Men! Yuck!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I was idealistic, yeah so maybe I did have my ups and downs but I was a nice person overall, I thought that perhaps there was a chance that maybe someone out there was nice and gave a damn about other people. Preferably a male someone and that I would meet this someone. For a while I thought I had found this person, he seemed like a really nice guy, you all know my story right? If not there’s a couple threads of mine about it. So now I agree with all you cynical people out there. This someone after dumping me the first time and getting a second chance tells me that he “needs space” and wants to “try something new” and “see other people.” But he says that he’s really sorry about hurting me and he does love me… really he does. Do any of you guys out there have anything that would make me not give up hope in the male half of the human race? Make me think that not all of you are horny bastards that were more in love with what they could do with a girl than the girl herself. Or how about it darling? How about the one guy that started all of this do you have anything to say? With guys that’ll flirt with just about every girl they see, that happen to like my best friend, that ae arrogant pompous asses, how am I supposed to not lose hope that there’s still a decent one out there?
Mods, I’m sorry if this is in the wrong forum, but I just wanted to rant and share and see if any guy could stick up for himself, that’s three of the forums right there so I just guessed.

Kitty

2

hmm, well, i’ve managed to stay with the same girl for over 3 years now, with no cheating at all. not all guy are like that, which i’m sure you’ve heard before. But it’s not just guys that are liek athat either. i know a few girls like that.

There’s one girl in my school right now that i’m pretty good friends with. She’s seeign a guy back home for about 4 years, but she breaks up with him on a regular basis to date guys here casue the one from home can;t be here. then when she gets bored, back to him. i feel kidna sorry for te guy cause he loves her so much, but she’s too damn selfish to wait a few months for some gratification. The funny thing is she gets pissed if he even talks about another girl, but she’s constantly telling him about al these other guys she;s gonna see. Bah.

See, girls are just as bad as guys. but we’re not all hopeless, we just need someone to smack some sense into us.

3

Hmmmm… do you want the bitter answer, the flip answer, the serious answer, or the overly precisely serious answer?

Bitter answer: You darn women spend all your time complaining about men, but then you constantly are attracted to the “bad boy” types who you meet at bars, not the the caring, sweet, funny and shy types. Like myself.

Flip answer: Sure we’re all scum. But you need us just as badly as we need you. And we’re smart enough not to spend any time agonzing over it. So phhhhhbbhbhbhbbbt! (And most of you are no saints either :slight_smile: )

Serious answer: I’m sorry that you’re so unhappy. Seriously. And I truly hope that you won’t give up on men in general. Because the worst thing you could do, either to yourself or to all the other men in the world, is assume that just becaues they’re also men, they will treat you the same way. How would you like it if some truly decent and wonderful man assumed that you were going to treat him just like his head-case-psycho-bitch-ex?

You should not forget this experience, nor should you try to trivialize it. You should learn from your past experiences, but maintain optimism, particularly since men your age (you are a college student, IIRC, are you not), are by no means the best age group of men you will ever come into contact with.

And if nothing else you can find a lot of decent people of both primary genders on the SMDB to give you virtual hugs.
Overly precisely serious answer: Nothing I can say can prove anything to you, since I am a man, and therefore anything I say is already automatically suspect :slight_smile: So you need to ask the women (or the gay guys, who as we know are vastly nicer, better, and more decent than us straight ones) whether there are, in fact, decent guys.

4

{{{{Fair Princess Kitty}}}}
We’re not all bad. I don’t smoke, don’t cheat, don’t do much of anything given half a chance. I’m reasonably reliable, solvent and capable of making my own bread. So there are nice guys out there. You will find one. Just have to keep on trying I guess. I used to feel the same way about women, but what the heck, maybe it’s time to go out and expect to find someone nice - maybe you (or I) will.
I’m rambling too much - better go and do something constructive instead.

5

My best advice to you: talk to one or more of the following:

hypergirl
democritus
falcon
nocturne
baglady
purplebear
Drain Bead
Ruffian

I personally don’t think I’m that awful of a guy. There are those who agree and those who disagree.

