May 4, 2019

"The idea of an 'emotional gold digger'... has gained more traction recently as women, feeling increasingly burdened by unpaid emotional labor, have wised up to the toll of toxic masculinity..."

"... which keeps men isolated and incapable of leaning on each other. Across the spectrum, women seem to be complaining about the same thing: While they read countless self-help books, listen to podcasts, seek out career advisors, turn to female friends for advice and support, or spend a small fortune on therapists to deal with old wounds and current problems, the men in their lives simply rely on them.... 'Men drain the emotional life out of women,' says the 41-year-old [artist Lindsay Johnson], who lives in Nashville, Tennessee.... 'Men don’t usually put the effort into maintaining friendships once they’re married,' Johnson says. 'The guys at work are the only people other than me that my husband even talks to, so when some of these men retire, they expect their wives to be their source of entertainment and even get jealous that they have a life.' Johnson jokes that women her mom’s age seem to be waiting for their husbands to die so they can finally start their life. 'I’ll get a call saying so-and-so kicked the bucket and sure enough, his widow is on a cruise around the world a week later with her girlfriends.'... 'Men are taught that feelings are a female thing,' muses Johnson, whose husband often complains about her wanting to 'talk deep.' Though Johnson brags about how wonderful her husband is—grateful he doesn’t exhaust her with his neediness like a lot of her married friends—she does wish men were encouraged to examine and explore their emotions in a safe setting, like therapy, before they boil over. 'I’m tired of having to replace another broken bedside table because he didn’t realize he needed to talk about his feelings,' she admits."

From "Men Have No Friends and Women Bear the Burden/Toxic masculinity—and the persistent idea that feelings are a 'female thing'—has left a generation of straight men stranded on emotionally-stunted island, unable to forge intimate relationships with other men. It's women who are paying the price," by Melanie Hamlett in Harper's Bazaar.

I love that name, Melanie Hamlett. Should be a character in a fictional story. And I love her subtle dig at Johnson — "Though Johnson brags about how wonderful her husband is..." — and then it's so delightfully cruel to follow that up with the news that Wonderful Husband has broken some number of bedside tables and Johnson's reaction is to continue to be the one who buys new furniture. But now Johnson is supposed to be the one who's so aware of feelings? That's refuted by her bragging and her furniture replacement habits. He's continually breaking the bedside table and you're wearily buying new tables and you want us to believe your man is wonderful? I'm sorry, you're just not coming across as the Emotions Specialist you're complaining about needing to be.

112 comments:

Oso Negro said...

Women’s feel good emotional porn

Marc said...

When I first read the excerpt I thought it was the wife who broke the lamps. I wonder why I read it that way.

Also, with regard to the entire tone of this writing, I've noticed in my own life that lack of compassion can be a prison.

Michael K said...

I have a book for her.

I don't think it has changed in spite of the best efforts of beta male professors.

Sebastian said...

"He's continually breaking the bedside table and you're wearily buying new tables.

I call BS on this. Unemotionally.

Lucid-Ideas said...

Classic projection bullshit. When people start talking about toxic feminity in the same pieces, I'll start listening.

Oso Negro said...

Always looking for an excuse to blame men.

Unknown said...

....waiting for him to die....women won't even notice when the last man leaves

RNB said...

You should check out her companion book on child-rearing: "Needy Baby, Greedy Baby".

Greg Hlatky said...

'Men don’t usually put the effort into maintaining friendships once they’re married,' Johnson says.

Because their wives won't let them.

'The guys at work are the only people other than me that my husband even talks to, so when some of these men retire, they expect their wives to be their source of entertainment and even get jealous that they have a life.'

What would the wife say if their husbands "had a life"?

Fen said...

American Women. SMH.

Ya know, for claiming to be such empathic creatures, women sure are arrogant in their ignorance. Men are every bit as complex as they are.

And phrases like "toxic masculinity" reveal women are just as sexist.

rhhardin said...

Women learn everything they know from women's magazines.

DAN said...

"Men drain the emotional life out of women," says the 41-year-old artist Lindsay Johnson. "Men don’t usually put the effort into maintaining friendships once they’re married..."

