You start off with your baseline standard, the ones you personally have.

That’s all good.

Then you start becoming influenced by others around you or on the internet, and then you begin to raise your standards.

To make things worse you buy into the idea that you need to have high standards, the highest you can possibly think of. It doesn’t cost you anything. To have high standards you only have to declare it. Now what you would have been satisfied with are no longer satisfactory.

You effectively reduced the chances of finding a guy you’ll be happy with.

To make matters worse for yourself, you start aiming for the best guy available. If you manage to end up with the best guy, and it doesn’t work out, you convince yourself that if the best turns out like this, then every other guy lower, by your standards, are not good enough for you. You need same or higher levels, similar to how someone addicted to drugs finds it hard to readjust. Once the best guy has wronged you, it feels like “where are the good men”

There are problems with aiming for the best, and this applies to many things in general. When you aim for the best, you must also aim to be the best, and actually work towards it. You cannot evaluate something so much more better than you. A woman might not have that incentive to put in the work. If you obtain validation that makes you feel like the best from the men you don’t want, do you don’t have to do anything, you are convinced you are the best, and that a top guy will see you as such

When they don’t, you find that you can’t reduce your high standards. It’ll feel like you are settling or loosing out. And the loss aversion principle guarantees you’ll find it hard to be happy with anyone lower than your high standards.

So is it bad to have high standards? Yes, if you yourself don’t meet those standards, if you think the validations takes the place of hard work, if you think just your existence is suffering. But if you work on yourself to the same level to which you raise your standards, then having high standards is good.

Having high standards by itself is not going to help you, in fact it’ll make things worse, it’ll limit your options and you won’t be able to bring it back down. That’s how you end up saying “all men are …”, and with the weird pride of dying alone, as long as you have your community

At the point you raise up your standards, you might not realize the downstream effects and how you might be screwing yourself over, going with what’s popular

okay this is also an exageration but my argument is that men need for validation from women is more than the other way. extreme one sided. so much that it is like how child follows a mother around. a woman actually told me on here one time actually told me that this is what she thought of mens complaint and yes i did find insulting. but now maybe its true.

i dont know that it is not the same for women their in group bias did not come from nowhere.

i dont have a solution for this. but this is men frustration, society does not care about men always actually means women make men feel invisible. why because of validation.

Original post is here (can't crosspost): https://np.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/s/W7v9nyyh8v

Movember has become a good representation of the frustrations that men are facing

Charity was created to help men, particularly in relation to prostate cancer and later mental health

• It became a men's space and activity that men globally recognised
• Women wanted to help and be included
• The foundation allowed women to participate, saying women act as a gateway to for men's health
• Women were hired by the charity, there was a goal for gender parity through the HeForShe commitment ~49% male, 51% female
• Women became disproportionately represented in leadership/executive positions (some estimates put executive women at ~70%)
• Female CEO was appointed
• Funding was being allocated to things other than prostate cancer through the lense of helping men including:
  • educating women working with men
  • working with UN Women
  • a push for "Healthy masculinities" education
  • suicide prevention and domestic violence programmes, many of which service more women than men

Here we see men's activities or spaces including women, broad equity and social constructs end up benefiting them within the space, the space's original purpose becomes diluted with mission creep and it slowly turns into a shell of what it once was. Reverse any of this and have men within a pro-women's organisation and I can guarantee you there would be an uproar.

Bettina Arndt's substack article from 2025 which shed alot of light on this in first place (which includes a photo of the Movember team at a conference which you should definitely check out)

https://bettinaarndt.substack.com/p/movember-rips-off-mens-health-dollars

P.S. I am aware that the female CEO has left and the executive team is of a different make-up now.

I’ve noticed that these terms are very often used by men to describe their current or ex partners while it’s rarely used the other way around. Why is that? And what do those terms really mean to men?

When I think of a crazy person, I think of someone with severe mental illness, insane behavior, or a drug addict screaming in public transport, yet men use this quite losely to describe many women. What do they actually mean by this? Are they all somehow dating the few genuienly crazy people? Or do they call someones behavior crazy to invalidate their side of the story and to avoid their own accountability in the conflict?

Women causing “drama” follows a similar pattern. I’ve heard some men say that “drama” is basically any conflict. Again, is this word use to discredit someone’s behavior or their interests? It seems some men think that a relationship should have no disagreement at all and the woman should simply follow the man’s lead with no complaints. When she dislikes something in the relationship, she should simply shut up and accept being treated poorly to not be “argumentative”.

I’m especially interested why you guys use these words so much when it’s very rarely seen the other way around. Is it to make yourselves feel better about a breakup or make yourselves look better in front of other people. A woman might say “We had some fights around issue x and I didn’t want to stay in the relationship anymore.”, while a man might say “She was crazy and caused so much drama.” to describe the same scenario.

Women tend to ridicule and berate you for being overly eager in a relationship and it doesn't matter if she's the one that asked you out. It's just strange to me that in the wake of nonchalant pick up artists and cheating men somehow it's worse to be too into the woman you are dating. Too attentive and ready to be available. It's to the point where it seems like being the opposite is better. I want to say that isn't the case but all experience points to the contrary.

I've tried articulating this point before but it usually isn't written with enough time to cover all the points. There won't be any gender shade because everyone does this and it doesn't matter who does it more prominently. People are fickle, they lie, discard and use people and they'll do it to anyone. But they also don't realize or count the times they've done it so they believe “I'd never do that!” that statement is only true if they are infatuated with the person which can change at any time.

Every excuse any of us ever heard from a partner or prospective partner that same person went above and beyond those excuses for people they truly desired. There's no such thing as bad testers, for example. Sure, there are jobs more strict on it or even zero tolerance. But before the day is done I am willing to bet money you could've texted before your shift ended because no matter how strict any job is people be on their phones.

People don't forget you and fall asleep. You decided to deal with them later. If you desire them enough you'll damn near have to remind yourself to sleep and take a break from the high energy and fun of high romantic interest.

I don't need to go down the list. Every excuse you've heard is a lie because people in general break the conventional rules for someone they want. If they don't for you it doesn't have to mean they aren't interested but it is an eyebrow raiser.

So as a heterosexual man it’s not that I don’t like men or can’t have male friends but having male friends isn’t enough for me. I need a relationship with women and I prefer female friends. I prefer company of women.

Women don’t like being friends with men. They are okay being fuck biddies with attractive guys. But for friendships they only want women or a token gay dude.

So for those not keeping score.

Men like women more than other men.

Women like women more than men.

Men are expected to approach women.

Women get to be picky about what guys they want.

Now do you see the problem and why guys have more issues with loneliness than women do?

I have never received a coherent definition of "flirting," despite trying many times. People tell me that lonely men must be doing it poorly, and that sexually successful men must be doing it well, but literally no one can explain what it means.

So, I'm not asking for a definition here. I just want you to give an example of someone flirting well, and an example of someone flirting poorly.

If you're still inclined to use the "It's too complicated to explain..." copout, just don't respond. I'm asking for something very simple here, ​if you can't give simple examples of "good" and "bad," it's because *you* don't understand what flirting is either.