The guy is hilarious. But I have some of these traits.
e.g.
I don't ask for help.
I don't cry. (Never in front others at least.)
And you're British!
I've never seen my husband cry (British family), although I've seen him very sad. And he has a lot of trouble asking for help, and we're working on that one, because I am not the only human being who could use help in our household.
Interestingly, the singer of the British band above relates making studio instructions to himself and his bandmates like, "Today, by 5pm, everyone must have cried." (...not sure if substance assisted or not
)
Italian and Middle Eastern men are more expressive than the more northern European types. And even Jesus wept!
So I guess the point is, just because you're male you shouldn't feel a pressure not to do something human - same is true if you substitute female for male in that sentence. There's a social conditioning problem around gender stereotypes that is restrictive and often unhelpful, for people to be fully human.
This is not to say that all men must now cry,
@Slim Jim included. Just that men should feel free to do that if they wish and not feel less manly because of it. Of course there's still a lot of social pressure not to - but without talking about it, we can't change that pressure and unhelpful attitudes that ridicule healthy types of emotional expression.
Yeah I'm not convinced woman respect vulnerability. I often recoil at such instances , displays in other men. (Excessive displays.) I can only imagine what some women must think.
About the stuff that's spoofed, or about displaying emotions that traditionally (Anglo/northern European etc) men have been expected to suppress?
I think whether women respect vulnerability depends on the individual women. We can't broad-brush here. The women I hang out with mostly do.
Granted, the skit is an exaggeration for comedic purposes. Let me pose the question, though, who would a woman rather go out with? This guy, red headed redneck guy, who hits the gym, he's clearly got muscle mass, may act like a caveman, but.... Or a woody allen type? nerdy intellectual, self deprecating but 'sensitive' and understanding.....I think I know the answer....outliers excepted, most woman are going to find the tall strong guy whoa acts like a jerk, if not attractive, certainly a more appealing prospect. I've seen it with my own eyes.
I saw that kind of thing reasonably frequently when I lived in Launceston, Tasmania, and also up in Perth, Western Australia, and in London too - where that kind stuff is more culturally ingrained than in some other places. Sydney was better - just from my experience, which is not a statistically authoritative experience, just anecdotal and talking to people, including lots of resident teenagers!
Brett made that observation dating in his 20s - why did so many nice girls end up with these horrible men? My first relationship was with someone who was pretty horrible viewed in retrospect - but for me the problem was not that I wanted to go out with cavemen, it was that because of my family background my sexual script was basically shot - and I textbook fell subconsciously for exactly the sort of person who replicated the family of origin pattern. If I'd been asked to write an essay about what I was looking for, it was not the same thing as what I was actually ending up with. So the sexual script needed to be re-written.
So for some girls it's that, and for others (like some Year 12s I had in Launceston) they are actually consciously looking for cavemen and find them cool!
Granted though, that was one of the least bright Year 12 cohorts I ever taught - they were pretty unthinking people and they had a pretty low grade average in that class. It was a little like what the film
Idiocracy lampoons. The boys had bullying tendencies and wanted to do bog-laps in their cars, and the girls thought that was super-attractive (which is where they were unlike the majority of teenage girls I have taught - I tended probably not to teach in schools where those kinds of attitudes were majority attitudes).
To an extent people mature out of it (and/or divorce later - marry in haste, repent at leisure etc). But one thing to consider is that outliers match better with outliers, and that's certainly what my husband and I found. So if you're an outlier and looking at what the majority do when dating, that's not actually your pool, so to speak.
Sigh. Should I start a specific thread on this issue? It's such a wrought and complicated subject. It comes up over and over again, and it's not like relationships are a huge NT strength either, no matter what some NDs may think.
Lol