I read it as Lindsay Lohan. So it made a different kind of sense.

Achilles said...

Good job Ann.

Your mission has been accomplished. Feminists built this.

Mr Wibble said...

Men often bond over some shared experience or goal. Work, sports teams, enduring a event together, etc. But more and more that's no longer an option. Women pushed their way into every male institution, which kills the ability for men to bond. Additionally, as pointed out above, often times married men aren't allowed to spend time focused on their own hobbies or interests.

Seeing Red said...

So it’s his fault she wasn’t strong?

Pffft. Those old boomers nag nag nag us and don’t walk their talk.

YoungHegelian said...

@GH,

Because their wives won't let them.

Yep. My best friend had before his marriage, a large cadre of friends & acquaintances built around his running groups. All gone. Started disappearing right after marriage.

Somehow my wife & I made the cut, but we are all that remains of his pre-marriage set of friends, lo now these 32 years.

Mr Wibble said...

One other thing that makes it difficult for men to find friends is that the left spend decades pushing the notion that any strong male interaction was secretly homosexual attraction.

elkh1 said...

Her man was wonderful. It was she who kept ignoring his feelings.

When men have friends, when men do things with their buddies, it was their women who complained of being excluded from their lives and didn't give them, the long suffering women, emotional support.

These harpies are mean to wait for (or, by being nasty, contribute to) their men's demise, then cruise the world with their girl friends. Would men do that? Probably. Would they brag about that? Probably not.

Bob Boyd said...

He's continually breaking the bedside table and you're wearily buying new tables and you want us to believe your man is wonderful?

She likes that position as much as he does.

Fen said...

"Men are taught that feelings are a female thing,'

Reason is the first victim of strong emotion - Frank Herbert

I think a big reason women haven't been taken seriously by society is because too many allow their emotions to control them. The tribe needs level-headed and consistent leadership. When men have an emotional break in public they are no longer trusted by men.

It's an evolutionary thing - you cant be a wingman for the hunting party if you are going to freak out the first time a sabertooth tiger jumps out.


Cato Renasci said...

What a load of Codswallop! These women (who seem pretty typical these days) want men to have the same sort of hormonal emotional lives women have and, if they don't, by god they're going to live it for them!

Most men want different things from friendship and provide their own emotional support. Not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but just not wallowing in all the things women do.

To the extent the workplace has changed such that men need traditionally "womens" skills, its the result of men being expected to conform to feminine undertandings of how one ought to behave; a world where process is usually more important than result, and the lone thinker, convinced of his idea, is a nail to be hammered down in the collective group.

Faugh! and Stuff! I say. Bring on the male bonding experiences of prize fights, sports, drinking, gambling and .....

oopsy daisy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mark O said...

"Toxic masculinity" is a lie. A fraud. A political maneuver to create a disadvantaged minority out of the vast majority that women hold. I am married and have dozens of friends with whom I engage weekly. Believe none of this vituperation.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

I'm sick of this....all men are this way... and all women are that way. That is just sloppy and lazy thinking.

I'm an individual. My husband is an individual. We, luckily, are two individuals who happen to be compatible. ALL people are not able to be pigeonholed into neat little categories.

Henry said...

Pretty much any spiritual and ethical practice worth anything should guide people away from resentment, blame, self-pity, and accusation. This mindset and its cheerleaders are guaranteed to breed unhappiness, both among its adherents and their targets.

I'm looking for the next wave of self-help books:

"Women Who Run with the Scolds"
"The Seven Habits of Highly Unpleasant People"

Francisco D said...

Modern culture seems to glorify seriously neurotic women and treat them as either miserable victims or greatly insightful intellectuals.

Methinks this is a coastal phenomenon, mostly in the heads of people who get their psychotherapy by telling the world how miserable things are.

I am so glad to be retired.

Unknown said...

Women devalued friendship between men, discouraged it as excluding women or mischaracterizing it as homosexual. And now they're complaining.

Fen said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
effinayright said...

remind a feminist harpy that almost everything she relies on every day: cars, planes, roads, bridges, highways, electric power, computers, iphones etc. was invented and/or made by toxic men.

Then watch her raise Impotent Fists of Fury to the skies and scream with rage.

buwaya said...

