Why The Male Loneliness Epidemic Is Not Women's Problem

On Not Caring About Grown Men-Children

As a child, I imagined that I would do all the things I was taught a woman does: go to college to get my Mrs. (if not there then shortly after), get married to a man who didn’t have a face in my head but I knew he had brown hair and that I wanted to make him wear a pink tie at the wedding, and have kids.

Now, at 23, I don’t want that anymore. All of this could change but with where I am in my life right now I am so, so much happier when I am single. I am so much happier when I am not responsible for my own emotions and mental health in addition to a man’s. I am so much happier when I don’t feel like I have to be constantly anticipating and solving a man’s needs. I am so much happier when I don’t have to babysit — emotionally or physically — a man.

And I am not alone.

The divide between how women of the left and the right see their futures is growing exponentially. Decentering men and the roles we as women are supposed to provide for them and our hypothetical children is on the rise among young people which, perhaps ironically or perhaps predictably, is happening alongside an ever-increasing wave of conservatism in the United States that even seeks to incentivize women to bear children, which will be done at the same time as women are stripped of their rights and the disenfranchised are barred from welfare.

For the women who do follow the path expected of them, many find themselves looking for a way out. According to the American Sociological Association, from 2009-2015 “women initiated 69 percent of all divorces, compared to 31 percent for men.” This same study also found this evidence to be unique to heterosexual marriages, which makes sense as heterosexual marriages often happen — and have happened for centuries — by design, whereas same sex marriages tend to be more intentional as they have only been legal in the United States for 10 years. Unlike same sex marriages, heterosexual marriages historically have been tools for women’s survival, financial security, and starting a family, making women more likely to settle than they would in a marriage that carries stigma and risk.

The Pew Research Center discovered that in 2019 around 40% of adults aged 25-54 are unpartnered and, in contrast to data from 1990, most of them are men. In the last few years the internet has been riddled with conversations about the alleged male loneliness epidemic — men don’t have friendships where they can talk about their feelings, incel culture and forces like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate are on the rise, and women are fed up with mothering their own partners.

It’s not that women don’t want love, it’s that they don’t want to be tied down by men. Women are realizing that if a man isn’t adding to her life, he’s likely putting a strain on it. Women are done babysitting full grown adults — often alongside their actual children — who don’t know how to do the dishes, make friends, or process their emotions. We’re just done. Marriage for women in its origins was a tool for survival, as we lacked the rights and resources to be able to support ourselves. Now that we have the ability to get an education, have a career, and own a house without a man’s assistance, we don’t want him.

The way many of us see it is a man holds us back. He is threatened by our success. He doesn’t know how to change his own child’s diaper. He doesn’t contribute to cleaning the household, but he’s happy to make messes in it. He doesn’t know how to talk about his feelings to anyone other than his wife who, as is the case in most of her close relationships with men, becomes his de facto therapist because the same patriarchy that keeps his salary higher than his female counterparts also discourages him from seeking a mental health professional.

Not only that, but women are disproportionately more likely to be victims of abuse of some kind by a man, and also disproportionately likely to be taken seriously by the court of law (and the court of public opinion) if they do have the courage speak out against it. Beyond that, not only do most perpetrators of abuse (less than 2%) never go to jail, plenty of men who do get accused of these crimes and are found guilty often go on to lead extensive lives outside of their history.

But men need women.

Without a woman, who is going to plan the meals? Who is going to clean the house and do the laundry? Who is going to give them sex? Who is going to be an emotional sponge for them? Who is going to be the collateral damage for their unresolved trauma?

We are tired. I am tired.

I am tired of women existing to take care of men who cannot take care of themselves. I am tired of women keeping secrets about how her boyfriend really treats her until they break up because they knew if they said anything, all of her friends would tell her to run. I am tired of women becoming therapists for the men in her life because they refuse to a professional or even to each other. I am tired of girls saying, “my boyfriend would never let me wear that.”

I know mental health is complicated. I know patriarchy and societal conditioning are complicated. I know that we are all doing the best we can with the bandwidth we have and that’s okay. But I am done being the therapist, the fixer, the mother. I am done internalizing the beliefs of those who externalize their pain in a way that hurts me despite me breaking my back to help them. That’s also okay.

