It's not always the man's fault bro.
That's not what I said, neither implicitly nor explicitly. But you're onto a phenomenon I've noticed, mainly that no matter how hard I try expressing a balanced view on here it's often interpreted as taking the opposing side. I'll quote myself on this, "they" is referring to women:
While I don't deny that in many cases they do deserve some blame, I think the guys side of it is toned down way too much.
This day and age, I'd say it's more on the side of a woman's for the single fact that they have so many options and society no longer looks down on failure relationships or failed marriages while the man gets a-z-z- raped in court.
I don't disagree about that in particular, the court does have an unfair bias. That fact still doesn't defeat my point and knowing that fact is only useful for one thing, to pick the woman with great care for oneself. Yet we do not discuss how to achieve our desires as much as we endlessly discuss what's in our way.
I usually agree a lot with you on many of your posts, but this one I am going to have to respectfully disagree.
I don't think we disagree, I think you're misinterpreting me. I'm well aware of the problems, but again, we can't fix the world as easily as we can fix ourselves. By "fixing" ourselves I'm not implying that we blindly bend to others will, I mean that we think of a way to achieve what we desire in spite of the obstacles. There's easier ways to get what we want than to brute force our way through societal problems, if we're clever enough to find a way around. I'm speaking in metaphors a lot, but it's hard to express it any other way, so I hope you get it.
Bottom line, one person usually cares too much, and the other couldn't care less.
And this is exactly what I talked about in the comment previous to the one you quoted me on. It fails because either or both don't care enough, only when both work together can synergy be achieved and the relationship be mutually beneficial. My criticism in the comment you quoted was about men who blame it on women to take attention away from their own shortcomings. Yes, the ex-gf probably was a b!tch, but her b!tchiness doesn't negate ones own mistakes, let's focus on those instead and forget the b!tch.
If a partner doesn't speak up, how is the other one to know there's an issue?
I don't disagree, in fact I couldn't agree more. Not sure why I was served this rhetorical question?
Also, I've read several threads here and other relationship support forums where the man was very supportive, but in his time of need, she either left him high and dry or couldn't care less.
Indeed and in those cases she most likely failed, but him focusing on her shortcomings won't bring him closer to his desires, it will only stall him. The only thing he can do is to draw connections between early behavior and later stage behavior and avoid other who show early signs of being his past mistakes, which isn't a process that requires 20+ threads about how women are b!tches. I'm also not really referring to the guys who went above and beyond in their effort to remedy the problems, in many of those cases the only mistake they made was indeed to not walk away early enough.
There used to be negative consequences because of a break up or divorce. Now, it's common place.
I see this come up frequently, while it is true I don't think it's relevant. Yeah, increased pressure from negative consequences will give people motivation to sort it out rather than break up, but it's still sad if that's what it takes to keep a couple together. It's the wrong motivation and I'd rather want couples to break up than to keep going solely to avoid negative consequences. I can't see a relationship being fulfilling if it's based on fear of loss rather than potential for gain.
