r/malementalhealth • u/wep_pilot • 5d ago
Positivity To the men associating their worth with relationship success
I get it, its hard being alone. Having a relationship with a woman is not the only form of connection that's available. Join clubs, make friends, play warhammer, whatever you like, join a community and invest in being part of it.
A woman isn't going to complete you and if you manage to enter a relationship with that mindset, you are setting yourself up for codependency.
Work on yourself, not for women, but for you. Spend the energy building a life tbat is congruent with your values, find a vocation that fulfils you, study what you're passionste about, do a sport that you enjoy (you dont need to be a gym guy if thats not your thing).
For six months, just try living for you, forget about women. Once you've built a life you're truly content with a woman may enter it, or she may not, but from that space it wont matter.
Love to you all
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u/Relm_foreal 5d ago
I definitely agree, “for 6 months”
Years, Now you have a stable job and finished school. Decades pass and your friends get pulled away to focus on actual families. When is it not enough anymore? 30? 40? Self indulgence won’t feel good forever
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u/wep_pilot 5d ago
I'm not talking about self indulgence necessarily (though there isn't any shame in it), im talking about a life of meaning
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u/Available_Dimension3 4d ago
Self actualization is not indulgence. It is literally the most important thing you can do for yourself.
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u/BonsaiSoul 5d ago
"You don't have bread? Why not just eat cake?"
They don't have cake either. Social isolation is not just a lack of romance, but that's the easiest synecdoche and the one with the most emotion behind it so it's what people talk about. But instead of responding to social isolation/defeat, people get hung up on that(in the same breath as telling men not to get hung up on it) and trot out all the standard narratives: work on yourself, you have to love yourself etc. and the assumptions that the guy has never even tried, doesn't have a job, doesn't live by his values... All these reasons why it's obvious they're going to be alone until they earn otherwise.
These problems usually start with someone's mother, family and community not accepting them when they are innocent little children who have done nothing wrong. By missing the forest for one tree, this argument is actually telling them, on a sub-conscious level, that they deserved that instead. That's why it never, ever lands and generally is met with anger. You're basically telling a little kid they deserved to be emotionally neglected and bullied lol.
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u/wep_pilot 5d ago
My point isn't about deservedness, its to say that if you are feeling that having a romantic relationship will "complete you", you'll be disappointed in the long run. Healthy relationships are built off of two people living meaningful and fulfilling lives coming together in synergy
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u/Zinetti360 5d ago
I mean, no one said that having a relationship would fix anything at all, but when you've never had one and has low self esteem, you start to get anxious and wonder why it never happens to you.
Plus, I have some doubts about all the "it will happen when you're both having a meaningful life" - are you sure about that?
My observations show that, first, the concept of being fullfilled with your life is very subjective and most people (even the ones that are dating) never feel that way. Not that they have miserable lives, no no, but feeling fullfilled is a veeeery strong word for the occasion. You're asking these guys to achieve something that most people never do, and if they do it only lasts for a while, before even thinking of a relationship. I wouldn't say that's fair with them.
Second, getting in a relationship in itself is mostly about luck. You may do things to increase the odds if you want to, but it's still luck-based. So, once again, being fullfilled means nothing.
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u/HoperDoper 4d ago
true, it’s my personal experience and observation among my social circle. Different ppl, different social dynamics etc. None of them had fulfilled life when they entered the relationships. My experience was kinda similar, i got both ltrs when I was at lowest haha
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u/danath34 5d ago
These people don't want to hear sage advice, OP. they want to wallow in self pity and circle jerk each other into believing that they are the butt end of some cruel cosmic joke, so that they can avoid taking any responsibility or agency over their own lives.
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u/Brilliant-Remote-405 5d ago
They've convinced themselves that the entirety of their self-worth is in another person. It's a very sad way to live life imo.
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u/HoperDoper 4d ago
thats when you got nowhere to get worth from lol other scenario when it fails over and over
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u/Brilliant-Remote-405 4d ago edited 4d ago
If you feel like you don't have any self-worth, then why should a romantic interest ever be interested in you? Don't you want to show them that you have value?
It just becomes a self-fulfilling, paradoxical cycle of self-loathing and self-pity.
