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How aggravating is it to hear time and time again that men don't have a support network for their problems. If a man does not have a group of men to talk to, a lot of that would be from his own doing. How often does the guy who asks for mental support help his friends in return? Why are you asking for women, for people outside your community, to patch the hole that you had punched?
How frustrating that any time women want their own space to complain about a specific, tangible instance of a man neglecting her, a man has to comment about men's mental health. As a broad, vague whataboutism. You never see women going into men's spaces and asking "What about women's issues? What are you doing to care for women's mental health?"
So how interesting is it that women have to bend over backwards to make their partner comfortable like a 50's dating book told them, only to be ignored for the simplest of issues, like a bad day at work. Women have been forced to care only about their partner because we were raised to be givers and never takers.
The million dollar question: When are men going to care about their partner's mental health?
Men invented nuclear war and went on the moon. Men could fix their mental health if they gave a shit. They just don't and I don't care for their trauma anymore. Being emotionally blackmailed into accepting everything they do because of mental health is the millennial version of "but if you don't cook he will starve to death!"from the boomer era.
November IS men's mental health awareness month yet most guys don't know it. The few who do know expect women to fix the problem
it's always the women who have to do the labor and men are just SOOOOO incapable of emotionally taking accountability and caring for themselves.
this is why dating will never be a priority for me.
DO MEN CARE ABOUT WOMENS MENTAL HEALTH?!? IF THEY DID AT THE VERY LEAST SEE US A HUMAN BEINGS, WE WOULD NOT HAVE HALF THE ISSUES WE DO (rape etc)
I saw a tiktok today of a pickme asking men “who do you call or talk to when things are really bad?” All the men answered the same: “no one, no one cares”.
I call absolute bullshit as from personal experience men specifically go after women for free therapy —their waitress, the hot girl at the gym, the girl they corner on public transit, their tinder matches, their buddy’s girlfriend, classmates, coworkers, their moms, their sisters… they just didn’t say so because women are not men and therefore not people and therefore “no one”.
Also, they probably don’t admit they do this because it would make them look weak to other men while simultaneously making them look like pathetic manipulators to women.
Never trust a man who does this. There’s a 50% chance he uses sob stories to get pity sex and a 50% chance he’s too broken to date and hasn’t sought any appropriate supports.
Women are not free therapy for broken men. Women are not rehabilitation centers for broken men. Women do not owe emotional labour to anyone but their children.
I am sick to death of hearing about having to be aware of men's mental health. It is not our fault that men treat women like shit until it's time to have sex or until it's time to find a partner to settle down and procreate with to look good in society, with zero effort put in into growing together as real partners who love each other. It is not our fault that men call each other gay when one of them gets depressed or starts crying so they all learned the art of emotional repression. It is not our fault when you continue to push the patriarchy to continue on despite the numerous ways it has failed to elevate you or make you truly happy as an individual man.
Women do not prioritize their OWN health often enough. We've been socialized to put aside our own needs, wants, discomfort, even agony. Did you know there's a lot of women being diagnosed with conditions like autism and ADHD in mid life? Why do you think? Because many masked their issues, not wanting to rock the boat. Boys on the other hand...
I know so many women who beg and pled for their men to do the most BASIC of self-care tasks-- to eat healthy, to see the doctor's when they're sick, to stop drinking, to set up boundaries at work so they aren't always working late (though, the reason why they're "working late" is most likely to dodge family duties 🙄), even to do the most BASIC hygiene tasks like taking a shower, or getting on clean clothes.
You know how the men in their lives react/ thank them?
They accuse them of nagging.
Then when the natural consequences of their actions come to fruition-- poor health, they find their friends/ family are no longer sticking around because they never took the time to take care of those relationships-- they complain that "no one takes their mental health seriously."
You know what? No. I don't. Because I can't take someone's mental health seriously if they can't be bothered to take it seriously themselves.
I once heard somewhere (granted, I don't know if it's true or not) that when there's a ton of people in the water, and the Coast Guard is trying to decide who to save and who to leave behind, they save the people who swim TOWARDS the boat.
Men lurkers-- SWIM TOWARDS THE BOAT. At the end of the day, nobody else can take care of your mental health but you. There's so many things you CAN do to get to a better place. Google is free.
Meditate. Journal. Eat as healthy as you can. Clean your area. Do basic-ass hygiene. Get as much exercise as you can sustain. YOU be the one to reach out to friends and family to see how THEY'RE doing.
SWIM TOWARDS THE BOAT.
I cared for my ex-partner's mental health for 9 years. Yes, he did provide me emotional support as well, but his issues always took precedence, since he lacked basic healthy coping mechanisms and needed me to regulate his emotions for him. My own mental health declined like never before when I moved in with him. Performing emotional labor for your partner 24/7 WILL make you depressed and anxious, and often it won't even help because he needs to learn how to take care of himself.