Why successful relationships with women are impossible

[CornbreadFed]

Many men today feel like they live with an expiration date. Once their usefulness runs out, they are pushed aside. In a world like that, the most important skill a man can develop is discipline and self-control. A man who is centered in purpose does not serve the approval of women. He serves something higher. If your entire life revolves around chasing women, arguing about women, pleasing women, or trying to win them over, then you are not living for yourself. You are living for them.

Trying to win over someone who is pulled in a dozen directions by work, social media, and modern expectations feels like fighting a war you cannot fully win. You might win moments, but you lose yourself in the process. Men are told their role is to build, protect, and provide. Those instincts are natural, but blindly applying them in every relationship can leave you drained. Sometimes the healthiest thing a man can do is follow his own path first and deal with the fallout later.

Modern life adds layers of competition that no man can control. A partner’s job, online world, and social environment can influence her emotions and priorities in ways you cannot outmatch. No amount of confidence, money, or strength can override the reality that external systems have enormous influence. Trying to compete with those forces often leaves men feeling like John Henry, strong and determined, but crushed by the machine.

Expectations in relationships also shift over time. What was once appreciated becomes baseline. What was once special becomes routine. You can give everything, from trips to emotional labor, and still find yourself criticized over something trivial. It is not that women are malicious. It is that modern life creates constant pressure, and relationships absorb that stress. You end up exhausted, trying to meet standards that keep rising.

Even men who want families face challenges they were never warned about. Postpartum depression and anxiety can transform a relationship overnight. A partner who once felt close may suddenly feel distant, overwhelmed, or resentful, even when you are doing your best. The relationship often reaches its highest point before pregnancy and becomes a test of endurance afterward. How long that strain lasts depends heavily on support systems like family and community.

If you disagree with all of this because you are still in the honeymoon phase, that is fine. But at minimum, understand this. A man must prioritize his well being and his children if he has them. Not out of selfishness, but because the world and sometimes even the people closest to him will treat him better when he stands firm in his own value. And because in many cases, men are treated as replaceable long before they realize it.

 

[BaronOfHair]

What you describe isn't just true for men:

Chicks wouldn't be dropping trillions per year on botox, boob jobs, lip fillers, and BBLs, often while they're still in their 20s, if quite a few of them didn't realize...

"My days of desirability will be extremely brief, unless I go the extra mile to preserve whatever sex appeal I possess, for as long as possible"

Dunno that relationships are "impossible", so much as they are difficult and complicated in ways which are often almost impossible to anticipate

 

[jhonny9546]

So many REAL-life truths in a single post. I think many men here have reached this level of awareness... yet we all wonder... how shall we approach life as men?

We know that status, economic/social power, and other things like beauty, popularity, the halo effect and social proof, and qualities required in competition are desirable to be seen as a man of value and to be able to attract/keep women. Yet, as a man, he must choose whether to give yourself the freedom and the burden of keeping you out of this system, or fight the saber-toothed with all your might.

Yes, seduction, women, might be interesting. But nothing is more valuable in a man's life than understanding whether to compete every day to be and remain desirable in the system, or whether to improve himself every day to increase his value in his own eyes.

We choose the first path, and obviously we end up in relationships, not just romantic ones, but also social ones, that make us sick, or we endure a financial burden like buying a newer car, or taking expensive trips, or a house in a luxurious neighborhood, to achieve a certain status.

Or we can choose the second path, which lifts all the burden from our shoulders. We choose our own things, the 15-year-old car we like, we feel free, and in romantic or social relationships, at the first sign of disrespect, we walk away and go our separate ways.

On the one hand, I see that maintaining a relationship is a burden on our freedom, and I understand that men suffer because they may have experienced both situations and realized that sooner or later they would have had to accept the compromise.

But it all depends on how we see things..For example, I see starting a family this way:
I could tell a woman that I want a child with her, and that we should do our best to make it "feel" like a family.
And this would last from 1 to 5 years. Then I could simply take care of the child and do activities together, but live separately, and starting year 5, each of us could even have other partners, or wheter decide to have another kid.

This seems more natural to me than a long-term monogamous relationship that doesn't work or in which the man will lose respect. We can live together, but only as long as we're raising a child. It's completely natural.
After the fifth year, each of us can go back to our own homes and live alone, and repeat the cycle.

In this case, status and everything else would become irrelevant. Each person must sustain herself economically. People would live happier.

"Family" is a long-term project for a lucky few.
For everyone else, 3-5 years of living together is the best you can do.

Don't you guys think this is the solution?

 

[RangerMIke]

Never sacrifice long term stability and security for potential short-term gain. True with everything not only relationships.

If a man isn't mentally and physically fit, secure, and safe.... nothing else matters. This is the baseline... this is where everything starts... it is the foundation. Any man that sacrifices their foundation and places themselves at the emotional whims of someone else, who has their own agenda, is spinning the Roulette wheel.