Episode 605: Let men solve problems (he's not your girlfriend)

I'm Dr. O'Reilly and Tara Bann, and this is Cycax, better living through psychology.

And the topic for day short talk is, let men solve problems.

Have you ever been in this situation, gentlemen?

I bet you have.

The woman that you're dating, or you're married to, comes to you with one of her problems.

Maybe she's frustrated with something that happened to her at work.

Maybe she's disappointed with one of her girlfriends.

Who the fuck knows?

But she comes to you with this complaint, and after listening to the inputs of her frustration

or disappointment, you begin to very helpfully offer reality-based solutions to her problems.

However, when you do, she simply becomes more and more annoyed.

Why do you always have to try to solve my problems?

I don't want you to solve my problems.

I want you to listen.

Why can't you just listen and support me?

And the man, of course, is thinking, well, what the fuck is that going to accomplish, right?

But the woman is absolutely adamant in her position.

This is what she wants, and this is what the man is supposed to do.

Does this sound familiar?

Like it's become a social cliche, however, I don't think this is something that your father

or your grandfather or your great-grandfather had to deal with.

So why has this attitude become so prevalent?

And why is it apparently a generational thing?

I'll tell you why.

It's because of the institution of therapy.

Over the last few decades, the institution of therapy and its ancillary industries, the

self-help gurus, the relationship experts, the daytime talk show hosts, et cetera, et cetera,

therapists and their ilk have convinced hundreds of millions of women that listening to

a problem is somehow a solution to a problem.

And why might that be the case?

What could possibly be the explanation as to why an industry that literally listens to

problems in exchange for money would insist that listening to problems is the best way

to solve them?

Like how could the therapeutic institution possibly benefit from such a belief?

I will leave that to you and your detective prowess to unravel.

Now don't get me wrong, listening has its place.

Like you have to listen in order to understand the features of the problem you're dealing

with, right?

But hot take, you don't have to listen more than that.

You listen up to the point where you're able to arrive at a tentative solution and then

you execute, you take reality-based action, which is what ultimately solves the problem

or not, and then you troubleshoot in a recursive way until it does.

This is how I run my consultation practice.

Insisting that listening to problems alone solves problems is a form of gaslighting on

the population level, like I don't know how else to describe it.

This widespread attitude is also complicit in the feminization of men, which is a very

serious problem.

Allow me to explain.

We know that when confronted with a problem, in general, men prefer problem solving strategies

and women prefer emotional coping strategies.

So when women implicitly or very commonly explicitly demand that men forgo their preferred

strategies, strategies which, by the way, are actually capable of solving problems in

reality and adopt their own preferred strategies, the subcommunication is, I don't want you

to act like a man.

I want you to act like a woman.

And when men concede to this demand, usually out of a misguided desire to give women what

they say they want, they grow increasingly feminized.

And this feminization of men creates all kinds of problems, not only in these particular

relationships, but in society at large as well.

Think about it.

When women implicitly want men to act like women, they typically feel entirely justified

in their desire.

And why wouldn't they?

Remember, the entire therapeutic institution supports the idea that listening and validating

is the solution to pretty much every problem of living.

And what does this do?

It authenticates the female way of solving problems as the healthy way of solving problems

in particular, and it communicates that the female way of doing things is the right way

of doing things in general.

And this, to put it mildly, is an irresponsible overgeneralization.

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hands on a copy of my book, The Value of Others.

Over the course of 432 pages, I delve deep into my economic model of relationships and explain

the behavior of both men and women in the game of mating and dating.

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The links are in the description.

I saw this over and over and over again in grad school.

Female preferences about problem solving and communication and relationships have been

mystified as the right or healthy way of problem solving and communicating and relating

by the official authorities on the subject who are overwhelmingly women.

And when I raised objections to this in classes where sometimes I was literally the only man

present, do you think I changed anybody's mind?

Why do you think I had to go to YouTube, guys?

Women comprise 85% of the therapeutic profession and women are over twice as likely to attend

therapy as men are, according to some studies, 85% of the readers of self-help books are women.

And how many relationship experts and dating coaches and self-care gurus are women and

or are primarily talking to a female audience.

And how are the minority of men in these fields treated when they have the temerity to speak

to men on issues that concern them using strategies that men prefer?