Interesting to consider this complaint in the context of the forced destruction of mens clubs. It was once popular in western countries. These are ubiquitous in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Wodehouse's fictional Drones club is the best known in English lit., and is, accurately, the center of the social lives of the male characters.

Other places had similar if not explicitly organized as such. Singapore had the bar at the Raffles hotel, Manila had the Casino Espanol and the Polo Club; both still exist and function as before, note. These things, if useful, and not expunged by waves of fashion, can carry on through enormous social change.

We are speaking of course of the upper class, which is also what the writer here is dealing with.

rhhardin said...

Firefox just disabled all addons, major worldwide screwup apparently.

exhelodrvr1 said...

Which is the bigger problem today, toxic masculinity or toxic feminism?

Michael K said...

Women pushed their way into every male institution, which kills the ability for men to bond. Additionally, as pointed out above, often times married men aren't allowed to spend time focused on their own hobbies or interests.

Yes, buwaya beat me to it about mens' clubs. Are there any spaces that men still have ? Women were picketing Augusta National.

buwaya said...

To cite, again, Monty Python - check out "Life of Brian".
The funniest and most poignant scene where the crowd recites in unison "we are all individuals", followed by the lone voice - "I'm not".

That fellow "I'm not" - he is correct. We are a social species and our individualism is a limited thing. It takes a fairly rare personality to achieve actual individuality, a separation from the mass, a genuine inner-directed eccentricity.
It is much easier to aquire a delusion of individuality.

h said...

Why is it so hard to find a man who is a good enough provider that I can spend my time as a commercially unsuccessful artist, and a man who is also capable at keeping the house clean, taking care of the kids, providing emotional support, arranging our social lives, keeping up on political cultural issues so that I'm not embarrassed when we're with our friends, and keeping himself fit and attractive?

Really, after decades of dating one imperfect man after another, I'm about ready to write men off as a group.

John Scott said...

The author is a comedian according to her bio. Just sayin.

Henry said...

It's depressing but not surprising that "toxic masculinity" has moved from describing the predatory behaviors of Harvey Weinstein, to the eccentricities of Elwood P. Dowd.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Imagine a man endorsing the same kind of blanket statements about the failings of women that Hamlett endorses about men . . .
You could never be a political appointee at the treasury department.

Earnest Prole said...

Sounds like traditional whining.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

The first thing that came to mind for me is the meme of the couple lying in bed. The man has a distracted look. The woman is staring at him and thinking, "What other women is he thinking about?" He's thinking, "Why can't I get my motorcycle to start?"

Pathetic for these menopausal harridans to think the men are burdening them emotionally by not having any emotional burdens. Women need to have an emotional basis for everything. Men don't.

Anonymous said...

Oh how we need Mencken now. Who else was pointing out a century ago that there are two sexes in America, one hard-headed, practical, and unsentimental, and the other flighty and romantic: women and men of course? Who also said, "every married woman knows her husband is a fool."
Works for me, but YMMV.

The whineticle reminds me of female scholarly commentary on people like the poet Phillip Larkin, who failed to make his mother and various girlfriends happy, the cad!

Here at the loveranch, I have a week to hang out while the wife does an Outlander-groupie thing in Scotland with her new-made pals from across the globe. It's only fair, she's never objected to my military history roadtrips with friends, and I have my own nice wargaming room and regular sessions. Almost none of my married friends get that kind of consideration!

Narr
My wife has two main complaints about me. One, I never listen, and two, something else she goes on about.

Anonymous said...

Where is this strange land, where "men don't have friends", "men don't have social networks", "men rely on their wives to have friends/social network"?

I've never been a member of any social environment where this was the case. Seriously? There are men who sit around until their wives find them friends? Sheesh, I'd like to think I'll always be there for the spouse if he needs me, but I'm pretty sure making and keeping his own damned friends is something a grown man does for himself. How am I supposed to know whose company he'll like or what kind of hang-out-with-the-guys stuff he prefers to do? Sounds like arranging a play-date.

