On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness • Hacker News Board

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#141

Post by hannasanarion » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

baby wrote: post #72

benlivengood wrote: post #4

> I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her more or less miserable. It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy. I imagine some of these men are similar to me in the loneliness and not as lucky in finding someone, and it’s impossible for me to not feel something. This is basically a red flag for any relationship. If the only thing making or allowing a person to be happy…

Sorry but I’ll have to downvote this, there’s something about humans that is either cultural or genetic, but we travel and live in groups and we settle with partner(s). Being alone might be OK in a tribe, but as we moved to more isolated and individualist ways of living being alone means something completely different. On top of that every song you hear is about love and every movie you watch has a love story. You go…

Your choices are not limited to "being adhered to a codependent sexual partner" and "being totally disconnected from society trying to live as a Randean ubermench ascetic".

It is the belief that those are the only possibilities that makes people incels, not the lack of a chick.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#142

Post by thepasswordis » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

void_mint wrote: post #120

thepasswordis wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah man I don't think I would classify a committed relationship where partners end up missing their partner when they're gone as "codependent". And honestly this whole trend of laymen trying to psychoanalyze people with whatever toxic psychobabble their read on twitter is getting out of hand. Codependence is when two people have some unhealthy trait that is reinforced by the other person's unhealthy trait. From wiki…

Right, but this is the statement that someone pointed out as a red flag, that you disagreed with > I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her more or less miserable. It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy. Which is basically the exact definition of codependence.

>Which is basically the exact definition of codependence.

Well okay I suppose that the people I'm talking about, in their 50+ year relationships would describe their love for their partner as a type of addiction, but what you might be missing there is: that is a joke, and they are being cute.

If we're redefining romantic devotion as an "addiction" then I think we have officially lost the plot.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#143

Post by dalbasal » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

>> there was a fairly polarized split between the she-doesn’t-owe-you-sex-you-child crowd and the good-for-him-dump-the-frigid-broad edgelords. I envied their respective positions and their certainty of being right, because I know too many people...

There is a version of this essay that's about establishing who's right and wrong, personally and/or publicly. In some cases, those essays need to be written. Those don't require much empathy, and if they do it's a judicial sort of empathy.

This essay we need more of, at least if we want to know more.

Everyone is responsible for their own arseholery. I do think we need to be somewhat firm about what that is or isn't. But drawing lines isn't the whole game. Empathy is an actual requirement for understanding, because what empathy is, is human's innate ability to understand one another when we try.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#144

Post by textgel » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

krastanov wrote: post #54

eloff wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly because neither feminists nor men's rights activists want equality, despite whatever they purport to be about. Just like there's a political spectrum with the crazies at the edges of both left and right, there is also a spectrum on gender issues, race, or any other social issue. The crazies are to be found at the edges of that, again on both sides.

Are you equating reasonableness of the *average* person that self-identifies as feminist and the *average* men's-rights-advocate?

Considering the year on year decrease in women who identify with the movement, its fairly clear anyone who would describe said movement as "reasonable" would no doubt hold the traits inherent in the movement that so many find despicable.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#145

Post by NationalPark » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

birdyrooster wrote: post #114

benlivengood wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the bay area there are plenty of cuddle parties for platonic physical touch. Feminism has a pretty convincing answer to the problem like I edited my original comment to include. Toxic masculinity is the social exclusion of deep emotional relationships between men, including the "suck it up" culture. The key is that only men can really participate in that healing because it's entirely a problem between men…

Feminism is a front for white supremacy

How do you reconcile that with the fact that one of the defining features of the last few decades of feminist writing has been intersectionality? And that some of the most prominent feminists are Black?

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#146

Post by corty » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

tonyp2121 wrote: post #101

the_jeremy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having a romantic ... relationship is not a requirement for a happy life Do you think having friends is a requirement for a happy life? It's not strictly necessary, but they are a positive factor, and most people will not be happy entirely devoid of friendship. Having a partner is a friend you commit to and are closer with than other friends (generalization, sure). I have friends who I would not support through dep…

Why would you not support your friends through depression?

Because supporting depressed people is depressing and often futile. Mental illnesses can be transmissible that way.

Also, supporting a depressed person needs lots of time and effort, and while they are depressed they give nothing back except bad vibes.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#147

Post by landryraccoon » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #122

benlivengood wrote: post #4

> I got absurdly lucky when I found my wife, but I spent every day without her more or less miserable. It’s arguable she’s the only reason I’m able to be happy. I imagine some of these men are similar to me in the loneliness and not as lucky in finding someone, and it’s impossible for me to not feel something. This is basically a red flag for any relationship. If the only thing making or allowing a person to be happy…

> having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life. This is a bit silly: either it's trivially true but irrelevant, if the claim is that there exist people who can live happy lives without (sexual) relationships; or it's flatly false, if the claim is that everyone can be equally happy without relationships as they would be with them. Relationships bring significant happiness. People who…

Man this thread sure must be depressing if you're single.

Single? That's your problem, that your single. Go get a relationship and be happy!

Way to dogpile on people when they're down.

I say enjoy being single. If a relationship happens, good for you, but don't listen to people that say you're damaged / worse off / going down the drain because you're single. They're just jealous you can travel and play video games whenever you want. =)

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#148

Post by openasocket » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

> if 51% of young men are single and only 31% of women in the same age bracket are, that implies something is up

So that statistic really confuses me, how could that be the case? The data seems to imply a significant number of women are dating men far older than themselves, which just doesn't seem true to me. I'm wondering if that is a sampling error or different genders are interpreting the question differently.

It kind of reminds me of a study I heard about a few years back claiming that straight men average three times as many sexual partners as straight women. Except, that isn't possible! If you're only having heterosexual relationships, and you have the same number of men and women, the average number of relationships for men and women should be identical! The conclusion is that either that study either had sampling issues, or the respondents were exaggerating. That could be the obvious (men inflating their number of sexual partners, women deflating their numbers, due to societal pressures) but also different interpretations of the question.

I'm wondering if we're seeing the same thing here. Either those Pew statistics aren't a representative sample, or we're seeing inconsistent responses.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#149

Post by sigstoat » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

tayo42 wrote: post #69

temp667 wrote: post #27

Is this too simplistic? Take care of yourself - health (mental and physical etc). Sex work should be legal if there is a "market failure" as the article argues. If someone doesn't want sex in a relationship and other person does - any way to negotiate something - ie, get on tinder for one person or whatever if the issue isn't so critical to break up over? Is porn a problem? ie, perception everyone getting lots of cra…

Kind of interesting, I really have no idea what peoples sex life is like on average. Idk how you can find out, no one wants to talk about it. So either porn or the rare few that do want to talk about it. But those few are going to be such outliers they're likely not average or just lieing

> Kind of interesting, I really have no idea what peoples sex life is like on average. Idk how you can find out, no one wants to talk about it.

i assume the Kinsey Institute has studied this; they do regular surveys and such on the topic.

Re: On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness

#150

Post by at_a_remove » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #17

There is a lot to unpack here, and it is difficult to know where to begin. I had a friend who was a pastor who lamented he didn't like that his yearly board game get-together with his other [often pastor] friends often ended up discussing their dead bedrooms. I have no idea how these dynamics have come to be so common, even taking into account the usual ebbs and flows in relationships. I don't know if this problem oc…

I don't know a ton of married men but every last one of them has managed to let me know one way or another that their sex lives are essentially over. All of them. And it all seems to follow this cliche that people will scream at you does not exist.