I was up until 2 a.m. last night explaining to an online friend that like, not holding men to a high standard while dating them because you're afraid they'll disappoint you if you do is actually a self fulfilling prophecy

I don't know what to say to women when they hear about the things Erik has done to enrich my life and be their best self for me and respond with some version of "I'm afraid I could never get a man to do that for me"

Men can sniff that shit out you know. Maintaining the lowest possible standard allows them to make you feel like a huge bitch for wanting better, and constantly keep you on your toes in fear that he'll leave if you push back a little; if you fail to stay "chill".

Having what you want starts with spending some time digging real deep until you can remember the corniest, most embarrassing fantasies you had about love as a kid and then deciding that those fantasies are valid and that you deserve nothing less.

It's scary to compare what you've got to an ideal that exists in the most vulnerable part of your psyche, but you can't value your time until you do. After that, spending time with men who refuse to do the bare minimum emotional labor feels like the huge ripoff it was all along.

Suddenly all the self-serving excuses men come up with to justify their behavior ("that's just how men are" "at least I'm not as bad as my dad" "science says it's actually good that I'm a huge piece of shit") sound like a choice they're making.

My friend's jaw hit the floor when I told her that if a man I'm with behaves inappropriately while we're out together, the date ENDS. I go home. That is still my policy after 8 years of co-habitating with my partner, too.

Ladies, practice this phrase: "I'm tired of pretending to have fun while you (pout/rules-lawyer me about my preferences/ignore my comfort/etc), I'm going home to watch a movie/read a book/cook a delicious meal for one/enjoy a nice night to myself."

Or, if you're with a group of friends and your date is choosing to respond to stress in a way that is ruining your day, you can absolutely say "I want you to go for a walk and come back in an hour when you're ready to join us again." Repeat like a broken record until they go.

Dudes who exhaust you with their pathetic man-baby shit and can't handle this level of boundary setting without throwing a fit are completely expendable and replaceable and never let anyone tell you otherwise.

Ok, to the dudes out there who feel irreparably harmed by toxic masculinity or childhood abuse or emotional neglect, and who feel alienated from their own ability to love: you are not broken beyond repair. You are capable of so much good.

BUT, you can't make women responsible for your healing. It's not on them to cope with the fallout of your pain. THEY need therapy for what men have done to them; they can't be your therapist on top of that. It's too much to ask.

Recognize that no matter the root cause, harming others and draining their resources is ALWAYS a choice you are making, not something that just happens. You have the power to make different choices. Like the choice to see professional help, or join a support group.

Ladies, if you call him out on his shit and he responds with his three part essay on the ravages of emotionally distant fathers, please feel free to interrupt him with:

"Wow, that sounds like something to bring up with a trained therapist. I hope you can find help for that! In the meantime though, I need you to stop doing x and tell me how you will respond differently in the future when y happens."

On emotional labor and how to do it: https://the-orbit.net/brutereason/2015/07/27/emotional-labor-what-it-is-and-how-to-do-it/

As long as y'all are here, hi, I make erotic comics about love and horror set against lush fantastical worlds. Please consider supporting me here:
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Hi new readers, allow me to use the time i committed murder as an example of how to apply this advice to friendships and other social situations: https://twitter.com/celineorelse/status/990636728498180096?s=19

This thread is making the rounds again, so here's a link to a follow up thread about going forward from this point: https://twitter.com/celineorelse/status/994620172391591936

My emotional labor thread has gone viral on tumblr and facebook, and while I'm happy that people are finding it helpful as someone who makes poverty wages it would be real nice if all that exposure translated into actual financial support, so: https://twitter.com/celineorelse/status/998922486694719489

This amazing, heartbreaking piece by @carolitajohnson is what I mean when I say not holding dudes to a higher standard because you're afraid they'll disappoint you becomes a self fulfilling prophecy: https://longreads.com/2018/06/20/a-womans-work-home-economics/

Michael's love for Carolita is real, and her love for him is real---none of this is to deny the truth of that, or to shame either of them for the people they became to fit into each other's lives.

But my heart breaks at the ways Carolita, a highly educated, independent feminist, learned to tiptoe around Michael's fragility because that's ultimately easier and less painful than being called a nag or having your expertise and care be felt as castrating, humiliating.

This is what I mean when I say men are exhausting.
This is what I mean when I say men drain the life out of women---even loving, well intentioned, adoring men.
Loving men comes with a high price tag, and I'm tired of watching women get robbed.

Have men shrunken themselves for the women they love? Oh boy they sure have.
We call them fools. They're pathetic. They've been castrated, henpecked, cucked.
But we TRAIN WOMEN to shrink themselves for the men they love. We punish women for resisting that process.

Listen to these episodes of RCP about coercive control with Prof. Evan Stark, one of the leading experts on domestic violence from back when "domestic violence" wasn't even a concept: https://soundcloud.com/real-crime-profile/episode-67-coercive-control-laura-interviews-professor-evan-stark
and https://soundcloud.com/real-crime-profile/episode-68-more-on-coercive-control-with-professor-evan-starke-mixdown

Something that blew my mind when I listened was the idea that if men were controlled in the ways women expect to be controlled in a romantic het relationship, we would expect him to lash out with violence and applaud him as a hero for doing so.

I am *not saying* Michael was an abusive partner! But I am just trying to highlight how much of our views about heterosexual relationships is based around the idea that women should and must tolerate a low level of stress and control...

And that this stress and control is normal, ok, and not in any way humiliating because women exist to be controlled and stressed by men. It starts LONG before we become sexually active, with our gender expression being policed from a young age.

It feels like the easiest, most natural thing in the world to then have your partners subtly test you and control you. You know what happens when you go off script. You can handle the gaslighting and fights sometimes and get what you need, but you can't handle it every time.

Men know how much it hurts to be called a nag. Men know you are terrified of their anger, even if they would never physically hurt you. Maybe you aren't afraid of their anger, but you are exhausted by it, and you know it isn't worth it in the moment.

Men have that space afforded to them. Even if they didn't explicitly train the women in their lives to avoid those tripwires, they're comfortable knowing other men did the job for them long before they showed up.

This dynamic stunts men and hurts them. It protects them from the consequences of their behavior, and brittles the intimacy they experience with others.

You can be happy living like this as long as you think this is as good as it gets, but that illusion requires your loved ones to play along...and it hurts BAD when those people decide they're done.