Anonymous said...

buwaya: Interesting to consider this complaint in the context of the forced destruction of mens clubs. It was once popular in western countries. These are ubiquitous in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Wodehouse's fictional Drones club is the best known in English lit., and is, accurately, the center of the social lives of the male characters.

I forget the source, but somebody once joked that men could set up a strip-joint "gentlemen's club" as a front for an actual old-school gentlemen's club. The former are now allowed to exist but the usual meddling suspects would not rest until they'd destroyed the latter, if they got wind of it.

Shame really. Men's clubs are an excellent idea; I don't know why some women can't stand the thought of men enjoying each other's company without them. My husband is a member of a crypto-club regularly meeting at a local watering hole, and they've managed to keep it men-only, hiding in plain sight.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

Mr. Pants has been trying to organize a reunion of his four best school friends for a couple of years now. I am strongly encouraging this. Every time they get close to identifying a date one of the other mens' wives has some reason or other he can't go. For four whole days. Le sigh. One of the wives is 45 years old, a grown-ass woman, and says she 'can't handle' their two elementary aged children by herself. @@

n.n said...

Feminists, genderists, diversitists, transhumanists, oh my. #HateLovesAbortion

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

That said, this is another entry in 'everyone I know is an asshole' journalism. Just because you managed to find some people to interview to illustrate some trend in your particular micro-micro-culture doesn't mean that this state of mind is universal, Melanie.

n.n said...

With around 50% of women on team America, team People, team Posterity, team humanity, with a prudent reconciliation as adults do, we should be careful to paint with narrow strokes, inside the lines.

Mary Beth said...

How angry do you have to be to keep destroying furniture? And why the same bedside table?

n.n said...

illustrate some trend in your particular micro-micro-culture doesn't mean that this state of mind is universal

Exactly, while we diverge in some notable, perhaps significant scopes, we share overlapping and converging interests in many other ways necessary for civilization and sufficient to mitigate truly extreme running amuck, with some notable historical and contemporary exceptions.

rcocean said...

Women complaining about men, Book XLV Chapter 1,256

etbass said...

There has to be some basis for the exclamation, "Be a Man!"

etbass said...

Man up!

rcocean said...

My Husband is too needy
My Husband is too detached emotionally
My Husband is both.

Please pick One.

Michael K said...

My wife has two main complaints about me. One, I never listen, and two, something else she goes on about.

I never listen enough and I was married before. It's been 40 years but I still hear about the ex-wife's shortcomings.

Michael K said...

thinking, "What other women is he thinking about?" He's thinking, "Why can't I get my motorcycle to start?"

Good laugh. Thanks.

Reminds me of the girlfriend saying, "All you care about is your fucking truck !"

He answers, "No, there's beer and guns."

Fernandinande said...

women seem to be complaining

Details at 11!

Ask Schrödinger: If a man is alone in the forest, is he wrong before a woman appears?

robother said...

Her husband keeps breaking the flimsy hipster bedside tables as he gets up in pitch black darkness to pee, But he won't have a deep discussion with his analyst wife about the emotional roots of this obsessive need to pee?

bagoh20 said...

Please stop the womansplaining. Men are not all alike, and you don't seem to understand any of us. First of all we are not like you. We don't need or like what you do. Stop imagining us as misdeveloped women, and deal with your own issues.

We don't want a deep intimate relationship with other men. We marry women for that. If you don't want that role then stop trying to marry us, and just leave us the hell alone.

Freeman Hunt said...

I'm going to venture a guess about why the women travel when their husbands die:

Woman wants to travel. Man does not. Woman says, "That's okay. You don't have to go." Man is offended and says that of course he will accompany her. Woman now in a bind. She wants to travel but doesn't want to make the man travel when he clearly doesn't want to. She also finds it hard to get excited about taking a trip with a reluctant companion.

Man dies. Woman travels.

DAN said...

An essay on teachers and students (in Quilette) tells the story of a man who took a pellet gun away from a friend and then shot him in the ass with it as he ran off. The author called that, "hilarious toxic masculinity."

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

"hobble" him, a la "Misery", metaphorically speaking,
then complain he doesnt get out more.

and...is this coming from an 'emotional vampire' who requires
routine 'emotional dialysis' ??

Wince said...

