There's probably a bit of toxic masculinity starving dudes of basic human tenderness in this, yeah. Especially preventing them from expressing that toward each other, so that they exclusively seek it out from women.
Yeah it seems like the modern experience of alienation and the overhanging effects of a patriarchal society have left a lot of young guys with a genuine starvation of kindness or physical affection from others, and they end up abstracting that sincere starvation of love and emotional fulfilment into the most-similar experience they've had in their lives, with their mother.
Lord knows I can sympathize with being romantically deprived, or feeling empty and emotionally unfulfilled, but the healthy way to reckon with that is to take that longing and focus it into being a giving and active partner in a relationship with someone who enthusiastically reciprocates, not marrying some mythical ur-matriarch that will give them a completely one-sided, unqualified avenue of love framed around replicating the (possibly) sole female authority figure in their lives that social mores expects to give love and affection.
Edit: Should note I'm trying to come at the more charitable angle of all this. There's also the deeply sexist angle that can sometimes be at play, with a more conscious objectification of women as mother figures, and the subsequent feeling of entitlement to their affection without reciprocation.
Yeah. There are so many fucked-up ways that can go for people, and having spent so much of my life online I'm pretty sure I've seen most of those ways by now. :doomer:
There's probably a bit of toxic masculinity starving dudes of basic human tenderness in this, yeah. Especially preventing them from expressing that toward each other, so that they exclusively seek it out from women.
Yeah it seems like the modern experience of alienation and the overhanging effects of a patriarchal society have left a lot of young guys with a genuine starvation of kindness or physical affection from others, and they end up abstracting that sincere starvation of love and emotional fulfilment into the most-similar experience they've had in their lives, with their mother.
Lord knows I can sympathize with being romantically deprived, or feeling empty and emotionally unfulfilled, but the healthy way to reckon with that is to take that longing and focus it into being a giving and active partner in a relationship with someone who enthusiastically reciprocates, not marrying some mythical ur-matriarch that will give them a completely one-sided, unqualified avenue of love framed around replicating the (possibly) sole female authority figure in their lives that social mores expects to give love and affection.
Edit: Should note I'm trying to come at the more charitable angle of all this. There's also the deeply sexist angle that can sometimes be at play, with a more conscious objectification of women as mother figures, and the subsequent feeling of entitlement to their affection without reciprocation.
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Yeah. There are so many fucked-up ways that can go for people, and having spent so much of my life online I'm pretty sure I've seen most of those ways by now. :doomer:
patriarchy harms us all