Here's some thoughts based on secondary sources and my own observations.
Let's start with some observations I have made:
1. Many men are lonely and heavily yearn for physical intimacy and romantic relationships
2. Many men nonetheless struggle in finding and holding romantic relationships
So let's answer these questions:
1. Why do men so heavily yearn for physical intimacy, and by extension romantic relationships?
I think it's because male friendships are very lacking in physical contact - in other words, touching one another. Now, if you are male and just cringed or had some reflexive reaction to that phrasing, that's exactly the problem. There's a huge stigma against intimate touch between male friends. It sounds like an incredibly juvenile thing, but that's also exactly the problem - it starts from when we are very young. It's exactly that juvenile ick against touching one another (which I believe is largely born of modern homophobia, a whole other can of worms) that sets men up for failure. From a young age, boys are inclined to literally starve themselves of touch. Men will not hug one another, lean on one another while watching a movie, or even give a light, gentle touch to comfort one another. The only acceptable physical contact between men today is a firm handshake or a knuckle sandwich.
But humans are very much social animals. Most of us have a very deep desire and need for physical touch, whether we are aware of it or not. So, of course, you get a lot of men who can't fulfill their needs in male relationships and therefore feel incredibly lonely. But since they refuse to find that intimacy with other men (god forbid you act gay!), they have to look for it in women, and therefore romantic relationships. After all, you also can't have physical intimacy in platonic relationships with women based on more general societal stigmas.
Thus, men are overwhelmingly lonely from the get go, crippled by juvenile stigma against physical affection among their peers.
2. Why do men so deeply struggle in the game of romantic relationships?
I believe this stems from, essentially, just the nature of history. Let's start with what changed and what didn't. Why didn't men struggle as much in the past?
Male culture, and generally any such social constructs, are relatively slow to change. The fact is, expectations placed on men and social skills normally acquired by men have not drastically changed in the last several generations. But material conditions and social conditions in the world have drastically changed.
In the past, men would bring notable material benefits to a relationship. After all, they were necessarily the breadwinners in the relationship since women hadn't gained the social acceptance to truly join the work force yet. Thus, even men with poor relationship skills could find and keep a romantic relationship by material dependency alone. Thus, men did not have a strong incentive to build relationship skills in the first place - they simply didn't need to. Some men, of course, still gained strong relationship skills, but not nearly as many, proportionally, as women generally do. After all, the only thing women could bring to a relationship in that time would be relationship skills. For women, gaining strong relationship skills was a matter of survival, on the same level of importance as it was for men to gain work skills.
But obviously, that has changed. Whether or not you think it's a good thing, women have gained the social acceptance and at least something close to equality in the work place. The value of bringing material benefits to a relationship has, naturally. plummeted because of that. But male culture has remained largely the same. Men are still expected to be the main source of income in a relationship and men are still not taught strong relationship skills.
In the game of romantic relationships, men have recently lost their greatest advantage while still holding on to their greatest weakness. No wonder they're struggling!
Bonus: 3. Why don't men just get better at relationships then?
Herein lies the crux. It's just not something you can learn by yourself. It's literally skills regarding how to interact with someone else. But who the hell is going to teach them? Certainly not the other men who are equally bad at it. Certainly not women, when they can just pick from the pool of men who do have good relationship skills instead. Maybe they could turn to the men who do have good relationship skills, but even that's difficult, because we've culturally stigmatized those men as "weak" and "feminine". It's not that there's a lack of male role models in society today, it's that there's an inherent stigma against the men who would be considered a "positive" role model. We simply do not look to ugly, short, and kind men as role models regardless of how successful they might literally be. Naturally, when we see good looking, tall men who are successful we assume it's because they're good looking and tall, not their social skills. (insert tangent about how it's also easier to find opportunities to learn social skills when you're good looking to begin with)
Now, also think about how we acquire social skills in the first place. It's basically all passively absorbed through the environment and the people around us over the course of us growing up. That's also why this kind of culture changes so slowly. The fact is, it's incredibly difficult to actively learn social skills - it's not just a matter of "go to therapy", it's an entire childhood's worth of social skills that were never learned. How the hell do you expect someone to just go out and make up for that? Not to mention the lack of people willing or able to teach it, as discussed above.