'Men don’t usually put the effort into maintaining friendships once they’re married,' Johnson says. 'The guys at work are the only people other than me that my husband even talks to, so when some of these men retire, they expect their wives to be their source of entertainment and even get jealous that they have a life.'

This topic was the subject of the comedy I Love You, Man.

"I gotta get some fucking friends."

The Girlfriend Guy.

traditionalguy said...

Everybody is different. There are givers and there are takers in both sexes. Givers need takers. As for emotions men who have friends don't take too much from their wives. But groups that meet regularly are rare except for business. After retirement a church group like a choir can help. The bases sit together and get to fellowship with one another while the sopranos at the end hardly ever speak to us.

Social groups provide mirrors which help people up their game. Men need that as much as the sweet women do.

Birches said...

Emotional gold digger my eye.

GatorNavy said...

Jesus Christ on a crutch! All these toxic women who destroyed the various male fraternal organizations over the years are now whining that men have no friends? What the hell did they expect?

ALP said...

Unpaid emotional labor? Hmmmm stands to reason there is 'paid' emotional labor? Where can I sign up for this and how much does it pay per hour?

IMHO women that expect men to act like...women...are bound to be disappointed in their relationships. This is why I always...ALWAYS talk to a **male friend** if I am having problems in my relationship. I already know the female perspective - if you are having issues getting along with/understanding a man - you need the counsel of a man.

SGT Ted said...

'Men don’t usually put the effort into maintaining friendships once they’re married,'

That's because when a man does maintain his friendships, the woman gets offended and controlling; claiming that she should come first.

This is classic toxic female behavior; create the exact condition they desire and then complain about the result.

Michael said...


Women are so favored in this society! The most feminized society ever in human history. It says here.

Yancey Ward said...

No, I refuse to read this. Just fucking tired of it all.

Yancey Ward said...

As for the bedside table nonsense, she needs to start buying some higher quality furniture.

Yancey Ward said...

Basically all this makes me want to do is sit on a bus with my legs spread as wide as is comfortable.

ccscientist said...

The BS aspect of such complaining is that women do NOT want to hear their husbands complain or be weak. It makes them anxious if the husband has a problem. A really good indicator of upcoming divorce is if the husband loses his job. Women demand that their men be strong and calm. That is the other side of this: women also lean on men. Women want their husband to listen to them for hours about every little thing.

As to men not having friends: some men work too much in order to provide for their family, which leaves little time for socializing. Some men are loners. But most men DO have friends and tend to be more stable in their friendships than the ladies do.

ccscientist said...

There is a big difference in female vs male socializing. Women gossip, one up each other, and complain. The men argue about sports or politics, share info on finances or home repairs, and tell jokes.
It is true that many women cut their husbands off from socializing because they "need them at home" and then complain he has no friends. huh

SGT Ted said...

Oh, another bullshit term is "emotional labor".

No one is responsible for anyone else's feelings.

whitney said...

Women last year " stop spending time with your male friends and spend time with me me me!"

Women this year " why don't you have any friends to talk to you why do you always talk to me"

Any man that chooses to get married today is an idiot.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

Fem 1: "...it's like he treats me like I'm his best friend or something"
Fem 2: "Ewww."

Zach said...

I'm going to venture a guess about why the women travel when their husbands die:

Simpler guess: they're lonely.

Zach said...

Emotional labor? How about comic book labor?

You don't know how many guys invest their time and attention into the comings and goings of costumed superheroes. The artists. The covers. The plotlines. The movies.

And money? When I say the words "cast pewter figurine" I am saying it all, and yet barely scraping the surface.

And yet, when they spread the fruits of this labor, the comic book freeloaders of the world just smile and say "that's nice." If that!

(What I am trying to suggest is that if you value something much more than your partner, it doesn't follow that your partner is freeloading.)

Anonymous said...

Adults think.

Children feel.

Big Mike said...

@Althouse, I think your friend Glenn Reynolds answered this post with one, pithy, sentence.

autothreads said...

https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2019/04/17/a-fantasy-for-the-sexes/

RigelDog said...