I struggle too. I have for a very long time. Anorexia, OCD, bulimia, depression, my brain is a fun little cocktail of it all, like when you go to a McDonald’s and mix all the soda fountain drinks together in your cup. That said, I am very careful with how I speak about all of it — except with my therapist and my mother — because I don’t want someone to be take these issues on themselves.

The male loneliness epidemic isn’t just about romance; men turn to the women in their lives consistently as their sole confidantes, and as we saw, their friendships with men tend to be less emotionally vulnerable. Men need support, and women can provide some of that. In that same vein, a lot of women, particularly girlfriends and wives, are tired of being the sole providers of it in addition to the other responsibilities they take on in the relationship (i.e. initiating hard conversations, cleaning up around the house, taking care of the kids).

Women are worn out from centuries of being expected to be the nurturer, the forgiver, the mother to the full-grown men in our lives, and the data is striking. Women don’t want men anymore, and they don’t need them either now that women are able to survive without a man’s proximity to education, a career, and income. In a report by Pew Research Center based on research retrieved in 2019, the data shows that 61% of single men are looking for a committed relationship, compared to just 38% of single women.

Referring to Clayman Institute Postdoctoral Fellow Angelica Ferrara’s and Research Assistant Dylan P. Vergara’s study with Stanford University, which was featured in Psychology of Men & Masculinities, the two highlight that “low levels of emotionally supportive friendships among cisgender men in the U.S. and U.K. to an unbalanced emotional and social demand on the women in their lives. This demand, in turn, may lead to decreased wellbeing for women, when they give more time and emotional resources than they receive in these relationships.”

Women are just done. Maybe not you. Maybe your boyfriend, husband, and every man you’ve known in your lifetime is perfect and you’ve never struggled with any of this. I am genuinely happy for you, but please don’t let your comfort and contentment blind you from the damning truth that you are in the minority.

I get that men are hurting. I get that it is so hard. But I also think there comes a point where when men as a collective refuse to work on their issues despite being able to and having more agency as anybody, they have to take responsibility or at least be aware of what it does to those around them and make a change.

I don’t care about the male loneliness epidemic and there being an expectation for women to do something to solve it, another instance of women being told to clean up messes they didn’t make and repair relationships they didn’t break.

Oh, so enough men have treated women as disposable, hysterical bodies for so many centuries that as soon as women earned the right to support themselves they don’t need or even want men anymore?

Oh, so they listened to so much Andrew Tate and spent too much time on Reddit calling Margot Robbie “mid” that no women want to touch them?

Oh, so they can’t talk about their feelings to anyone including a therapist and sink into their loneliness because the patriarchy tells them to suck it up, the same patriarchy that so many of them refuse to denounce or even acknowledge exists?

I don’t care. I just don’t. I think about all of the times I have defended nearly every single man I have ever dated knowing deep in my gut I was stuck in the lion’s den. I guess I always felt I had to protect each of them one more time, to do what I could so that no one would see him the way I was desperately trying not to.

To sell the illusion that we were happy and things were so good, most of all to myself and also to the drunk girl telling me what a dick he is in the bathroom of that swanky bar as I sobbed on the floor after what he said to me, and I said “No, no, I love him. He’s wonderful.”

That he told me “what’s the point?” of me coming to his house after a month apart after I told him I wasn’t ready to have sex with him.

That he treated me like an emotional punching bag because no matter what I did, it was never and would never be enough for him.

That it’s okay that he pushed me down on the bed twice while I tried to get away and raped me because he loved me, and I knew he loved me because he gave me his smoothie when I didn’t like the one I got.

That every single woman I know has had an experience at least partially adjacent to every single one of those experiences, and that so many of them have yet to experience them but they will.

They will.

Does this mean these are what all of my experiences with men have been? Does this mean that it is every woman’s experience? Does this mean that every man is guilty of all of these things?

No. I never suggested otherwise. I said every woman I know has had an adjacent experience to mine, or at the very least knows a woman who does. Why did I say that? Because it’s true. And if you’re thinking to yourself, “none of the women I know have ever been through that,” think about what they might not be telling you. Think about why they haven’t.

My message to women is this: you are not his therapist. You are not the collateral damage for his unsolved problems he refuses to work on despite you doing everything to try to help him. You are a whole person who exists for so much more than nurturing and taking on the pain of others.

Grace writes ⋆⭒˚.⋆ grace ⋆⭒˚.⋆ — personal essays and cultural commentary with a loose focus on body politics, feminism, relationships, and life in the digital age, with some poetry on the side.