there are four genders and they are secure attachment, anxious / preoccupied attachment, dismissive / avoidant attachment, and disorganized / fearful attachment

the prototypical complaints that women have about men are complaints about men with dismissive / avoidant attachment, they basically do not apply to men with anxious / preoccupied attachment (who have a totally different set of problems), and not understanding this fucked me up

women in pop culture in the 90s and early 00s: ugh why won't men ever commit

me, an innocent who knew nothing: i literally would have proposed to my first girlfriend if i'd thought there was a chance she'd say yes

there's this weird meta structure where securely attached people just have good relationships, avoidant people refuse to prioritize intimacy, and disorganized people are both rare and have a lot of problems

so most writing about relationships is done by anxious attachers

and since men for various reasons write less about relationships than women, most writing about relationships is done specifically by anxiously attached women

and anxiously attached (straight) women attract and are attracted to avoidantly attached (straight) men

when i was a tiny teenage baby the cultural messages i absorbed about What Was Wrong With Men were complaints about avoidant men: afraid of commitment, pump-and-dumpers, never listen

so i thought all i had to do was not do that stuff and i'd be set

did not work like that. as an anxious attaching guy the girls i attracted and was attracted to were *avoidant*; opposite dynamics

my first gf broke up with me and pretended it was b/c she wasn't attracted to me; months later she admitted it was b/c she felt tied down

this was shocking to me at the time. i literally had not considered the possibility that she could be the one who was afraid of commitment. it was in none of my cultural messaging. the love songs didn't talk about it y'know

there are, to a first approximation, roughly three noninteracting reality tunnels when it comes to (straight) relationships:

1. securely attached couples
2. anxious women and avoidant men
3. avoidant women and anxious men

and most relationship stuff is only about #2

anxious attaching men in particular i think are reluctant to talk about their experiences because their problems seem embarrassing and shameful compared to what's in the discourse; because the discourse mostly represents anxious women they seem like "feminine" problems

as an anxiously attached guy who talks an unusual amount about his relationship stuff i get an unusual amount of guys in my DMs and elsewhere telling me variants of "bro thank you for writing about this oh my god" which is how i know i'm not the only one