Exaggeration and hyperbole to make a point aside, of course it's not actually impossible. It's just very difficult.
But at the end of the day, humans simply do not want to do difficult things, especially when an easier alternative is presented:
Bonus: 4. The manosphere
We have a tendency to take the easier path forward. There's nothing wrong with that - after all, it's our very desire for ease and efficiency that has allowed humanity to progress to this point in the first place. We love to find paths forward where there's nothing we have to do, expend the least amount of energy. But that's also a dangerous tendency.
Given the difficulty in improving one's own relationship skills, it is simply far easier to blame the problem on something else. Especially so if the target of the blame is something you can't change, because that means you don't have to do anything about it. Rather than accepting the difficult path ahead which requires a lot of work, we look for shortcuts, easy paths forward that require us to do nothing - to be energy efficient.
And it's so easy to find that alternate path too. The fact is, regardless of the proverb, we do judge books by their cover. The fact is, ugly, short men do have an inherent disadvantage in finding relationships in the present landscape. So of course it's natural to latch on to that. It's so much easier to put the blame on those things than to try to make up for decades of social skills, because that means there's nothing you have to do - after all, you can't just fix your genetics. Similarly, you can simply blame women for it, because the fact is, they are the one's rejecting you. And because you can't just mind control women in real life, once again, that means there's nothing you have to do. And we love when there's nothing we have to do.
And thus is born the manosphere. Grifters taking advantage of desperate men, giving them an easy alternative that just requires them to swipe their credit card, communities of men finally finding some intimacy and escape from loneliness through their shared grief, echo chambers doubling, tripling down on the easy paths forward, toxic role models offering tantalizing visions of what it looks like when those easy paths forward are fully realized.
Men are trapped. The fact is, it will take generations before male culture fully adjusts to modern material and social requirements. In the meanwhile, those entire generations are trapped in the cycle, seeing no other way forward but to go backwards, pushing themselves ever further away from the very thing they want. But no one wants to help. Nor do they want to accept help. After all, they're men. And men solve their own problems.
So the silent screaming will continue.
Let's start with some observations I have made:
1. Many men are lonely and heavily yearn for physical intimacy and romantic relationships
2. Many men nonetheless struggle in finding and holding romantic relationships
So let's answer these questions:
1. Why do men so heavily yearn for physical intimacy, and by extension romantic relationships?
I think it's because male friendships are very lacking in physical contact - in other words, touching one another. Now, if you are male and just cringed or had some reflexive reaction to that phrasing, that's exactly the problem. There's a huge stigma against intimate touch between male friends. It sounds like an incredibly juvenile thing, but that's also exactly the problem - it starts from when we are very young. It's exactly that juvenile ick against touching one another (which I believe is largely born of modern homophobia, a whole other can of worms) that sets men up for failure. From a young age, boys are inclined to literally starve themselves of touch. Men will not hug one another, lean on one another while watching a movie, or even give a light, gentle touch to comfort one another. The only acceptable physical contact between men today is a firm handshake or a knuckle sandwich.
But humans are very much social animals. Most of us have a very deep desire and need for physical touch, whether we are aware of it or not. So, of course, you get a lot of men who can't fulfill their needs in male relationships and therefore feel incredibly lonely. But since they refuse to find that intimacy with other men (god forbid you act gay!), they have to look for it in women, and therefore romantic relationships. After all, you also can't have physical intimacy in platonic relationships with women based on more general societal stigmas.
Thus, men are overwhelmingly lonely from the get go, crippled by juvenile stigma against physical affection among their peers.
2. Why do men so deeply struggle in the game of romantic relationships?
I believe this stems from, essentially, just the nature of history. Let's start with what changed and what didn't. Why didn't men struggle as much in the past?
Male culture, and generally any such social constructs, are relatively slow to change. The fact is, expectations placed on men and social skills normally acquired by men have not drastically changed in the last several generations. But material conditions and social conditions in the world have drastically changed.
