So I’ve been in a relationship for a while where it feels like I am much better at navigating my partner’s feelings and supporting them in hard times than they are for me. I’ll give a recent example of what I mean, and here I should put a content warning for a deceased pet.

My partner’s last childhood dog recently passed away, she was getting pretty old and was in failing health for a bit. When she died it wasn’t a terrible shock but it was very sad. My partner got some remembrances from the cremation and upon receiving them was very upset. They didn’t want to just hide the remembrances away somewhere because it felt disrespectful but also couldn’t deal with it at that time. So I stepped in, said, OK, I’ll take them, they’re going to be kept out in the open, not hidden, but I will hold them for you until you’re ready to reach a more permanent solution. Pretty good response if you ask me.

Now flip the script, say I’m the one in need. My partner doesn’t have anything other than cliches or proposed solutions to my problems that clearly aren’t well thought out and are effectively useless. I feel very unsupported emotionally a lot of the time.

But it isn’t just this relationship. I feel this throughout my life. I’ve wondered at times if this is a performed gender roles sort of thing. I’m a man and nobody has said to me directly “you’re a man just don’t have problems lmao” but it does at times feel like we are dancing around that implication. I don’t know. Just curious if other people have experienced this because I’m sick of needing to be the mature party in my relationships. If I cut off everyone that made me feel this way I’d be alone.

  • iminsomuchpainv2 [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    16·
    2 months ago

    Yeah OK so a few things. First I want to be completely clear that my post is not meant to be read as anti-woman, in any way. Sorry to say your comment comes across as blaming women for what I’m describing and is not constructive. It’s hard to read tone in text like this so I don’t want to overstate the point but I want to be completely clear.

    Further, the point of my post is to talk about the subject of non-reciprocal relationships in general. This is not necessarily gender-coded although it probably often is. You can have male-male relationships, for example, where one party is much better at supporting the other than vice versa (one person’s a better friend, as it were).

    Finally, what you’ve written is descriptive, which is fine, but I think we all kind of know that patriarchy does this. But I can’t snap my fingers and solve toxic masculinity. I’m trying to ask how to navigate these conditions as we find them - other people must be frustrated by similar things and I’m looking for strategies to manage the worry that comes from thinking nobody will be there for you when you really need them.

    Sorry if this comes across as scolding, I just wanted to make the purpose of the post clear and hopefully this pushes things in a more productive direction.