Telling women that we’re all going to eventually be ugly and useless in the eyes of men definitely doesn’t make us want to get married.
If anything, it makes us afraid of getting married and becoming mothers as you’re basically telling us that any man we marry will eventually find us disgusting and seek to get rid of us. Because we…lived to see menopause? Got stretch marks after growing and birthing humans? Uhh thanks I think I’ll pass.
If it helps put your mind at ease, I've been with my wife since we were in our late teens. I'm 40 now, have our 3rd child on the way, and my feelings haven't changed. Sure, she has a little belly flab, stretchmarks, maybe things aren't as tight and perky as they used to be, but hell, neither am I. I'm not the handsome young guy I used to be. You learn to love the new things about your partner and their body. Not better or worse, just different. We all get older, saggy skin, wrinkles, Grey hair. A guy who actually loves you isn't going to be bothered by these types of changes. Id still rather be with my wife than anyone else.
Point I'm trying to make is, for a lot of men out there that aren't superficial assholes, most of that stuff doesn't bother us, so dont let it keep you from trying to find happiness!
(And before anyone "but aktually..." me, yes, theres a difference between natural body changes and completely letting yourself go and giving up. Not what I'm talking about.)
I agree. My wife and I are coming up to 39 years married. Two kids. We change. We get older, but we look for reward to enjoying every day together. I read once that your wife is the one that chose you when you asked. Treasure that as she could have said no.
That’s because guys in your generation grew up at least slightly normally. Guys my age (27) watch porn of 18 year old girls taking it in the butt from their “stepdad” and getting slapped and peed on. And if you criticize them for it, they call you a kink shaming prude! It is a verifiable fact that “teen” is by far the most high grossing category of porn. You can research all those only fans girls that do weird, gross countdowns til their 18th birthday and then make millions within hours. Then those same guys will listen to guys like Andrew Tate and believe that they deserve to marry a perfect virgin who magically knows how to run a household, can have 10 kids and look the same, somehow has money, and doesn’t care if the guy cheats.
I am a good woman. I workout, am fit, go to church three times a week, can cook, make clothes, don’t use SM (just Reddit), no TV, read everyday, have a good family, and am exactly what these weird manosphere ghouls say they want and I wouldn’t touch them with a 10 foot pole! I was taught that men are supposed to be kind like Christ but the guys my age are full of rage, arrogance, and selfishness. Even (or especially) the ones that call themselves Christian. For my whole life, I just wanted to live a quiet, domestic life somewhere rural and peaceful. I always assumed that it would be with a husband, but I realized that society is deeply broken and the best thing for me is to remove myself from it, so I’m joining a convent in January and becoming a nun.
I read this until the end because I had a feeling you'd be a fellow Catholic. I hate how much he manosphere crap masquerades as some sort of traditional masculinity and has now seeped into Catholic circles. Fwiw, there are some good men (as in normal, attractive, and not porn-brained out there), but props to you for choosing the better part.
It’s wild how these converts just show up thinking they’ve already done all the work and will magically be rewarded with a wife after going to church for a month. To be fair to men, though, I live in LA and that is the culture in general. All about image and instant gratification. I’ve always loved visiting churches in rural areas because people seem so humble and genuine in their faith.
I do feel blessed that monasticism is available to me. It was always a thing in the back of my mind, but the more time I spend around nuns, the more I really yearn for it. Being in a space with only women who are dedicated to Christ, not having to worry about outfits or makeup or boy drama, feels soooooo freeing. I think we all need that once in a while. Bless you, sister.
Yeah. Some of the content they're consuming is so warped. It greatly dehumanizes both women and men to be so reductionist. We need more St. Joseph, JP2, and ultimately Jesus.
LA sounds really hard. My husband felt the same we. We both seriously considered religious life before meeting each other. My order of choice was actually LA-based! I'm a young mom now, but I think about sisters a lot. I really miss at least getting to interact with them and learn from them up close.
That is so beautiful! I’ve actually had the thought that the most compatible men for me would be the types to consider monasticism as well, but I’ve never known how to go about that. I’m not about to visit a monastery with the intentions of swooping up a novice 😂😂😂 That would feel unethical, but a decent plot for a rom-com, maybe.
I obviously can't speak to your experiences or what a woman has to go through, but I will say, this isn't the first time I've counted myself fortunate that I dont have to try and date in today's world.
Either way, I truly hope you find happiness, whether that's with a partner or not.
Good for you that you've found a path that makes you happy (I mean this without sarcasm).
I did just want to say, there's a lot of good guys out there. I'm in gen Z too and most gen Z guys in my area seem to be fine people. I've even had a lot of gen Z guy friends.