In the past, men would bring notable material benefits to a relationship. After all, they were necessarily the breadwinners in the relationship since women hadn't gained the social acceptance to truly join the work force yet. Thus, even men with poor relationship skills could find and keep a romantic relationship by material dependency alone. Thus, men did not have a strong incentive to build relationship skills in the first place - they simply didn't need to. Some men, of course, still gained strong relationship skills, but not nearly as many, proportionally, as women generally do. After all, the only thing women could bring to a relationship in that time would be relationship skills. For women, gaining strong relationship skills was a matter of survival, on the same level of importance as it was for men to gain work skills.
But obviously, that has changed. Whether or not you think it's a good thing, women have gained the social acceptance and at least something close to equality in the work place. The value of bringing material benefits to a relationship has, naturally. plummeted because of that. But male culture has remained largely the same. Men are still expected to be the main source of income in a relationship and men are still not taught strong relationship skills.
In the game of romantic relationships, men have recently lost their greatest advantage while still holding on to their greatest weakness. No wonder they're struggling!
Bonus: 3. Why don't men just get better at relationships then?
Herein lies the crux. It's just not something you can learn by yourself. It's literally skills regarding how to interact with someone else. But who the hell is going to teach them? Certainly not the other men who are equally bad at it. Certainly not women, when they can just pick from the pool of men who do have good relationship skills instead. Maybe they could turn to the men who do have good relationship skills, but even that's difficult, because we've culturally stigmatized those men as "weak" and "feminine". It's not that there's a lack of male role models in society today, it's that there's an inherent stigma against the men who would be considered a "positive" role model. We simply do not look to ugly, short, and kind men as role models regardless of how successful they might literally be. Naturally, when we see good looking, tall men who are successful we assume it's because they're good looking and tall, not their social skills. (insert tangent about how it's also easier to find opportunities to learn social skills when you're good looking to begin with)
Now, also think about how we acquire social skills in the first place. It's basically all passively absorbed through the environment and the people around us over the course of us growing up. That's also why this kind of culture changes so slowly. The fact is, it's incredibly difficult to actively learn social skills - it's not just a matter of "go to therapy", it's an entire childhood's worth of social skills that were never learned. How the hell do you expect someone to just go out and make up for that? Not to mention the lack of people willing or able to teach it, as discussed above.
Exaggeration and hyperbole to make a point aside, of course it's not actually impossible. It's just very difficult.
But at the end of the day, humans simply do not want to do difficult things, especially when an easier alternative is presented:
Bonus: 4. The manosphere
We have a tendency to take the easier path forward. There's nothing wrong with that - after all, it's our very desire for ease and efficiency that has allowed humanity to progress to this point in the first place. We love to find paths forward where there's nothing we have to do, expend the least amount of energy. But that's also a dangerous tendency.
Given the difficulty in improving one's own relationship skills, it is simply far easier to blame the problem on something else. Especially so if the target of the blame is something you can't change, because that means you don't have to do anything about it. Rather than accepting the difficult path ahead which requires a lot of work, we look for shortcuts, easy paths forward that require us to do nothing - to be energy efficient.
And it's so easy to find that alternate path too. The fact is, regardless of the proverb, we do judge books by their cover. The fact is, ugly, short men do have an inherent disadvantage in finding relationships in the present landscape. So of course it's natural to latch on to that. It's so much easier to put the blame on those things than to try to make up for decades of social skills, because that means there's nothing you have to do - after all, you can't just fix your genetics. Similarly, you can simply blame women for it, because the fact is, they are the one's rejecting you. And because you can't just mind control women in real life, once again, that means there's nothing you have to do. And we love when there's nothing we have to do.
And thus is born the manosphere. Grifters taking advantage of desperate men, giving them an easy alternative that just requires them to swipe their credit card, communities of men finally finding some intimacy and escape from loneliness through their shared grief, echo chambers doubling, tripling down on the easy paths forward, toxic role models offering tantalizing visions of what it looks like when those easy paths forward are fully realized.
Men are trapped. The fact is, it will take generations before male culture fully adjusts to modern material and social requirements. In the meanwhile, those entire generations are trapped in the cycle, seeing no other way forward but to go backwards, pushing themselves ever further away from the very thing they want. But no one wants to help. Nor do they want to accept help. After all, they're men. And men solve their own problems.
So the silent screaming will continue.
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