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Comment by survirtual

2 months ago

I never said women don't need men, did I? Let me read what I said again.

No, I never said that. I said women need safety, and society is largely not safe for them.

Human beings are social creatures. Women need men. Women need women. Men need women. Men need men. We all need each other.

The system patterns of online dating cultivate undesirable traits in both men and women which result in side effects that no one would want. "Flakiness" is one such side effect.

Online dating dynamics create high abundance, low commitment environments that systematically produce “flakiness,” so the issue isn’t about women needing men or not, but that both sexes operate in a degraded safety/trust landscape shaped by platform incentives rather than by real world social cues. Restore actual interpersonal safety and the entire pattern shifts positive, with less defensive behavior, less attrition, less pain, and more ethical orgasms.

All people, regardless of gender, should cultivate a safety in both society and in themselves. This safety is liberating. Instead of controlling people, you free them. Instead of binding, you uplift. Instead of harming, you heal. This is the basis of safety.

Perhaps one of the problems with modern dating is that women expect a man to provide safety, but many men don’t want to be viewed as a source of safety? Me, I am only interested in relationship for companionship, someone with whom I can share interesting experiences, because joy is not complete unless it is shared. But when it comes to safety and security, a partner is on her own. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t do this or that for a partner, but it would be supererogatory. My male friends have a similar complaint, this isn’t just a HN thing.

Again, this is probably an outcome of modernity. I likely wouldn’t think this way as a man, if I didn’t grow up in a modern age hearing that women are strong, they can take care of themselves and no longer depend on men.

  • We're speaking to different things.

    Safety doesn't mean you're a provider. It means you are safe to be authentic with. Safe to share truth with.

    That safety takes many forms.

    You cannot have depth without that safety. It is physical, it is also emotional and intellectual.

    For instance, without safety a partner would never join you on many interesting experiences. If you want those experiences, they need to be able to trust you.

    Now extend that idea of safety to a broad society context, and that is approaching what I was speaking to.

    • The safety I have heard demanded directly from women to me as a partner – or from female friends about the man they seek – is the safety of being a provider, giving them a feeling of security that they can’t manage to achieve on their own. It’s not just about a man being safe to be with. Again, you are speaking about something I haven’t heard from actual women, and I think I’ll trust the latter (and reportage matching it) over a HN stranger for forming my assumption of what women want from relationships.

      And again, maybe part of why women might be having problems with dating is that many men today don’t want to be seen as a big emotional support for a partner either. That’s draining and time-consuming. This might bother you, but my whole point is that the social pressures are no longer there to compel men (or women) to act a certain way, and that is impacting dating.

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