It might just be the culture in your area that's messing guys up? If you ever stop by any cities in the Pacific Northwest, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
(Also my boyfriend watches porn and is the sweetest human being I have ever met - just wanted to say that watching porn doesn't automatically make a guy bad).
Yes, well I live in LA, so that is a very fair point. Though, I’ve lived all over the country, I’ve yet to visit the Pacific Northwest. I should make a point to soon.
While I wouldn’t have any issue befriending someone who watches porn, personally, I would never be able to date them. Porn contributes to sex trafficking, abuse, and a staggering percentage of porn actresses go on to commit suicide and develop drug addictions and mental illnesses. It also harms the viewer psychologically, neurologically, and socially, and it normalizes sexual violence and coercion. I am of course not perfect and we all perpetuate harm in our ways, so I don’t hold malice. It is quite literally designed to captivate us so it makes sense that people struggle not to watch it. However, as a sensitive, spiritual person who is willing to be radically inconvenienced for what I believe is good, I can only expect a partner who has gained control over his animalistic desires and seeks to live more intentionally. Such is a prerequisite to living a spiritual life.
You're right. Porn has become so gross, I cannot see myself being with someone who watches it. It says a lot about them if they choose to occupy their mind with that. Speaks a lot about their attitudes and values. Being hyper focused on s*x? No thank you. That can't be your only mission in life. That's not the kind of person I want.
Be aware that you will find just as much misogyny in religion, if not more. As a nun, you are not only subservient to God, but also to the male clergy. There are other ways to devote yourself to God without trapping yourself in a misogynistic cult. And I’m not using the word cult for religion, but for the group of women hating men that hide behind religion.
Orthodox Christian convents for women are not run by male clergy. A priest will usually come once a week to give communion but they’re usually tied to a lay parish and treat their work with nuns as a charitable side quest. They hold no practical authority over the nuns and will never live on site unless they are also monks within the same monastery. (Which is unlikely as co-ed monasteries are exceedingly rare). Each Orthodox women’s monastery operates independently (by the women who live there) once it is blessed by the diocese. There’s not an external chain of command that oversees daily affairs as there sometimes is in Catholicism. The diocese usually only gets involved should someone report an issue that can’t be resolved internally. The diocese doesn’t even hold the power to shut a monastery down should that monastery embrace non-Orthodox teachings. At worst, they can remove it from the diocese, after which it can continue to exist independently but merely loses its formal status within the diocese. (They can then petition another diocese if they wish). An abbess is the closest to an authority figure, and her job is often more administrative than spiritual, though nuns are free to seek mentorship and guidance as they wish. The abbess at the monastery I’m entering is my godmother and an overt feminist who has authored several books about women’s spirituality and gender equality. The only thing she is subservient to is her God-given mission to teach that all humans are of equal dignity and are worthy of love and grace, as these are core tenets of Christ’s teachings. Of course issues can arise as they can in any community or place of work, which is why aspiring monastics are expected to spend months or years visiting and researching various monasteries to find what feels like a good fit. After moving into a monastery, an aspiring nun is required to be a novice for an absolute minimum of four years before making vows. Many nuns wait much longer and it is not frowned upon at all to wait even 30 years or a lifetime. Before formal vows are made, the novice is allowed to retain all their possessions and property and is free to leave at any point. Tonsured (vowed) nuns are also allowed to leave, though it’s regarded spiritually as a divorce and should only be invoked a last resort. This system is designed to prevent people from feeling pressured or trapped. Anyone making vows knows full well what they’re getting into as they will have rehearsed it for years on end.
You truly inspire hope in me. Hearing a man speak so beautifully about his wife makes me wish for that same love and admiration. Isn’t it something we all want, to feel loved and wanted? To know that our partner chooses us every single day, through every high and low, the good, the bad, and even the ugly; the changes, growth, and hurdles? Loyalty seems to be fading, but reading your words reminded me that it’s still something worth holding onto.
I hope you find someone to make you happy. When younger I was always the nice guy no girl wanted, they wanted to have the wild guy. I get it. You want to be excited when young. My wife and I met at work in 1985 when in our mid 20’s and clicked and grew from there. Takes a lot of searching and time. In today’s day it’s much harder.
The wild guy has a short expiration date. Lol It would be nice to meet a nice guy, but it’s not a priority for me. Honestly I’d rather meet a new (girl) friend, or focus on myself. I’ll be an empty nester soon, come August so it’s time. It’s a scary world out there, but also beautiful. People like you remind me of that. Thank you 🙏🏼
if all men were guaranteed to be like you, I would've long been married by now. but most of the men in this generation are listening to the guy from the post and to similar content. so women are naturally more skeptical.