6

Okay 4 guys out of how many? What are the odds of me finding a decent guy I can fall in love with that won’t bail the second things get emotional? Yeah where was he when I needed emotional support, when I was in mexico crying, when I just needed someone to hold me and tell me that things were going to get better? Besides, how old are all of you? I need someone my age, or at least within a few years. I don’t want to ait until I grow up because I need someone who can be there for me now. I know that my best friend will always be there for me, but what about when I want to be held in someone’s arms and just feel safe? What then?

Kitty

7

yeah, i’m just a youngun i guess. i’m only 19. you odn;t need a guy to be there to just hold you, a friend can do that too. While it may not be the same, it’s still better then nothing at all, or picking the wrong person.

8

FPK, I don’t know how old you are. I’m guessing young. I’m 23 myself. My experience is that pretty much all guys are scum to some degree. I consider myself a pretty nice guy: very honest, not likely to cheat, I try to make the other person happy, etc. etc. Still, I know what a scumbag I’m capable of being. It’s scary. And, the younger the guy, the higher the scumbag ratio, generally. (Although, in defense of young guys, in many cases they’re scum because they don’t know otherwise. Still, they’re scum).

There are “nice guys” out there. But, you may have to wait for one. From what I’ve seen, people draw to themselves a match for where they’re at. First and foremost, one needs to be happy and satisfied with him or herself. Old cliche, but true. Romantic relationships aren’t there to make life easier on you. They test you in all your tough issues.

Don’t start a relationship when you’re lonely. That’s when you turn to your friends. Start a relationship when you (and the other person) are dynamic and happy. Then, you can help each other over the rough spots.

Well, anyway, there’s a small piece of my personal philosophy on relationships. I’m up way past my bedtime. I hope this makes sense when I re-read it in the morning.

FPK, best of luck and all the happiness you can stomach. :slight_smile:

9

Opting for the serious reply. Apologies if this sound pedantic –

a) I can’t refute you emphatically. Throughout most of my life I’ve shared your opinion of my gender. But…

b) Most of it is structural. To a major extent, blaming guys head-on for how guys are is like blaming women in the 1950s for not having as profound an interest in civic and worldly affairs as men or for having a shallow obsession with their appearance. I’m not up for writing a sociology of masculinity treatise at the moment, but the guys who complain that women only respond to cads and creeps who mistreat them are on to something. You need to imagine how you would behave if the sex role expectations and behavioral scripts were mirror-image reversed, giving PARTICULAR attention to the expectation that you would go about taking the initiative in an environment where your sex is expected not only to take the sexual initiative but to be rather annoyingly pushy about it; and how you would deal with some of the general behavioral patterns and sex-role expectations of your own sex if you were on the receiving end of them and they saw you through the lens of their expectation of you as a guy-type person.

c) Some of it may be innate, although I am still radical-feminist enough to say that we can never say for certain which differences are “natural” or “built-in” rather than socially constructed or perhaps the socially organized and defined way of dealing with whatever is “built-in”. One area you’ll see a lot of conjecture about (probably in this thread even) is the whole arena of monogamous commitment and fidelity, and the partially associated topics of visual sexual attractiveness (and response to it), casual and/or virtually anonymous sexual feelings (and response to it), and the security needs of an individual feeling love and/or sexual attraction for another. Again, a full-sized treatise is not something I feel up to at the moment, but I think it is important to recognize that there is more than one valid and defensible position regarding “how it is supposed to be”, and inflexibility and uncomprehendingness on your part won’t encourage openness and dialog.

d) You should be having this conversation with the guys you meet and consider playing with. Have animated philosophical conversations about how things oughta be between guys and girls and which gender is at fault for what and what things they hate females in general for doing and being and how they react to your annoyances with guy behaviors. If you can’t effect a truce or at least strike up a playful friendly banter indicating more overall good will than antipathy, don’t play with them.