We have to conclude that the therapeutic institution and its ancillary industries have collectively

become a billion dollar echo chamber in which women are told what they want to hear.

In business, the customer is always right, right?

And as I've said before, making women feel right is big fucking business.

However, what is the absolute best indicator of rightness?

You have it effectiveness.

You are right when you correctly predict that certain means succeed in achieving certain

ends.

But look around.

Our relationships achieving their ends, I think you would be hard pressed to argue that

they are.

Divorce rates are up, people are dating less often, three even hooking up less than they

used to do.

So if a woman's way of doing things is the right way of doing things, and the right way

of doing things is associated with these terrible outcomes, like I honestly don't know

how to square that circle.

If these strategies of relating and communicating were right, we should have greater interpersonal

harmony and relationship effectiveness, not less.

And of course, the most common counter argument to that is the reason we don't is because

people aren't doing it perfectly.

They're not doing it good enough.

But even if we were doing more of it, which we clearly are, we should still see progress

in that direction and we don't.

So there's that.

People's parties should be getting more of what they want, and less of what they don't,

which doesn't seem to be the case at all.

I'll get to the point, it's a bad idea for women to treat their men like their girlfriends,

which is what they do when they expect them to suppress their masculine problem-solving

strategies in favor of feminine emotional coping ones.

And the most rational argument against this is that it's generally more effective in any

domain of human endeavor to play to one's strengths than attempt to transform one's weaknesses.

What does this mean?

Think about it.

You can throw the ball, but you can't catch it.

Better to perfect your abilities as a quarterback than spend years trying to compete as a wide receiver.

You're pretty, but dumb as rocks, better to play up your face card than try to join

Mensa, right?

The time and energy you spend perfecting your strengths will only succeed in making

your weaknesses mediocre at best.

Of course, it's a good idea to eliminate glaring liabilities, but that's not really what

we're discussing here.

So ladies, your man is bad at listening.

Who gives a shit?

He might be good at problem-solving.

And he might very well be better at problem-solving than you are.

And rather than spend all that time and energy in an attempt to transform him from a bad listener

into a mediocre one, why not devote that same time and energy in an attempt to transform

him from a good problem-solver into an exceptional one?

Like a woman who does that is a smart fucking woman.

Because if she succeeds, well, she will not only have private access to an exceptional problem-solver

array, but she will have succeeded in cultivating a complementarity of skills across the relationship

that will make it much more likely that the two of them, as a couple, will be able to

handle like anything that comes their way.

So women, if you want to be heard and validated, that's fine.

But go to your girlfriends, go to chat GPT, don't take your grocery list to the hardware

store, which is what you do when you expect your men to act like your girlfriends.

Men's strengths, listen to me, men's strengths lie precisely in direct communication involving

reality-based solutions to problems.

Intelligent women use men for that purpose.

Let men solve problems.

That's what they like to do, it's what they're good at doing.

This means, ladies, that if you choose to come to a man with a complaint, then you're

effectively also choosing to consider his proposed solution and to implement it in reality.

Otherwise, you are guilty of treating him like your girlfriend or using him as a receptacle

for your emotional ejecta.

Let men cook, ladies.

Let them mansplain to you.

If you can listen, then you just might learn something.

What do you think?

Does this fit with your own experience?

Let me know in the comments below, and please send this episode to someone who you think

might benefit from its message, man or woman, because it's word of mouth referrals like this

that really help to make the channel grow.

Other value propositions.

Anyone looking to join my free weekly newsletter, for which I write original content, no AI,

or book a paid one-on-one consultation with yours truly, can do so on my website.

There are also my books, The Value of Others, my bestselling exposé of the economic model

of relationships, and Starry Night, my novel exploring the final weeks in a life of painter

Vincent Van Gogh.

Finally, there's my private member community, The Captain's Quarters, which is great.

If you want me to actually help you solve your problems, I can't do that on YouTube.

You have to come to the private community where I can interact with you, listen to the

details of your particular solution and offer actionable strategies to overcome the difficulty,

right?

I can do that there.

I can't do that here.

You understand?

So, if you're curious, check out the links below.

There's a lot of great value to be had there.

As always, I appreciate your support, and thank you for listening.