Or at least threads started by same?
I can’t do a search because I don’t know what the common keywords would be. But it seems that I see more threads with the themes, “She won’t go out with me but I’m giving it one more shot” or “I want to get back together even though she told me 10^ times that it’s over,” than there are threads with the themes, “I KNOW he’s that into me even though he acts like he’s not” or “He’s destined to come back because our love is an eternal flame.”
Am I right or wrong? I think I might be, actually, because it would seem that men would be more likely to have these discussions under the cover of relative anonymity, while women would be more likely to have IRL friends to hash it over with. Or perhaps because this board is self-selecting towards men who like to analyze the myriad reasons why “I’m not interested in dating anyone right now” actually means, “No one has swept me off my feet with the kind of superromantic gesture you’re planning,” and also self-selecting against the Bridget Jones kind of women who would find “pink” boards for these discussions, again assuming they have such discussions online at all.
So what do you think?
I think you’re being awfully coy. Why don’t you just tell me what you want out of this thread, for crying out loud, and then I could figure out how to give it to you, and everybody would be happy, instead of generalizing all over the place about…
Ahem. Excuse me.
I don’t have a clue as to the demographics of this board with respect to age and sex and marital/relationship status, which probably has more impact on the question than anything else. A lot of broad stereotypes lend themselves to the kind of outcome you think you’re seeing. In addition to the ones you’ve mentioned, there are “women tend to either accept a bad situation or escape it, men tend to try to control or fix it,” “men are more interested in the pursuit than women, who focus more on the outcome, so men agonize over the courtship and women over the results,” and “men are more likely to be drunk online than women, which makes them more likely to start these types of threads.”
They all sound good and seem to explain the phenomenon (which will be really embarrassing if it doesn’t actually exist, but I don’t know if they’re actually true, either generally or in any individual case.
Or it may be that there are just as many lovelorn threads by women, but they tend to be quieter because women are better at describing a problem and then listening to the advice they’re given, or because they tend not to describe in their first post truly asinine behavior on their part that invites the kind of recriminations that a lot of people seem to enjoy, which lengthens the thread and draws more attention.
Are you right or wrong? I think you might be, too.
IMHO, women are more likely to leave their romantic woes on a journal/blog where fewer random people are likely to see it. I know I am.