10

I was going to post my story, but it became too long and meandering and so I’ll post it later. In the meantime (and, face it, you don’t want to hear my story anyway), here’s my take on the situation, yielded from observation and long hours of introspection.

Really, what it all comes down to is that men are fallible creatures. We’re governed by testosterone, hedonism, and the fact that until we reach a certain part of our lives we have no idea what’s important in life. That last part’s important because this is where we guys differ from you girls. You girls have the right idea as to what’s important while it takes us a few years to figure it out.

To girls (the ones I’m friends with/am interested in), as far as I can tell, relationships with the opposite sex really are relationships. Many walks down moonlit beaches and lazy nights in front of the fire with your special someone sound like the best evening ever. Throw in the option to be in your most comfortable evening-wear, and it’s perfect.

To (the average) guys, the perfect evening is going down to Hooters with a plateful of buffalo wings, a pitcher of beer (preferably Guinness, or something with personality), watching [insert name of home team here] beat the crap out of [insert main rival of home team here], and getting the phone number of at least one of the waitresses. In short, “being a guy.”

Now, I’m sure the basic incompatibility is becoming clear, but here it is in summary: most “guys” are too hedonistic, too egocentric (in the literal sense that his world is centered around his self), to be a good boyfriend. This isn’t to say that they can’t seem like it, because when a relationship is passionate enough to appeal to his sense of hedonism, it’s easy for the poor guy to think that lust is love. (Case in point, go to this thread for a better, more concise, elucidation than I could ever provide myself.

Now, the advice I’m going to give you is the same one that’s generally given to the guys in the “why do girls only date assholes” threads, and that is to wait. Eventually, I don’t know when, we come to realize that no matter how many hedonistic urges we tend to, we can’t really be happy without the special people in our lives, and this is when we realize what swell people you girls are, and that it is you - in the singular sense - that we need in our life, and that we were fools for ignoring or otherwise taking advantage of those girls who loved us in the past.

For what it’s worth, I’m only 22, and came to these realizations because very bad things happened to some people very close to me and made me realize, somewhat ahead of my time, how important people who weren’t me really were to me. Give it time, and people - yes, even us ignorant male types - will realize how wonderful a person you are. I promise.

11

Don’t worry, Kitty. After a guy has been around for 90 or so years, senility has likely stripped him of his ability to be an insensitive asshole. He may also have the advantage of being dead.

12

What’s the point of Love if it isn’t scary? It hurts like Hell when it goes wrong, but the highs seem to be without bounds. Learn to love yourself first, after that anything is possible. Learn to protect your heart and do not give it to fools, they wont know how to treat it. Respect yourself and whoever falls in love with you (and there will be many) will as well!
Bad relationships well… hmmmmm… I like to use voodoo dolls.

13

Astro seconds all of the above advice (or most of it, anyways…) and adds this:

Iblis, I fully sympathize, and I know exactly where you’re coming from (I was 25 before I ever had a GF, and not from lack of trying)!

Here’s what I learned about that; and I know it sounds cliche, but it is true:

You have to make yourself happy, no one else can do it for you! Once you accompish this, you’ll be surprised at how many men will want to be in a relationship with you.

Understand that men think very differently than women… IE: most men are usually thinking about sex/food/sex/the theme song to Gilligan’s Island/sex/having fun. Women are thinking about, uh, well… actually I dunno what women are thinking about, but it’s NOT what men are thinking! BEHOLD! I generalize with broad strokes! :slight_smile:

Emotional needs are weird for men: we are socialized to express no emotional needs (Grunt! I am MAN! I need nothing! [sup]Well, maybe a little sex now and then… and beer, of course…[/sup]), and when we are asked to help with the emotional needs of someone else, it scares us.NB: Astro is a man, can hunt down wild animals and eat their flesh RAW! And, furthermore, can take anyone here!! He DID NOT admit fear! NO, he DID NOT!!!:smiley: Men do not admit to having emotional needs, and when someone else does, it makes us very uncomfortable

