Men face scarcity. Women face danger. Both are exhausting — just in completely different ways.
For men, dating is like sitting in a room without food. You’re hungry. You know exactly what you need, but there’s nothing around you. Every so often, someone opens the door and tosses in a scrap, and you scramble for it. You might have to wait a long time for the next one, and sometimes it’s gone before you can even touch it. The problem is obvious: there’s nothing here.
For women, dating is like sitting in a room overflowing with food — but most of it is moldy, spoiled, or outright dangerous. You can’t just grab the first thing you see, because you know it could make you sick, or worse. You spend more energy inspecting and discarding than eating, and sometimes you wonder if anything here is safe at all. The problem is obvious: there’s plenty here, but most of it will hurt me.
Each group looks at the other’s problem and struggles to understand. The empty-room people say, “At least you have food!” The moldy-room people say, “At least you can eat without worrying!”
What they miss is that hunger and danger are both hard to live with — they’re just hard in completely different ways.
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The problem is most people don’t see what you’re saying and only see their own side and dismiss the other side when it comes up.
Like, your argument presupposes that the majority of men and women recognize this fact when even just the man or bear meme proves otherwise.
That was a really good breakdown on the issues we face. How might you recommend that some empathy and connection might be fostered across rooms ?
I think it’s even more complex than this analogy. Mostly people are just self absorbed and that’s it. Also lots of people push others away with their lack of empathy and entitlement. I know many women who were sympathetic to men’s issues right up to the point those same men started to say how good those women have it, and completely disregard what those women were saying, then tell what those women feel (women disagreed but who cares) and so on. Hard to feel empathy to people who disregard you and disrespect you, it’s basically agreeing that it’s okay and should be like that
What an outstanding analogy!
I really hate this analogy, and every other one like it (eg the whole swamp vs desert thing). Why you may ask? Because it assumes that, by default, women are higher quality than men on average, and that most single men are, let’s see how you put it… “moldy, spoiled or outright dangerous”.
Do you sincerely believe that the average single woman is higher quality than the average single man? Because if you don’t, then it becomes unavoidable to conclude (under this analogy) that men have to deal with a dating pool that is both small AND low quality.
Legit question, and i’m really asking this because i’m curious and want to understand women’s mindset better, i’ not trying to start a gender war… but how can women possibly look at men’s scenario and say “at least you can eat without worrying” ? Isn’t the whole summary of our scenario is that we’re ‘malnurished’ ? And that we *do* have to worry because we don’t know when the scraps will be thrown to us, and if we’ll even be able to eat the scraps?
Men and women’s dating issues have way more in common than they think
Just a dude over here who’s never been starving. The scarcity is way overblown. That’s just what you see on Reddit because it’s always low quality men who don’t want to work on themselves who come on here complaining.
Ehhh sometimes I wonder if it’s a difference in approaches type thing. I’m a dude but it seems like some women unknowingly have a “hoop” to jump through that makes them look less serious. I’m 100% not going to be your FWB or a friend for a year before we can date. Me not wanting to be your FWB or friend first doesn’t mean I’m trying to sleep with you and never call again.
As a woman this is my experience on the apps. I am bombarded with guys who aren’t my type, and every time I’ve decided to take a chance on a guy I was on the fence about, they’ve either been aggressive or stalked me. The guys who I liked who were normal and cute felt “no romantic connection” and ended things with me probably because they had other options. That’s just life.
Could I have sex tomorrow if I wanted to? Yeah. But that’s not what I’m looking for. Looking for someone who lives nearby, has similar values (religion/politics), similar interests (outdoorsy), no kids but wants them, age gap less than 5 years or so. I’m very relaxed on appearance, weight, and height. When I narrow men in my area down to that, I get like one match maybe quarterly.
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What kind of analogy is this?
If you’re in a room without “food” walk out of the room and go find food elsewhere. Interesting enough, women are already doing this, instead of staying in the dating realm, many are finding fulfillment in other things. Are men doing the same?
Also, what is this scarcity that men face that you speak of?
One thing I hate the is default assumption that a man who gets little interest from women is a problematic person. If a man complains about his lack of options, people blame him. If a woman complains about her lack of options, people blame men in general.
It seems the common narrative is that a woman’s approval is the best thing you can have as a man as far as dating/relationships go. Combine that with all the talk about how man are awful, don’t put in effort, the bar is in hell, yada yada yada, and you get a ton of people who genuinely believe that all you have to do as a man is not trip over the ridiculously low bar and you’ll be swimming in options.
It doesn’t work like that in practice. It’s possible to be a decent, upstanding guy that women just don’t like for reasons nobody can pinpoint.
Yeah, both rooms sound exhausting in their own way. Guess the real trick is figuring out how to meet in the hallway before either of you starve or get food poisoning
This analogy implies most men are trash / dangerous / toxic.
The scraps men get are moldy, spoiled or outright dangerous too 🙂
some deal with level 1 problems, other with level 2 problems. everyone will then have to face level 3…4…5 etc problems. just different starting line.
This is a pretty big overgeneralization. You’re listing one stereotype type for men and women. This is not the same experience for everyone.
Yes, people can have more empathy, but this just feels like a simple and shallow summary.
> The problem is obvious: there’s plenty here, but most of it will hurt me.
I have to take issue here with “most”. In the West, at least (I’m not qualified to comment for elsewhere – but likely other places not in the West as well), if you lock an attractive woman in a room with a random man for a day with no consequences zero harm will come to her. Even a random *single* man, since I reckon the safe ones are more likely to be in long-term relationships anyway.
The problem is that the one time it happens with the wrong man she comes out traumatised or dead. So it’s more like there’s plenty of food and most of it is *fine I guess*, and there’s some that’s really good, and there’s some that’s deadly poison and you don’t know which stuff it is.
Not a bad summary.
As far as the “why”, politicians, all politicians like when their constituencies are unhappy, angry and dislike one another; so thei indoctrinate their pawns to vomit soundbites without processing what is that they are actually saying, promoting divisiveness and hate.
So, here we are, everyone is pointing finger to everyone else, and treating everyone else like an enemy.
Do you know what happens when you treat someone like an enemy? They will become your enemy.
>The problem is obvious: there’s plenty here, but most of it will hurt me.
This isn’t true, though, and that’s insulting to men. Most men will not hurt or harm a woman, even if they do not end up a good match. It’s not even a plurality of men that will. Most men are not spoiling garbage