Emotional Defenses: The Silent Sex Divide

"Women like moody bad boys" and "Men like manic pixie dream girls" imply-

There’s a long list of common gendered differences out there in the internet ether being explored every day. Women like money! Men like youth! Women like abs! Women don’t like abs! Men like tits! Men like ass! Women be shopping! Men be on they video games! Women are yappers! Men are mansplainers! Men don’t like hos! Women are hos! And so on and so forth.

But - even though I see takes that sort of inch around the perimeter of this - I don’t often see discussion about the fact that female and male taste regarding their partners’ emotional openness diverge starkly. Yes, sometimes men will complain that “women don’t want emotionally open men,” and sometimes women will protest that they do want emotionally open men. Men are not usually thinking about the fact that they don’t want emotionally closed women when they say that, nor do they announce it. I don’t know that women are aware of male preferences on this - you don’t see them discoursing about male preferences for female emotion either. Frankly, it’s easier to complain about the tit situation. But men will tolerate an emotionally open woman who plays hard to get sexually - at least if we’re talking long haul, interest in dating or marriage - a lot better than they’ll tolerate an emotionally closed woman who plays easy to get sexually. Women, by contrast, get a bit of a kick out of being let in to a man’s inner world, when he doesn’t often let people in.

Women like men with some emotional and physical defenses - they say they like emotionally open men because they like emotional closeness to men who are capable of at least some reasonable stoicism. Men like women with emotional and physical openness - not necessarily sexually open, but touchy, flirty, and trusting, and they’ll take that with a side of excessive emotionality, sometimes eagerly (it’s not clear that men believe women come without a side of excessive emotionality). They like this most of all because it translates into responsiveness.

As I said in an old post on a different subject:

Perhaps for this reason, men respond very well to women playing low status in the improv sense. Men most often like women who treat them like the more important party in the dynamic: deference, asking questions, and doing things for them.

And in another:

this too imo is tied to status, this time in a more improv-related sense

the high status person in a scene is the one who is *reacted* to

and who is more reactive than a strongly neurotic woman

Men actively dislike a feeling that women are boxing them out emotionally. They like women who maturely manage their emotions, yes, women who don’t subject the men around them to large emotional upset and variability in an unpleasant way. But not women who keep their men at arms length to do so. Men find that this kind of low trust feels alienating, and it even makes them resentful. It’s hard enough that women are sexually reserved - harder by far to sleep with on average than men are - most men carry around an almost-never examined belief that women absolutely should not be emotionally reserved as well.

Manic pixie dream girls are a revealed element of this preference. So are men declaiming that they like a woman who’s a little crazy. BPD gfs? They’d have no takers if men were drawn to emotionally zipped up women.

It’s a sex difference, you see, and it’s one of many sex differences where men in particular like their women different than them. Men like to be the more emotionally closed off one in a relationship, or at least the less neurotic party in the marriage.

It’s no coincidence that men on average trend avoidant and that women on average trend anxious in their attachment styles.

Men actively avoid avoidant women, and they often can’t imagine a kind of man who’d be interested in that.

Women though? Women love a nut to crack. Women love walls that come down just for them. Women love a beast to tame, so they love an avoidant man. The much maligned woman who loves assholes is - among factors like “enjoys a man who is interesting rather than simply inoffensive” - often a woman drawn to challenge no more or less than is a man drawn to women more neurotic than he is.

When I start talking about women, you might notice that you think they should grow out of this. Quite right. So too, in theory, should men grow out of a desire for an emotionally vulnerable, mercurial woman who feels accessible to them, or at least so too should men be able to integrate that desire into a mature capacity to see potential partners honestly, without ignoring any vertiginous downsides that might be attached to traits they find intriguing.

We’re often very critical of how women pick men, but to be on brand, I think we too often treat men as though they were totally helpless in securing whatever girlfriend or wife they currently have. We’re a little too quick to model men as having more or less been assigned their current girlfriend. For better or worse, another (much more controversial) sex difference, one that yes, has some data behind it, men lie more in general than women especially when there is competition driving it. It’s a lot easier to tell if a woman sucks when you’re dating her than it is to tell if a man does. She’ll show you who she is, and woe betide you if you ignore it for pussy. He’ll be lying his ass off for the aforementioned pussy, and good luck figuring out if he isn’t. I’m tired of pretending like this one isn’t gendered, and tired of treating men whose wives frustrate them like helpless, hapless victims.

There’s a lot of talk about a lot of sex differences, and many of them cleave at some real joints, but I don’t see this one quite as often.

I myself write online, almost entirely in a shields up, cannons loaded stance, and rarely in an emotionally open frame (unless irascibility counts) if I can help it. I’m a much worse writer for it - full of irritability, pique, and unsympathetic reductive rants. If I were to write with a modicum more restraint, I’d improve, and I suspect that if I wrote with the vulnerability people expect of my sex, my numbers would improve even more. It’s a trade off I make partially due to natural personality but also with some intention, one I’ve made ever since I started an account among a collection of internet people interested in AI, game theory, and other diversions. I was entering enemy territory, and I continue to write in enemy territory, and thus I would rather err on the side of issuing friendly fire than leaving a flank unprotected. If it’s a choice between being given a wide berth by someone who might otherwise be an ally, or being trespassed upon multiple times by multiple opponents, there’s no question which downside I prefer.

There are a great deal of people I don’t like dealing with unless I’m behind the business end of a balistraria, and I write accordingly, especially here on the internet.

When women are avoidant, hostile, or cold, they’re departing from the norms of their sex, and most people correctly intuit a story behind it. Unfortunately, the assumed story is rarely correct.

I appreciate my readers who tolerate my bombastic and imprudent style. I’ll continue trying to develop a bit more restraint, for your sake.