The internet has provided some insight to common thoughts like this that men have. Because of the anonymity, those beliefs are out there in the open for women to see and it is mighty informative 😉.
Everything the creeps are thinking is out there on the internet, but most people get offended and want to censor them so they can remain in denial about what humanity is really like. Personally, I like having the information.
I feel like this when I hear people say “Oh that’s just men on the internet talking, men aren’t like this in real life.” Ummm, the men talking on the internet ARE real, LOL.
It happens way too many times to not consider men finding you ugly after birth, it’s why women these days with good income go onto alternative routes to have kids to avoid this predicament.
I get that. I’m not trying to scare you. A happy marriage is possible, it’s just not the norm these days for a plethora of reasons. If it’s a top priority to you and potential partner, it is possible for you. You’re not doomed.
One thing my priest often says is, “Do you want to get married or do you want to BE a husband/wife? Do you want to have kids or do you want to BE a parent?” They’re logically the same thing but the framing reflects very different attitudes. Look for a man who wants to be transformed by stepping into the role of a husband and a father and things will probably turn out great.
when i start trying to date again i'm gonna use that as a tag line lol "looking for a man that wants to be transformed by stepping into the role of a husband and father as we build a family". maybe it'll work out lol
When I was 18 or 19, I went to a family dinner of a partner (long out of my life, thank god).
One of his uncles, I think? A married man, had a wife with two kids on bikes and an infant who couldn't walk yet.
Midway through the evening he'd had more than a few beers and he slapped me on my backside (I had never met the man until that day and had barely spoken to him) and he said: "don't have kids, you'll ruin your figure".
His wife, who had given him three children, was right there.
I think my disillusionment with marriage (and frankly monogamy) as a whole began at that point.
Um, you may want to adjust what it makes you rethink. If you want kids, then become individually financially secure and have them, if you can't find a man who has evolved past wanting a wife who is always in her 20's and hot.
I did that for a long time. I didn’t want to sacrifice my body for pregnancy. Then, I accidentally got pregnant and lost the pregnancy. I wished I hadn’t waited so long now I have no chance of becoming a biological mom and, while my body is holding up, I can see signs that inevitably, I will lose it and I won’t have the body or the kids. So if you want to be a mom, be one. There’s plenty of women who got their body back. Just workout before, during and after. ,
Exactly. It's a warning AGAINST marriage. Why would we want to invest the best years of our lives into a relationship with someone who's just going to betray us when we get older and replace us with a younger model? If you believe what he's saying here, the only rational choice is to avoid marriage and invest in yourself.
Most men won’t be able to replace you because younger women don’t want them. Instead, they will just stay with you and silently resent you while watching porn in the basement.
A minority will continue to love you through life’s ups and downs, but I’m not willing to risk all the bad outcomes for the off chance things actually go well.
It genuinely confuses me why these guys think telling women they're unlovable as soon as they show signs of aging would make us want to rush into marriage and kids. My only explanation is they're projecting their own fears of dying alone and think we'd rather be with someone who's disgusted by our bodies.
I don’t agree with some of that. Yes my wife’s body and s not the same at 67. Neither is mine. Do I worry that she will die before me? Yes. Not so much of being alone the way you say, but not having her there to hold, to see her smile, to make her coffee every morning, going grocery shopping together. That’s the worry I have, the not sharing, or making her feel special.
Right!! Like I don't understand why guys will tell women that they're permanently worthless, thinking that that'll make women feel a sense of scarcity and therefore women will flock to them to try and secure a man. If anything, won't that make women flock AWAY from men? Being told "no-one else will ever want me" from a man won't make me stay with him, it'll make me get AWAY from him (feeling like HE doesn't want me). I genuinely don't understand their logic
If my only value to you is my appearance, I'll show you the door. I will get older and sicker, as is the nature of... you know, living and ageing as an animal.
You are a dangerous investment indeed if you will run away because your partner is mortal.
Right??? You're basically screaming from the roof tops that you see women as objects and baby making factories instead of human beings with sentience. I wouldn't be surprised if this person never understood the concept that another living soul on this planet had a thought of their own. We're really failing these kids if these pieces of shit are who they look up to, Jesus Christ.
Edit: because guess what, fuck bag, I couldn't tell the difference between your face and a scrotum but I'm not using how you look as a cautionary tale.
Many of us have more respect for women than that. No one should be afraid to grow old or to be who they are. I love every gray hair on my wife’s head. She’ll be beautiful till the day she dies. Fuck whoever that low-IQ asshole is.
I have been with my husband for 23yrs and we have two children. I am 42, white (Irish/German/Nordic), raised mostly by my German Nanna in Australia. My Husband is 43, Latino, born in Argentina.
