Statistically women are just as lonely as men (in fact, more so in 2021). Yet, I never hear anyone talk about female loneliness and what we can do to solve that.
And now, women are not only expected to ignore our loneliness, as we have been doing, but to solve men’s as well. Or we are considered as the root of that problem – yet men are not considered as the root of ours.
Women should not only NOT be considered as the solution for men’s problems, but instead we deserve help and acknowledgement of our loneliness just as much as men.
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I definitely see it talked about in female spaces, but on reddit in general for example if you say you’re lonely 10 guys will jump on your comment and be like no you’re not, start ranting about their problems and how you have no idea what it’s like, say it’s because you’re only chasing the 1% attractive men who abuse you and ignore the men you’re not attracted to who would totally show you love, it’s because you care too much about height and dick size, etc. You’ll just get absolutely harassed, insulted, berated. Women generally are shut down from being able to discuss it.
Because women suffer from self-inflicted loneliness due to being picky and not giving every NiceGuy™️ neckbeard a chance. We deserve to die alone with our 15,000 cats. Men are just helpless victims of our shallow shrill nonsense /s
Women, if they are actually lonely, already perceive openly talking about it with men will invite predatory interest or invalidation. They’ll either doubt you or use it as an excuse to use the info to their advantage.
I’ve been thinking the same exact thing for a while now. Everything men complain about as an “epidemic” isn’t unique to them at all. They are so delusional that I feel like a lot of these men never had meaningful relationships (be it romantic or platonic) with women before to have any insight or are basing their beliefs on like a grand total of 1 to 3 women they met or inaccurate/exaggerated depictions from memes and social media.
They seem to legitimately believe a woman just needs to enter a room and like 15 men will go after her. And that women only ever get compliments and support. Enduring belittlement and insults are daily hurdles for us. Also no, no one “supports” us like they’re claiming – it’s the exact opposite of being expected to take care of everything and everyone with 0 thanks.
The truly lonely guys don’t actually want the truly lonely women, even if they have things in common. There are tons of single women who want to date but get ignored because they don’t meet some aesthetic standards, when the guys may not even wipe their own asses.
Female loneliness is considered a personal failure
The male loneliness epidemic sees more airtime not because it’s somehow more serious than what women are experiencing, but because it’s a phenomenon that is defining and shaping our cultural moment. The current far right political and cultural shift was in part fueled by this phenomenon of “male loneliness.” It was picked up on and utilized in male targeted media to alter sentiments of many many men in this country. Look at the rightward shift in young men for a clear example.
Male loneliness is a bigger topic because we are living in the world it has helped create.
Women’s Health Magazine did a good analysis recently into women’s mental health during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, which highlights the prevalence of loneliness among women. I’ve been reading recently about how women are generally pretty good at seeking help and making changes to alleviate loneliness and poor mental health, so that could partly be a cause of why organisations and governments may feel the need to proactively connect with/reach males.
Could you give some examples on how we’re implicitly or explicitly being expected to solve men’s loneliness?
That’s because when women experience shortcomings, it’s seen as a personal problem. When men experience the same shortcomings, they tend to react in ways that force any discourse to not only center around how “it’s not their fault” but more importantly how they are being failed by others. Grievance politics is very popular, especially if people can be convinced very universal experiences are unique only to them.
I believe part of this arises from the implicit sentiment that women have more serious problems to be dealing with: sexual harassment, lower pay, human rights violations, health access, social disparity, et alia. Men have… loneliness?
We live in very isolating times. Working too many hours, or weird schedules. More and more people are going no-contact with toxic family. Moving for work to a new place they don’t know anyone.
It’s almost like both genders are actually going through the same issues, but there is a concerted effort to divide them
I wonder why that could be… maybe because if we actually joined together we could go against the actual people causing the issues.
Men and women should care about each others issues. It’s the only way through this mess.
That’s because the female loneliness epidemic is regarding being lonely, while the male loneliness epidemic is regarding not getting laid. It’s obvious in the “explanations” they provide of why female loneliness is “a choice” while male loneliness is “a societal failure”.
My theory is that the male loneliness epidemic is brought into space where women are talking about their own loneliness or lacking community because they want women to fix the problem. They think it’s women’s fault they’re lonely.
It’s not talked about because we don’t murder and rape and fall into hate groups when we get lonely.
(Not saying it’s NEVER happened, just not on the same scale.)
Our culture is fundamentally misogynist, by which I mean it could only be founded bc of misogyny and depends on dehumanizing and victimizing women to continue to function.
In this culture men are people, and their experiences and needs matter. Women are working livestock whose existence is tolerated only so long as they service the needs of men, so their lives and needs do not matter. If you keep this in mind, everything in media about men and women makes perfect sense.
Just my two cents but these are connected issues that men and women should be working together to solve. I have seen a fair amount of toxic opinions on this sub reddit that basically denigrate the male versiom such as
I don’t really see a lot of men dismissing the female loneliness epidemic or really discussing it at all to be fair. While it’s just my experience I have in contrast seen a ton of negativity from women on male loneliness. I have never gotten the implications that women have any interest in men’s opinion on this topic.
I do think a lot of our dating issues stem from major changes in the dating landscape.
All in all, I think the modern dating environment is a fucking hellscape and I feel like the constant man vs woman war has been constantly getting worse over the years in a reciprocal manner. I don’t know what the solution is but both issues are a mutual issue.
Because more lonely me go out and try and destroy things/people then lonely women.
Men don’t want to be assigned to people, either. No one does.
Romantic relationships are choices and conditional love, by definition.
It’s the mutually agreeable part that we’re not teaching or modeling as well as we used to.
Mutual interest. Mutual respect. Mutual contribution. Mutual benefit.
There is so much denial, eh i’ve noticed it myself on reddit and in generic, neutral, not women oriented spaces.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/s/HrLt07mKVA
Mandatory: women can’t be alone /s
Well, maybe it’s because women handle it differently. They aren’t preyed upon by right-wing grifters, lured into the ranks of racist, fascist incels that blame women, minorities, liberals and democracy for their troubles. It’s not that we care more about the happiness of men, but when men get sad and lonely, they become a problem for the whole world.
Because we’re not trying to blame everyone else for it.
This is because when women are lonely we get a cat. When men are lonely they blame other people and then murder them.
My understanding was that the big cause of male loneliness was toxic masculinity. This led to them not discussing their feelings with friend groups, and thus not having deep support networks.
Evidence suggests men are lonelier in mid life, which might be related to that being when women are more talkative, though women appear to be lonelier in old age (though there are lots of obvious methodological caveats).
Just to preface, I’m a woman.
A lot of comments here focus on men, but I would also wager that it’s hard to be friends with women. As a result of patriarchy, women tend to compete with each other and tear them down in uniquely horrible ways. If you’re not already in a group, it’s harder to get into a group. Maybe I’ve just attracted shitty people in my life (honestly, being alone shields me from that at least), but the women I know aren’t very kind or supportive these days. I get stonewalled/ignored if I asked for help, criticized/dismissed if I admit to having dark thoughts, and if I offer/take initiative to help them I get chewed out and told to mind my business.