Who’s To Blame For Men’s Bad Dating Advice?
by Adam Hills
It's axiomatic that part of maturing and growing up is accepting responsibility for those things which are yours. But maturity just as much requires us not to accept responsibility for those things which aren't our responsibility or which we didn't cause.
Blue pillers continue to blame men who received poor advice or no advice, even after those men do exactly the things they were told to do in order to "get it" and "figure it out". The pattern goes something like this.
How Men Get Set Up To Fail
1. Boy grows up indoctrinated with and marinated in advice and instruction which amounts to "you must be nice" and "you must be yourself".
2. Boy applies said advice to his detriment and repeated failure.
3. Boy becomes man, eventually figures out something is very wrong and begins seeking help on blogs and online, or perhaps at in-person groups. Many eventually realize that most mainstream tips never addressed real attraction at all, which is why more grounded perspectives on how to win dates and influence women feel like a completely different language compared with the “just be nice” script.
4. When asked where he got such advice, he points out repeatedly and often that everyone around him gave him that advice. Not knowing anything different, and with authority figures consistently redirecting him back to "be nice" and "be yourself" and away from what he was observing, he followed it. But having seen he was wrong, he's at the sites to get advice and to fix what was wrong.
5. Blue pillers harrumph at him: "You are just blaming everyone else for your dating and relationship failures. You won't take responsibility for your failure, inability or unwillingness to see reality. You want someone to blame so you don't have to be responsible. And you want to wallow and wail about how everyone done you wrong."
Critics of game and masculinity often make the "you're just blaming everyone else for your problems" argument when the malfeasance and educational malpractice foisted on many boys about women is pointed out. At the reddit thread Han Solo linked in the "Do Not Adjust Your Set" thread, pastorofmuppets brings the argument:
"I've never received the kind of bad advice that TRP always complains about. No one ever told me just to be nice, to always be deferential to women, etc. When this trope comes up -- and it always does -- I literally have no idea what you're on about. It may very well be your experience, but it's certainly not the universal you all claim it is.
"My theory is that a lot of guys say this because it allows them to avoid taking responsibility for their lack of success. It's not their fault, it's society's fault, it's the culture's fault, it's their parents' fault, it's the media's fault, it's the educational system's fault.
"Blaming your lack of success with the opposite sex on bad advice and society -- a constant underlying theme of TRP -- is the very definition of not owning one's failures."
Pillburt then responded:
"When we were growing up and learning how to interact with others.. did we emerge from the womb grown adults?
"And yet, here's a sub dedicated to taking the reins- dedicated to self improvement. We have outgrown our youthful selves.
"And we have the insight and emotional honesty to understand it was our families and communities that instilled such shitty ideas into us... that makes us a cult that can't accept responsibility?
"What they did to us was not our fault- but what we do in light of this information is on us, and squarely on us. It's the opposite of shirking responsibility."
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Owning Reality Versus Accepting False Guilt
Pillburt is correct. He points out the fallacy in the "you're blaming everyone else" argument very well. A lot of men have figured out something was very, very wrong with their instruction and training about masculinity and about women. They've figured out that they got bad advice, or that they missed something, or that they didn't observe something that someone else observed. They then exchange information and ideas at online sites or elsewhere in a specific effort to identify the problem, isolate it within themselves, determine its causes, and take steps in their lives to correct it. So, they are doing exactly what the naysayers like pastorofmuppets say they should be doing -- finding out what was wrong and fixing it. Yet, pastorofmuppets claims these men are just searching for scapegoats, even though they are doing precisely what he claims they should be doing.
One of the reasons people like pastorofmuppets and other naysayers dissuade men away from trying to fix the problem and improve is a general sense that it's "unmasculine" for men to try to get information from online sources. Yet, there seems to be no difficulty with men discussing and gathering online information and knowledge on most other subjects: Christianity, "blue pill", paleo diet, auto repair, building an outdoor shed, and all manner of things. There are no shortages of Christian bloggers in and around the manosphere holding forth, day in and day out. One wonders why learning about masculinity should be any different, particularly when there are no other sources of information. Articles like why men can't get dates make the same point from another angle: most guys were never taught effective, reality-based social skills in the first place.
The “Sausagemaking” Problem
A closely related phenomenon is what I call the "sausagemaking" objection. People like to eat sausage. They like the way it tastes. But they get squeamish when the discussion and pictures turn to how sausage is made. And people certainly don't want to watch their sausage in the process of being made. So it seems to be with forming up and educating men. Everyone wants their men readymade and fixed up just right. They don't want to watch the process of creating a man. They don't want to see or hear about men unlearning the bad and learning the good. They don't want to hear men grappling with concepts or fumbling when they try. They don't want to observe the process of making a man; they want only the end result.
In a way it's understandable. This used to take place away from others' eyes. It now takes place in the open, in full view of many others --- as it must sometimes. The same people who mock that process will turn around and complain that modern men are weak, confused, or "beta", even as they ignore resources that spell out what needs to change, like breakdowns of things that make you beta in a relationship or practical pieces such as the poor man's guide to attraction that show exactly how different actions lead to different results.
Put Responsibility Where It Belongs
Don't listen to those who would shame you away from finding out what's really going on. Don't listen to the naysayers who claim you're just looking for someone to blame. Put responsibility where it lies, and move forward to correct the problem. The men who actually change their outcomes are the ones who stop defending old scripts, admit that what they were told didn’t work, and then do the uncomfortable work of learning new ways to relate, connect, and lead in their relationships.