Men are cruelly isolated on ice-locked Emotional Island....but it's WOMEN who "bear the burden" of the situation?? I'd a thousand times rather be someone's main support and sounding board than be in the position of those men who are trapped in a barren interior landscape.

Anonymous said...

This is the best article since it was discovered that women are the real victims of men's shorter lifespans. http://research.policyarchive.org/8798.pdf

sestamibi said...

I recall a NY Times article a while back about men's life spans growing and the gap with women narrowing. In typical NY Times fashion, this was presented negatively as it would require women to spend more time with husbands they've outgrown.

Why do men continue to put up with this shit?

Automatic_Wing said...

Sounds like someone needs an Emotional Rescue.

JeanE said...

Maybe if there were clubs or service organizations exclusively for men, then men would form close friendships with other men in their club, get together for some "time with the guys" and look to their male friends for support and encouragement at times. While Fred and Barney are at meetings at the Water Buffalo Lodge, Wilma and Betty can have some "girl time" and everybody will be happy- Yabba Dabba Dabba Doo!

Patvann said...

We lost a child a long time ago. WE felt it. WE feel it still. It "labor's" both of us deeply and forever.

Anonymous said...

WHY DO WOMEN LIVE LONGER THAN MEN? THEY DON'T LIVE WITH WOMEN!

bwebster said...

My wife has two main complaints about me. One, I never listen, and two, something else she goes on about.

Almost did a spit-take of Fresca all over my laptop keyboard.

jack said...

I always have mates I catch up with for a drink and a chat about sports and politics and gossip, and we look out for each other as well, same in all the places I have lived in, it's an upside of being a drinker, and yes I do know there are downsides as well

roc scssrs said...

She spends hours reading books and listening to podcasts and talking to her girlfriends; he breaks a piece of furniture and moves on.

tim maguire said...

As many here have noticed, Johnson’s theory is incoherent nonsense (women are doing all the emotional work but are waiting for their husbands to die so they can hit the party circuit! What kind of emotional work is this!?)

But at least equally important, Lindsey Johnson (which I also initially read as Lindsey Lohan) sounds like an awful person who surrounded herself with awful people and now projects her awfulness onto the rest of us to make herself feel better.

tim in vermont said...

“Can’t wait for hubbie to die so I can spend all the money he made for us traveling with my girlfriends!”

Schopenhoer(sp?) said that marriage was like reaching into a bag of snakes hoping to grab an eel.

In the UK the noise was about men caring more about their “mates”(UK meaning) than their potential “mates” (US meaning.)

Rusty said...

Men bear the burden of women.Sometimes the burden is light and sometimes it drags you down. It's why Stoacism was invented.

tim in vermont said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
tim in vermont said...

Really the problem for women is that the desirable men can now get all the sex they want completely without commitment. Thanks feminism! I was worried that after my marriage ended, I would have to use on line dating, but there are tons of attractive women out there just waiting to be chatted up in non creepy ways. Thanks feminism!

Lincolntf said...

I still have all the same friends as before I got married, 18 years ago. And in many cases they are the same friends I've had since Kindergarten. If I ever wanted to bitch and moan about some emotional issue, I'd be much less embarrassed in front of my buddies than my wife.

tim in vermont said...

Funny about the complete lack of resentment she feels for the emotional labor she is doing for her girlfriends.

BR said...

I'm a construction engineer. Heavy Highway. The Heavy Construction Tradesmen I work with lose years off their lives. 15-20 years. With people marrying later and later, they know they won't live to see their children graduate college, get married, etc. Yet still they show up every day, break their bodies day after day, with desperate hope they can squirrel enough money away that their families will be taken care of when they're gone. BUT! Please, do go on about all the emotional labor women do.....

stlcdr said...


Blogger h said...
Why is it so hard to find a man who is a good enough provider that I can spend my time as a commercially unsuccessful artist, and a man who is also capable at keeping the house clean, taking care of the kids, providing emotional support, arranging our social lives, keeping up on political cultural issues so that I'm not embarrassed when we're with our friends, and keeping himself fit and attractive?

Really, after decades of dating one imperfect man after another, I'm about ready to write men off as a group.

5/4/19, 1:34 PM


I’ve got a box of cats I’d like to sell you.

William said...