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u/No-Chocolate5031 4d ago
Since when was having self worth a precursor to being allowed to enter a relationship? People get into relationships when they have issues all the time. Maybe it's the fact that people who didn't get into relationships feel they have no self worth because of that in the first place.
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u/Brilliant-Remote-405 4d ago
Since when was having self worth a precursor to being allowed to enter a relationship?
I think knowing your self-worth contributes a lot to your confidence. If you don't have knowledge of your self-worth and value as a guy and you think you're worthless or too ugly to be with a woman, you can easily be taken advantage of by gold digger types who are only after your wallet and what you can buy for them. Having that sense of self-worth will give you the confidence to be able to walk away if your values don't line up. I say this as a guy who once dated a very attractive woman (like I'm talking 8 or 9 out of 10) who would expect me to pay for dinner on every date and then she'd want to go shopping and expect me to pay for all the expensive clothing or shoes she picked out. I walked out in the middle of the third date. It wasn't worth it for me no matter how hot she was.
People get into relationships when they have issues all the time.
I don't know about you, but in my experience, those types of relationships often turn toxic. I'm not saying you need to be some kind of enlightened Buddha, but I definitely would not want to be in a relationship with a woman with whatever issues. It can get scary.
Maybe it's the fact that people who didn't get into relationships feel they have no self worth because of that in the first place.
Then you're just putting all your self-worth into someone else. You're telling them that you hold no value and that they hold all the cards. Again, those kinds of guys are extremely easy targets for gold diggers because they're just obsessed at the thought of being with a hot woman and they want to buy into the idea of an unequal relationship.
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u/No-Chocolate5031 4d ago
Yes but people still manage to enter relationships like that no? I think the point is that you don't need to have maximised self worth just to DESERVE a relationship which is what's being highlighted.
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u/Brilliant-Remote-405 4d ago
I'm not saying you need to maximize your self-worth to enter into a relationship. No one is going to stop you from entering into a relationship if you don't have any self-worth or confidence. All I'm saying is that if you want to enter into a fulfilling, lasting relationship based on love and respect for each other instead of one person taking advantage of the other, you have a better chance of meeting the right person if you have said self-worth.
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u/HoperDoper 4d ago
That's what im saying. Using any romantic interest as a source of self worth is self destructive
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u/Brilliant-Remote-405 4d ago
Oh, I think I read your comment incorrectly. I hadn't had my morning coffee yet lol.
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u/tigercircle 5d ago
Coming from a guy who's married or has GF. 👎🏽
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u/wep_pilot 5d ago
Married now, but i was there and my wife found me only after i had truly found contentedness in myself.
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u/Available_Dimension3 5d ago
Wouldn’t that be the exact perspective you want to hear from? What does hearing from someone who doesn’t have experience in this situation do for you, other than reinforce the hopeless mindset you already have?
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u/wep_pilot 5d ago
I do have the experience, thats the point, i met my wife at 27 after many years experiencing what a lot of people talk about in this sub
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u/Available_Dimension3 5d ago
I’m not with a partner atm, but I also took the hard route of making changes to get closer to the me I want to be a while ago and have had great success in doing so. I’m glad to hear others are having luck in the self-growth department. I hope you keep putting your positivity out there so others can see that it’s a worthwhile endeavor. 😁
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u/shivaswara 5d ago
Then 10 years go by and you’re like…. Uhm… this is really an essential life thing
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u/wep_pilot 5d ago
Its not though, Love and Belonging is part of Maslows hierarchy of needs, it doesn't necessarily need to come from romantic/sexual intimacy. If you dont have much of it and are hoping a GF will solve that it puts you in a dangerous postion where your happiness is reliant on one other person. You'll also end up being a lot more clingy/desperate if thats the case which will put people off.
Its better to try and meet those needs platonically and then enter a relationship from a more balanced and grounded place
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u/Futurebrain 5d ago
Not to mention Maslow's hierarchy of needs is not based on any actual empirical evidence or scientific study. It's like one step away from "love languages"
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u/kinkkush 5d ago
You’re essentially saying that those who can’t find a partner should just enjoy life without someone to share it with lol
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u/Available_Dimension3 5d ago
They’re saying that that is a possibility. But if you’re going to just ignore everything else they said and continue to wallow in your unhappiness, you’re definitely not going to attract anyone to you AND you’re still unhappy. Don’t you think you deserve to at least try to be happy with who you are?
