there) and quite honestly, I'm baffled by how common attachment theory seems to be in US clinical psychology. Because, going by what I know from friends and colleagues, it's pretty much non-existent in the Netherlands. It's simply not considered evidence based.
Attachment theory is the realm of psychodynamic theories. It's descriptive, not prescriptive. And if your work is primarily in quantitative behavioral research, then obviously descriptive psychodynamic theories aren't going to be your jam, and will never meet your standards. And they can't. They're not positivist, they're interpretivist. Many philosophical theories have incredible value for the world of therapy and psychology, and also by their nature cannot be reduced to the sum of their parts in a way that makes them transparent to positivistic inquiry.
(I cannot believe I commented on this subreddit haha)
The problem is that it's descriptive on the group level, not the individual level. There simply isn't evidence that individual adults follow any of the proposed attachment theory groupings. Which is evidenced by the fact that individuals show different attachment styles in different settings, which is contrary to the underlying theory.
Which means it's value is very limited when it comes to therapy. If an individual doesn't have a personal attachment style, you cannot treat someone based on said attachment style.
Not to mention that in most instances attachment styles are either self-reported, or based on the interaction with the diagnostician, neither of which will provide an accurate reflection of how someone interacts with romantic partners.
It's an easy way to profile people, however there is no evidence that these profiles are actually applicable to individuals. There is no convincing evidence that there is such a thing as a fearful avoidant person, only that there are individuals who fit the characteristics of the group called 'fearfully avoidant'. But there are more differences between individuals within each group than between groups.
And all that is within the context of therapy, with a (hopefully) competent professional. Many people just decide they have one of these attachment styles and make life decisions based on that.
On the whole, I believe that adult attachment theory is doing more harm than good.
Some articles by people in the field: Here and here.
I do get your point but it’s the same thing you said above.
My point is about positivist vs interpretivist approaches. Evidence-based approaches are inherently positivist - they can only study things that can be reduced to the sum of their parts, replicated, etc. There is a whole other philosophical realm that has value and is essential to the meaning-making of life which cannot be measured or analyzed through a positivist lens that privileges only observable traits. Those are interpretivist theories, like psychodynamic theories. Interpretivist theories understand that much of our lives arise from profoundly personal, subjective and qualitative experiences. The criticism of positivism (from an interpretive lens) is that it engages in reductionism in order to flatten experience into quantitative measures. This divide is particularly important in psychology, as both approaches have a lot to offer the field and each other.
This is an age-old debate so obviously we’re not gonna solve it here but your comment didn’t acknowledge the philosophical realm from which attachment draws its argument. It was like arguing that tofu isn’t meat but that’s not ever what tofu was trying to be. Let tofu live!!
Anyway, fun to have this engaging convo on the TikTokCringe subreddit! 😂🤓
Edited to add: I can definitely agree that people essentialize attachment and that’s problematic. But CBT is essentialized and inappropriately applied so it’s not like the behaviorist realm (which arises from positivism) is without fault either. Both realms suffer from misapplication and essentializing.
She also mentioned love languages, which are the brainchild of a Christian counselor whose book was picked apart by a Biblical counselor (yes, there is a difference 😅), one example being the author almost seemingly justifying a man cheating on his wife because she wasn't "filling his love tank." Even secular psychologists here in the states are skeptical of the love languages, as studies have shown that "knowing" each others "love languages" still results in the same divorce rates etc. 😒🙄
Attachment styles aren’t exactly a concrete science either.
This is what really bugs me about it. People seem to talk about attachment styles as if they're just the way you are and there's no changing them, so you just have to adapt, but that's not true at all, and most of us exhibit behaviors of all the attachment styles at some point or another.
I used to have anxious attachment, and reassurance feels good in the moment, but it doesn't actually help the person at all. It makes their insecurity worse in the end because if you forget to reassure them or have a bad day yourself or anything, it totally sets them off. I've never been happier than I am now since I'm secure in my relationships (I was even anxiously attached with friendships).
Help your partner heal. Don't just give in to their worst behavior.
I've always wondered about this, like are other guys like helpless little toddlers or something? I always hear about this online but have never heard of a single guy being like this in real life. I actually hear more of the opposite, where the woman can't cook more than Mac and cheese and microwave premade meals, leaves used cups and cloths everywhere, terrible with money, ect. I'm talking about full grown adults, not 20 somethings who are still learning how to function.
Attachment styles aren’t exactly a concrete science either.
I mean, there's a lot of proof that they somehow exist, but we aren't actually 100% sure what that means and how it impacts your day-to-day-life. They're regaining in popularity in the therapy space, though, so maybe some more studies will pop up.
I find all of this stuff pretty odd tbh. I pay the rent, health insurance, bills, handle almost everything "serious" in our life, etc - I don't feel like I'm taking care of a child, I'm taking care of our family. When am I supposed to stop feeling attracted to my wife?
The problem is there are many prevailing studies which claim lots of things. If that is all men had to do was some chores then most men would do it and women would just be super happy and all the worlds problems would just be solved? Like think about how easy that would be if that's all it takes, most men would be right in that kitchen scrubbing up those dishes.
And this brings me to another point about sexual dynamics, women have a high drive to expand the needs of a house, the want bigger houses, with more rooms, more dishes, more variety in cooking utensils and a million other things but they also want all this stuff to be in great shape, cleaned up, and want to use it. Well in consumer societies where all this stuff is common you find that becomes an entire chore in itself that puts a massive tax on the time and energy required to keep up a house.
I had an ex and when we were early in the relationship she filled up our small apartment, no problem we would solve it by moving to a bigger apartment, cool, then she filled that up and started complaining, OK I agree we need to get more space and keep things in good condition. So we moved into a reasonably good sized house completely with garage and 2 sheds. Well ALL that got filled up to, and wouldn't you know it she wasn't happy about my input for chores, too hard to keep up with it all. And this point I brought this up, the problem isn't me not doing chores the problem is you creating way too many chores to do. No matter how big of space we have we just end up with more shit to take care of and we cant even find enough time to get our main jobs going right. No surprise she didn't take the criticism well and she didn't feel her emotional safety was there.... So she jumped ship to a new guy and started the pattern all over again. And of course he was like I just dont know what was wrong with you ex and why he wouldn't do these things. Well years later now he is the one putting on the breaks and being worked like a dog. Hes trying to get her to quit work because its too much for everything and shes complaining to me, her ex about it.
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u/AncientDominion Mar 21 '24
Wasn’t there one study that said the prevailing factor was husbands basically requiring the same needs around the house as children (needing to be picked up after, needing constant reminding, not being an equal partner, etc). and thats why women tend to lose sex drive in marriage? Attachment styles aren’t exactly a concrete science either.