I have been married for 35 years to a wonderful woman who has been a great spouse and mother and friend. She is also a person who suffers periodic bouts of depression, I can tell you that coping with that has exacted a significant emotional toll on me, our marriage, and our family. What always keeps me going through her bad times is a knowledge that she is a genuinely good person and that as bad as her depressions are for me and our children, they are much worse for her. And this is not just an occasional, on again off again thing. Even when she is in a good period, you never know what is going to trigger a descent into a dark time so it is always there. So don't effing tell me men don't have an "emotional burden". That is effing BS.

Bandit said...

Uh - I don't want an intimate relationship with another man

Vet66 said...

Spend some 369 days on a remote island in a cold archipelago working underground on the flank of a volcano with a group of great Naval guys, no women and we can talk about friendships during Viet Nam. Made up for it-married 48 years to a great woman I met at Schofield Barracks, Oahu who was teaching for the Army. Some of these posters take their liberties and freedoms for granted. Bury a few buddies and return home to being spit on for not running off to Canada or France and have a talk with a young mother whose husband was KIA. Joined Patriot Guard Riders as therapy to do it again during various Gulf War Vets going through the same thing. Learn to listen, drop a few tears with the family trying to move on without a husband or daddy and reassure them life will go on. Duty! Honor! Country!

CAVU - Ceiling And Visibility Unlimited
...Touch the face Of GOD...and get some religion in the 'burbs...

JAORE said...

Reparations are DUE!

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holdfast said...

Yeah, I don’t put the time into maintaining friendships that I should. I wish I could, but I am in “prime earning years”, which means a lot of time at work. I have two young kids who seem to get bigger every time I turn around - and I want to enjoy my time with them as much as I possibly can. And I have a wife whom I really love and like, and I want to spend time with her too., And a lot of my friends are in the same place, so it’s though to get together and hang out. But there are only so many hours in the day, and I need my 4-6 hours sleep a night too.

And yeah, I do expect my wife to be my safe sounding board. Sometimes I am hers, sometimes she’d rather use her sister or her mom - that’s her choice. But she the person I can talk to who I am sure is on my team, and isn’t going to be my competition (a lot of my friends who aren’t my work friends per se are still in the same industry or an adjescent industry - I CANNOT let them see weakness).

cheeflo said...

I watched my brother work hard for 17 years to be a good husband, provider, and stepfather. He married late in life to a thoroughly unpleasant woman with a young son, whom my brother loved and raised as if the boy were his own son. Her own father deserted his family and she went on with her life taking it out on all men, including her son by chastising him for "taking his father's side" when he would visit his dad. She is a manipulator and is only happy when she has something to be unhappy about. Fortunately, they are no longer together and my brother has emerged undamaged, and glad to get his life back.

Don't tell me that women do all the emotional heavy lifting. The efforts my brother made to try to make his marriage a success were nothing short of heroic.

BlackKnightFool said...

The concept of emotional labour and when it's unpaid labour for raising their children is coming from the lesbian demographic of feminism.

It's a side effect of not understanding the exchange of services and hetero-sexual relationships. Those women are not our women. Ignore them.

BlackKnightFool said...

The biggest mistake men can make is confusing lesbian constructs as originating from hetero-sexual women.

Because lesbians benefit from instruction hetero-sexual relationships they live their lives demonizing man in the eyes of women as a form of mate guarding.


Therefore everything they say regarding men and boys masculine and heterosexuality's cause of interest.

Ignore them.Stop falling for it.

BlackKnightFool said...

The prefrontal cortex which uses the bulk of the brain energy is an inhibitor to the lizard emotional brain. Therefore emotional labour is in controlling your emotions not vomiting them on somebody else.

Hetero-sexual women are more concerned about men cheating emotionally than sexually.
The whole point of songs like "say my name" is about her insecurity that her husband may be emotionally invested in somebody else.

The article is just a paraphrase of some radical feminist concepts. It's not her experience.

BlackKnightFool said...

The writer is a homo-romantic women and is not compatible with hetero-romantic relationships.

BlackKnightFool said...

"Across the spectrum, women seem to be complaining about the same thing: "

CITATION NEEDED