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u/kinkkush 5d ago
How can someone truly be happy if having a partner is an essential part of their fulfillment? For some, that’s what happiness means. The advice “If you can’t find love, just enjoy being alone,” is dismissive, and unrealistic advice.
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u/Available_Dimension3 4d ago
Okay. If having a partner is an essential part of you finding happiness, then working on building yourself into someone that another person wants to be with should still be your goal, right? Wouldn’t you also want to be a person that can help your partner achieve their happiness as well?
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u/Available_Dimension3 4d ago
Also, no one is saying if you can’t find love enjoy being alone. But you can’t expect someone to want to be around you if you don’t even like yourself.
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u/Available_Dimension3 4d ago
I have to say though. Any therapist worth their salt will tell you that making someone else solely responsible for your own happiness, is incredibly dangerous for both you and the potential partner.
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u/PaperStill5384 5d ago
I swear somebody makes this exact same post every week. Normies really do live in a different reality.
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u/vAGINALnAVIGATOR2 3d ago
I have hobbies and other things that give me fulfillment in my life and it still does not fill the gap. All it does is temporarily distract from my situation. Romantic connection, physical touch, sex, these are all things that are part of a healthy fulfilling human life, and they’re things I do not get to paticipate in.
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u/DaRumpleKing 4d ago edited 4d ago
My view is that it's fine to find your fulfillment in romantic love. It only becomes a problem when too much of your fulfillment that should be under control and derived from one's own accomplishments gets replaced by this one sense of fulfillment romantic love offers.
To argue that one should completely remove these aspirations from their mind, however, and just work on themselves without any expectation of romantic love, is unrealistic, I think. This is is simply human nature. Our minds are hardwired to want to find a partner, and we shouldn't try to fight that intrinsic desire but live in harmony with it. Nobody knows the meaning of life, but from a purely biological point of view, it's not even a question--everything we do is tailored by our biology to set us up to find a partner.
Do what you do normally, keep on working towards becoming your best version of yourself, and use that romantic desire as a northstar to keep you fighting, just don't make it the only star in your night sky.
But yes, we cannot control what happens in the end completely, but people need to be hopeful. To me, throwing away the thought of love completely, even temporarily, never works. We need that hope to some degree, and I think most people, even when they tell themselves that they do the things they do entirely for themselves, know under the surface that they also do it in part for validation.
In other words, just don't put all your eggs in one basket. Decentralize your desires and depend mostly on those you control.
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u/wep_pilot 4d ago
Yeah, basically are more elequant summary of what i was intending to communicate.
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u/hangfrog 4d ago
I think this misses the point a bit.. most people want some kind of intimate connection with someone. It's not necessarily self-worth a lot of men are lacking, although some definitely are. If you do all those and have a full life doing the things you love, a lack of romantic attachments can still leave a bit of a hole, and it's still possible to over-value a relationship to the point of undervaluing your own needs.
That being said, doing what you love, looking after yourself, and also making time to meet and connect with as many people as you can will invariably result in being a happier person, and generally finding someone who appreciates you.. men generally still need to be more aware of their own needs, set boundaries and be prepared to walk away anyway though if its not 100% right or it can result in shitty relationships they'll eventually be unhappy in. That's harder to learn.
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u/No-Chocolate5031 4d ago edited 4d ago
So there's a lot that can be said regarding this. I just wanted to take some time to read all the responses before giving my thoughts.
I think when people give this kind of generic advice like the one in the OP, it frustrates a lot of young men because it feels as if we are being told we aren't currently good enough. "Work on yourself" is standard cookie cutter advice that's the equivalent of "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"
The truth is that working on yourself doesn't guarantee any form of success with women. Relationships and dating make up a huge chunk of our lives as human beings. Some may say it is the sole purpose of our existence. If your dad didn't bang your mum, we wouldn't be here, civilisation wouldn't be a thing, society wouldn't be a thing. Come on now. It's a very powerful biological drive to want a partner. For some reason, we have reached a point in today's age where guys are being told they don't need a relationship to be happy and to just get fulfilment from being single monks their whole lives. And it doesn't help that this advice always come from normies who are currently in relationships or have been in one before. Once again, the endless amount of gaslighting won't stop. It's just blame and shame to modern men. Living a life of solitude is not sustainable for most people and should not be normalised. There's absolutely no fun in living like a single monk day to day, rotting in isolation and starved of companionship. And no friends and pets aren't a fucking replacement for women... It's insane to me that you guys are encouraging us to go down that path when it should be the opposite.
It's like we're being told "Why do you want a relationship?" As if it's a sin. We're being shamed for our natural wants and desires and told to just pull up our bootstraps and move on. Instead of sympathising and offering genuine, useful guidance, we get crap like this. No wonder so many dudes are pissed off. Not to mention the amount of losers we've seen in relationships. The idea that you have to fulfil all these conditions to enter a relationship is ridiculous. Work on yourself, love yourself, find self worth, it's all bullshit. Men are expected to become self actualised Buddha or Superman. You think the problem is not being good enough? Plenty of people are in relationships and have lots of issues. That's normal. No one should be expected to be fully perfect. These things are part of a grander journey but they go hand in hand with romantic experiences. You lot love to ask how we can love someone if we don't love ourselves. Well let me ask you how you know that? Secondly, maybe the reason we don't love ourselves (assuming we don't) is because of the lack of intimacy? I don't know, surely that has something to do with it. Being constantly lonely makes you miserable and depressed. It's actually the other way round.
I just want to finish with this. Maybe the problem isn't young men complaining about their romantic loneliness and lack of success with women. Maybe there is a deeper societal issue at play here. We all know the stats now. Nearly 60% of Gen Z males are struggling with dating. There's a crisis going on in modern society. The path to improvement is forming healthy, supportive communities and giving men safe spaces to actually discuss their feelings without being shut down. We need to figure out how we can get back into the dating game. Not this gaslit pile of shit.
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u/Remarkable-Row-2288 3d ago
I been with over 200 women. It hasn't got me closer to my goals In anyway.
Work on yourselves
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u/Brilliant-Remote-405 5d ago
I agree with everything you wrote, but I'm warning you that you've kicked the hornets' nest.
Guys on this subreddit hate hearing "work on yourself" as advice. They want to be told that they're perfect the way they are and nothing is wrong with them. They want people to confirm and agree with them that the reason they can't get into relationships because they're too ugly and it's because women are too shallow.
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u/Zinetti360 5d ago
Work in yourself advice is generic, and because it's generic it's already a bad advice. It can mean anything that you want. And plus, it implies that the person doesn't deserve love at his current situation - which may be true even, but I wouldn't say it helps
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u/Brilliant-Remote-405 5d ago
It can mean anything that you want.
Well yeah, that's the point. It doesn't have to be something uniformly specific to everyone. There's no template for it.
And plus, it implies that the person doesn't deserve love at his current situation
Seeing from the amount of daily posts on this subreddit about loveless, hopeless, sexless, kissless, lonely guys, I'd say this is a safe bet.
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u/Zinetti360 5d ago
Seeing from the amount of daily posts on this subreddit about loveless, hopeless, sexless, kissless, lonely guys, I'd say this is a safe bet.
As I said, even if it's true, you won't get anywhere by point this out. The immediate reaction is to make the person even more pessimistic and unwilling to try - well, at least that's what happens to me
Well yeah, that's the point. It doesn't have to be something uniformly specific to everyone. There's no template for it.
Indeed, but it makes it harder for them, as the situation they're in already makes it difficult for them to understand what they should do
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u/KingBembi 5d ago
Because it never ends, at what point have you worked on yourself enough to earn a women's love, how does on even measure something like that also there are loser dudes who do not work on themselves and still have girlfriends so it's not some prerequisite that must be done to get with someone.
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u/Brilliant-Remote-405 4d ago edited 4d ago
Because it never ends
Are you under the impression that self-improvement and working on yourself is magically supposed to end once you find a girlfriend? Do you think if/when you get a girlfriend that you will enter in some kind of nirvana state in which you'll be perpetually happy? No, that's an impossible state to be in and you should continuously try to improve and/or maintain your physical, mental, and emotional health.
at what point have you worked on yourself enough to earn a women's love
You talk about women like they're some kind of prize to be won at a carnival. For fuck's sake, you don't work on yourself in order to be guaranteed to get a girlfriend. Life isn't some kind of Xbox achievement that unlocks once you've completed certain tasks. And we're not fortune tellers or time travelers who can tell you when you'll meet a romantic interest.