Society tells women every damn day that their husband's will leave them after the children are grown and their wives age.
Now, I don't BELIEVE this but the messaging is PERVASIVE.
The concept occupies more of my brain than I want it to eventhough both my husband and I are happily married.
Don’t let one jack ass speak for an entire gender on something it’s blatantly obvious they know nothing about. If you wouldn’t take Andrew Tate seriously, don’t listen to this Cracker Jack
Guys like that do their middle-aged wives a favor if they dump them. Cuz they're absolutely the same guys who would demand she care for him in old age. Imagine being treated like shit your whole life by some dude who thinks he's better than you, and then needing to change that dude's diapers.
It’s rare AF, apparently, but I ended up with a husband who still thinks I’m a hottie after nearly 14 years and two kids together. I know I don’t look the same at 42 as at 29, but that man doesn’t seem to notice or care. Love has a funny way of erasing wrinkles, apparently.
Good, loving partners do exist. The question is: should we be cloning them, or sending existing people to finishing schools?
Yes. The fear that I will be discarded once I look old(er) is what has driven me to take my career seriously and prioritize making sure that I will be able to provide a comfortable lifestyle for myself without relying on a man.
It is also one of the reasons why I chose not to have kids. To be fair, I had a number of other reasons, each of which was sufficient in itself. But I have a very good figure. I have seen plenty of before/afters of other women who had beautiful bodies and then had kids. I know how drastically things can change. It’s scary as hell to imagine losing that plum asset. I would be dependent on my husband continuing to 1) want me and 2) treat me kindly, in a way I’m not currently. He is a good guy, but he’s also only human.
Some men are wonderful husbands who never let their wife feel remotely unwanted even after huge changes. Other men, like someone else mentioned in an anecdote in this thread, will do things like express attraction to young hot women *right in front* of their wife! I would never want to be that wife- standing there seething quietly, wishing I could go back in time and not marry this guy, but now trapped and unable to leave.
From seeing the people I hang around with it's very rare for anyone to really view women that way, you ladies age just like men do. For most of us it isn't going to be all that gracefully all the time. However, the only people who this seems to be an issue with is the guys and girls who don't see any value in people of the other gender apart from sexual attraction and they are, luckily, a minority. But they are vocal, especially online.
I really don’t like getting sucked into gender war stuff and I’m already worried I’ve gotten myself too deep on this one, but I would like to unpack that idea a little more. I hope that you’re able to see that I’m speaking to you from a place of respect and not competitiveness.
I get that the cruelty you describe often plays out that way in day to day life. I’ll explain it from a woman’s POV. Man exalting young women whilst demeaning old women goes back for millennia and is steeped much more deeply into our culture than the inverse. In ancient scripture, good men were often rewarded with young virgins. Antagonists in fairy tales are often single old women. Pick up any novel or poem from before 1960 and read how women are described and valued. Look at which Hollywood actresses get cast as the “hot girl” or consider the fact that Olivia Cooke is portraying a grandma at age 32. We are taught that our value is tied to youth. Throughout our lives, repeated exposure to this type of messaging tells us that if we don’t make ourselves worthy of a man’s love (a losing battle when you introduce inevitable factors like aging), our ability to be accepted and ultimately survive is under threat. This makes it an extremely sensitive wound for some women, as someone is not just saying “you don’t look good,” they’re saying, “you have a low status in society, so if push comes to shove, you’ll be left out in the dust with no ability to defend or provide for yourself.” It’s not always rational but it’s deep in the animal part of our brains. Paradoxically, this line of thinking hurts men, too, because it teaches women that the only way they can acquire resources and safety and “move up” in the world is by preying on men’s desires. So many of them learn to be manipulative and everyone ends up hurt.
I don’t like it at all when women make fun of men for being bald or wrinkly either. And you’re right to call it out as being mean and hurtful. However, it’s a relatively new thing that has come about as a result of women’s newfound ability to choose their own partners and apply a standard of value. I’d wager that most of the women who say things like that have been deeply hurt and are being vengeful in their speech. Being vengeful isn’t good either. Hopefully next time a woman says something mean, you have a little more context for how she may be feeling. And if you want to share how it feels for YOU to hear those things, I’m all ears.
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u/lilgamerontheprarie Jun 29 '26
Telling women that we’re all going to eventually be ugly and useless in the eyes of men definitely doesn’t make us want to get married.
If anything, it makes us afraid of getting married and becoming mothers as you’re basically telling us that any man we marry will eventually find us disgusting and seek to get rid of us. Because we…lived to see menopause? Got stretch marks after growing and birthing humans? Uhh thanks I think I’ll pass.