On Christmas day, we got on to the topic of how, a) tinder dates tend to use us as psychologists, and b) when a guy gets a girlfriend, he stops speaking to his female-friends.
I’ve experienced it myself, how men, starting a sexual relationship with me, start to tell me all their traumas. After a certain point, I feel like this is a bit unfair and emotionally draining, like I’ll spend all this time improving this guy for another woman to reap the benefits, which is termed “emotional labour”. I think: “I pay a psychologist to talk this through. This is not my circus, these are not my monkeys”.
A close male-friend of mine once told me that he wasn’t allowed, or “knew” that it would cause a biiiig conflict in his relationship, if he was friends with me. When people “know” things like this, but can’t quite explain why, it’s suggests that their past (in this case, negative) experiences condition their current fear motivated behaviour. Another male friend, having missed the last metro, stayed at my house, and felt uneasy about telling his girlfriend about it.
I’m not sure where these fears come from, or how we can change them. It seems that these men are afraid of being accused/suspected of cheating. Toxic masculinity states that “boys will be boys”, and doesn’t hold men responsible for cheating, lying, forcing.
Heterosexual dynamics mean that women become marginalised and kept out of social networks, which affect them in a plethora of different fields. Don’t even get me started on the guy who says he’s a “feminist”, and then hits on every woman in the room.
When my male-friends get girlfriends, I make an effort to make friends with the girl, as female-friends of my boyfriends have done.
When I’m debating whether or not to let a man into my life, I now suss out the following:
-how he treats his mum
-if he’s friends/cordial with his exes or not
-if he has any female friends