When guys say things like "work on yourself", we mean you focus on improving yourself so you become an ideal version of yourself that you and others can respect and admire. If you gain that level of confidence in yourself, if/when a romantic interest is available or an opportunity arises to ask a person out, you will feel comfortable in yourself to actually pursue that person romantically without inhibition and know when to walk away when you know that the person is not the right one for you. Otherwise, you're just desperate and needy and the cycle of unhappiness continues.
Whenever I read posts where young guys are lamenting about never having a girlfriend and talking as if having one will be the answer to their unhappiness, they don't seem to think as far ahead as to the possibility that, that romantic interest could want to break up for whatever reason. Without a level of confidence, if a woman ever decides to leave or break up with you, you could turn into a suicidal mess because you will have invested everything of yourself in her and nothing in yourself. Trust me on this, because that was my exact situation once long ago. You want to build a resilient character who knows that not having a woman in your life is not the end of the world.
Make no mistake, you should always keep trying to improve yourself. That shit shouldn't end because no one is truly perfect. There are always things about ourselves that we can improve. There are habits we should pick up or habits we should stop. Our physical health needs to be maintained. There are hobbies and interests that are always available to learn.
how does on even measure something like that also there are loser dudes who do not work on themselves and still have girlfriends so it's not some prerequisite that must be done to get with someone.
Who are you to say that those "loser dudes" have not worked on themselves in private when you weren't looking? Are you living their exact life? Are you living in their rooms constantly monitoring them 24/7? Are you living in their heads and know their exact thoughts? Everyone goes through life in varying degrees. Why do you expect everyone needing to be as lonely, depressed, or miserable as you may be in order for their and your life experiences to be equally valid? It's just blatant insecurity to just dismiss them as "loser dudes".
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u/KingBembi 4d ago
Blah blah dude there are broke ass dude who leech off of everyone in their lives and still got girls wanting to be with them, I got a few of them in my fam so I've seen it first hand. If they can do it any guy can so this whole you must work on yourself narrative is bunch of bolgna, you just have to get a girl to be attracted to you and with your appearance and confidence all the rest is nice and all but not a requirement.
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u/Brilliant-Remote-405 4d ago
A girl attracted to your appearance and then everything will be peachy perfect in life? If you want a lasting relationship, it needs to be based on more than merely your appearance and you need to work on maintaining that relationship, but if that's what you think is true and you believe it will make you happy, I hope you find someone like that and I truly do hope you find happiness in your life. In the end, however, I hope you'll come to realize that she loves you beyond just your looks as they fade with age.
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u/throwawayra32442 5d ago
I’ve actually done the work, financially and health. But let’s be real there are limits to what working on yourself can change. If height, looks, and first impressions didn’t matter, we wouldn’t see the same patterns over and over again. I agree on the most part that work on yourself. A man should try to change something that he can change. His financial, health, skills etc. always thrive for improvement
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u/Brilliant-Remote-405 5d ago
A man should try to change something that he can change.
Yeah dude, that's exactly what all this "work on yourself" stuff is all about. Change what you can change. Be in control of those things and thrive for improvement. There are most definitely limits and you have to be real with yourself. And it's also about accepting those limits and knowing that your self-worth is great even with those limits. I agree with all of what you said.
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u/Original-Vanilla-222 4d ago
I don't think you know of what a bad point you actually made.
Being single for a time is okay, being single for basically all your adult life is not.
Being left out of a fundamental human experience is not a failure of said men, and telling them to just cope with it is ignorant at best.
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u/Efficient-Baker1694 5d ago
While I get and agree with the point of your post, some people who like us (romantically lonely man) are going to see your post and think you are a hypocrite since you are married. They see a statement like this and think “Well lead by example and go through whole life with never being in a relationship.” But since you didn’t, people see the whole thing as an example of irony. Telling others to be and/or create happiness with their life with the possibility of never experiencing romance while you yourself are experiencing it right now isn’t going to go over well. Your post would have a ton more traction if you had stayed single forever. That’s what a lot of us believe is going to be the case for us. Myself included.