As soon as a man hears “I need you for (insert emotional need here).” The man, unless already deeply in love with you, will think ‘emotional need=no fun/fear!’ and will generally bolt. That’s why so many people say that a woman should pretend that she doesn’t need the man, and let him do the chasing. Once he is deeply in love with you, then you can start unveiling emotional needs relatively safely (but do it gradually, wouldn’t want to shock the poor sucker!). Again, this is a broad generalization, and YMMV… it didn’t work that way with me, but I was weird and desperate when I met GF #1… Fiancee #1 has been unveiling emotional needs for the past 3 years, and it weirds me out big time! But, by now, our lives are so intimately entangled that there is no “me” without “Hyun Jeong” (she’s Korean, therefore weird name…), her problems=MY problems, so it’s too late to bolt (don’t tell her I said that, or I’m a dead man!)!

I guess my advice boils down to this: try not to worry about it and be happy! For a man looking at you across a smokey bar, happy=fun & attractive and very happy=fun & very attractive. And once you become involved with a man, keep your emotional needs to a minimum until it is very clear that you and he are essentially one entity.

I hope this didn’t sound too harsh, as it really wasn’t meant to be… and I hope it helps, at least a little… :slight_smile:

Disclaimer:
The previous advice was derived from BROAD generalizations of the behavior of the various sexes as observed by the writer, and YMMV! The writer makes no claim of accuracy, intelligence, or deep insight. In fact, the writer has, on more than one occassion, been accused of having his head up his ass!

14

Astro also seconds, and thirds! absoul!

Life is a rollercoaster! Relax and enjoy! If things REALLY go badly… well, hell, in 70-80 years you’ll be dead anyhow, so WTF? :smiley:

15

well - two kinds of humans on earth… those with the boobs can be pretty damn annoying and cruel too if you ask me…
but at least we dont let condom warppers lie around everywhere… :rolleyes: … though… I remember forgetting to throw away a sanit… forget it…
:smiley:

16

" Well, I can’t speak for all men. I, personally, am a jerk for these reasons…"

Seriously, some of us are really quite nice. I am a caring and sincere, if somewhat neurotic, human being. This in spite of the torture I had to endure at the hands of a couple of heinous wenches.:frowning:

17 
 Idealism is the usual state for college age kids. Been there, done that. It's also WAY to early to give up. Your life expectancy is probably at least 60 years. You've probably lived only 25% of your life. Plenty of time. Does it really ultimately matter that much if you meet the love of your life and live with them 60 years or 58?

[QUOTE]
**

For a while I thought I had found this person, he seemed like a really nice guy, you all know my story right? If not there’s a couple threads of mine about it. So now I agree with all you cynical people out there. This someone after dumping me the first time and getting a second chance tells me that he “needs space” and wants to “try something new” and “see other people.” But he says that he’s really sorry about hurting me and he does love me… really he does. Do any of you guys out there have anything that would make me not give up hope in the male half of the human race?
C
Sorry. Cynicism about relationships is one thing, but biytterness has to wait until at LEAST 30. If he wants to run at the first sign of troubles, he isn’t ready for a LTR or he just isn’t right for you.

Kitty, said guy should NOT be posting back. General discussions are fine, but not the specific ones between BF and GF. That should be face to face if at all possible, or at worst on the phone. You didn’t name names, so you’re general enough. Remember, 15-25 an awful lot of guys are hormone-driven (again, BT,DT). Flirts abound (look at this board, we’ve all doen it -you, too) Pompous people? The more education most people get, the more they realize they do NOT know it all. The ones who like your best friend? Hey,
maybe one of these days some friend of yours will tell you she knows some guy who really likes YOU…

18

…and I’m sorry I screwed up a tag…

19

All guys are immature assholes, and all women are controlling bitches.

Next question?

20

I had a girlfriend that did this regularly…problem being they weren’t MINE! But at least I’m not bitter.:smiley: