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this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2024
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Here's another thing that I was just reminded of in this very thread, lmfao:
Men are expected to accept unsolicited advice at face value when they want to vent, because we're supposed to be the ones with all the answers, and if a man is complaining about a problem, then he's obviously just missing the answer.
This actually blew up my last relationship, right at the beginning of the pandemic, when my girlfriend at the time was stressed from being laid off and we weren't able to see each other due to the isolation orders.
She would try to vent to me about her problems, looking for support in a time of emotional vulnerability, and I, an inexperienced idiot just trying to be helpful, would suggest solutions that I thought she hadn't considered. If you can't guess exactly how that went, you've almost certainly never been in a serious relationship.
What made it worse is she would then say to stop mansplaining, which made me defensive because I thought she was tacitly accusing me of being intentionally misogynistic when I was honestly just trying to be helpful. At the time, I figured I just needed to adjust my approach a little bit, not completely change course. Unsurprisingly, that didn't work.
It was only in hindsight, some time after she had dumped my dumb ass, and I had blocked and deleted her number, that I was complaining to my friends and getting the exact same kind of thing back that I realized, "oh wow, I get it now, that is actually really fucking annoying and invalidating."
It was also around this time, while discussing my experiences with friends who have been diagnosed, that I realized that I might have ADHD. So that definitely hadn't helped.
In the extremely unlikely event you're reading this, K, I'm sorry. I figured out what I did wrong, just a little too late.
It's not entirely on you. Accusing you of mansplaining is not cool, she should've just said something like "i'm sharing this because I'm looking for emotional support, not solutions, so please stop trying to solve my problems when I'm just venting".
In a sense, how people react to having problems shared with them is a cultural difference, neither is right or wrong but they can be jarring and confusing when you're used to one culture but interact with a different one. But it's not fair to just assume the other culture is acting in bad faith
With my brother I’ve started asking “are you looking for advice or do you just want someone to vent to?”. I think most people can do better playing both roles.
In all fairness, she was pretty patient with me for a bit, but as I alluded to, I attempted to apply small course corrections when I should have tried a different course entirely. In reality, this was the cumulative effect of multiple different occasions.
See, my dumb ass didn't think it was an issue with what I was saying, but how I was saying it. So I figured it was just a matter of trying to be more tactful with my suggestions. Obviously, that wasn't it.
Sure, she could have been more mature and introspective about it, but so could I. So it's kind of a wash.
I can't really blame her because of the shit she was going through. There's a bit more context that I don't really want to get into on a public forum, but in hindsight her reaction is understandable.
Kinda hard not to blame myself when it was ultimately my fuck up, however. I'm still dealing with that over 4 years later.
Had a gf way back in the day explain this to me. "When we're venting we want emotional support. Stop trying to give us solutions."
Dated many women in the 25-years since I was given these wise words, seen the truth of that advice over and over. Yet I still struggle to STFU. It's so prevalent among men, I wonder if we're not hardwired to go into problem solving mode when confronted with an issue.
I think it's because we feel that we can find the solution to the problem, it will stop the pain that our partner is feeling at the situation.
Because it is, right? Right?!? When your car brakes makes weird noises you replace them to fix it and stop whining. Why doesn't this work with women too? /s
I'm sorry you equated me saying we want to help our partner feel better with 'stop whining'.
I mean, if it's a problem, fix it. If you don't want it fixed, shut your cake hole.
And there's the toxic form of that sentiment
Yeah not wanting to be someone's feelings toilet sure is toxic.
Holy shit, it's almost like men and women sometimes have different motivations! Maybe the problem isn't the event, but how she feels about it. And maybe the solution is to let her get it off her chest instead of suppressing it. I know, us guys generally don't like to deal with our feelings, but that doesn't mean they don't exist, or that it wouldn't be healthier if we did.
Feelings are shit. And no, I'm not being dismissive, I'm being metaphorical.
When you eat, you mash up the food with your mouth and saliva is added and then it gets pushed into your stomach with various glandular juices and it gets squished around into a paste and then pushed through your intestines where it is attacked by yet more enzymes and bacteria, nutrients and fluids are extracted and the unusable brown sludge that gets pushed out as a waste product is what we call "shit." Who's hungry?
When you perceive stimuli, electromagnetic, mechanical or chemical signals enter your senses, are transduced into action potentials which fire across synapses, signals travel along nerve cells to your brain where the processes of filtering and attending, perception and decoding happens, in a process I don't think we fully understand yet, these perceptions are compared to memories, recognition, learning or insight occurs and the energy left over from this experience gets pushed out as a waste product that we call "feelings."
If you take a bad shit, if it hurts, if it's difficult, if it's messy, it can be an indication that your body or your diet are unhealthy. If it's too much of a problem for too long it's time to talk to a healthcare professional because maybe you've got a condition. But if everything was fine and then you ate that suspiciously room temperature shrimp cocktail at that non-chain steakhouse 150 miles inland that hasn't changed its decor since the 1980s, probably that's the problem.
Deal with your bad feelings the same way you deal with a bad shit: troubleshoot, diagnose, take corrective action, return to service, monitor for further issues. Or do what women do and use your acquaintances and/or your Tiktok audience as feelings toilets, I guess. Just dump your shit onto other people to deal with.
The overall topic here is gender double standards, right? Well, I don't get to use people as feelings toilets. So people don't get to use me as a feelings toilet.
And you don't perhaps think your attitude is guided by your feelings? Why should others around you have to be the toilet where you deal with your feelings by having such a negative attitude? Or perhaps none of us are sufficient to do this on our own, and sometimes we rely on those close to us to get us through the parts we find difficult.
The fact you liken emotions to a waste product, and not an equally vital part of the entire process, says it all.
Nope. Fair is fair no matter how you feel about it.
OP asked a question.
All men are required to be sufficient to do this on our own. If he isn't he is discarded. We should also discard women for the same reasons. Fuck that double standard.
Taking a shit is a pretty important part of life as a mammal, but you're expected to shut the fucking door while you're on the can.
Yeah, this reads like, "I suck at this skill, so this skill must be useless and the people who do use it are wrong."
More like "if I attempt to engage in this activity, I will be punished for it, so I have no intention of tolerating it from others."
I don't get to cry on anyone's shoulder. So no one gets to cry on mine. End of discussion.
I struggle with this too. I think it's because it feels so damned nonproductive to not try and figure out how to make things better. Matter of fact, it feels like how I approach people dumping personal problems at work...indifference I suppose. And that's the last thing I want to show someone I care about. So it weighs me down.
I've taken to asking questions from different angles during the venting, and this seems to be my best strategy. Results are mixed.
I've accepted that I can't be one of these "there, there" people because I don't enjoy feeling useless. I care, what's being said matters to me, but I can't be myself in the situation. And that feels bad.
Ah, the "it's not about the nail" situation. https://youtu.be/-4EDhdAHrOg
Well, kind of the exact opposite of that. I realize that's meant to be satire, but that kind of attitude is what got me into trouble.
I left out the exact details for brevity and privacy, but it was a situation where there wasn't a simple answer. I just didn't have a good grasp of the concept of active listening.
I was trying to engage with what she was saying, because she had previously told me that it seemed like I didn't care about her problems. But I just wasn't saying the right things.
In reality, my previous approach had revolved around keeping my mouth shut because then there was no way I could say anything to fuck it up. But then, in large part thanks to my undiagnosed ADHD, I would tune out without realizing it.
So I engaged in the only way I knew how, by trying to rationalize her experiences when I should have been empathizing with them.
Ah, ok. I'm essentially the same as the person in the video. I didn't talk about something unless I want help and the situation fixed. Otherwise, I kept to myself, and I treated others the same. It was a rough young adulthood.
I definitely had to have a chat with my SO about letting me vent without problem solving. I still have to remind them from time to time. Some people are just solution-minded like that.
Had to learn this the hard way myself.
Now I literally ask when it isn't obvious. Do you want support or solutions? It's rarely the latter but at least we're both on the same page.
be happy it turned out the way it did.
Here it is, folks, case in fucking point.
Did I ask, at any point, for opinions on how I should be feeling about any of this? I don't think so.
Yes. You posted it on the internet. We're not your ex. This is a public forum. Go blog if you want to vent without someone else saying something.
you invited ths beast to appear, now deal with it like a man.