I feel like I can’t get on TikTok without seeing at least two or three videos of women outwardly wondering why men seem to be resistant to the idea of marriage. They question why men seem to be pulling away and not engaging with them on a deeper level, at least not the kind experienced by their parents. Especially not their grandparents.

It’s clear that these young women yearn for that kind of stability, and it’s clear that men are increasingly less willing to provide it. Indeed, the numbers check out. Marriage is definitely on the decline. But before women start asking where all the good men have gone, perhaps they should look at themselves first.

I know. Women aren’t typically used to hearing that it’s their fault. To be sure, you don’t shoulder all of the blame, but in this case, you bear a lot of it.

Not long ago, I wrote about how men are getting tired of the “hyper-sexualized woman” where I laid down a very brutal truth:

Society doesn’t encourage women to be good partners, they’re encouraged to be consumers of what their partner produces. Sadly, these same women are being encouraged to go out and get high-paying positions and are very likely to succeed thanks to the current culture, and very often make more money than their male partners. Yet still, the male is still expected to make more for the family.

It doesn’t just stop at the societal level either. Even in modern families, men are taught how to treat a woman, provide for her, and work hard to keep her happy. Women aren’t taught how to treat a man or how to make him happy; they’re strictly taught what to expect from a man.

This, combined with modern feminist philosophy that encourages women to do away with traditional ideas, has produced an entire swath of useless women who value shallow sexuality over familial contribution and homemaking skills. They enter into marriages where they contribute very little and expect quite a lot, and these marriages eventually end.

The sad truth is that many young women nowadays don’t know how to be in a marriage. As I said above, they’re not taught how to treat a man, but what to expect from him. Meanwhile, they’re flat-out dissuaded from providing anything but their presence to the partnership. They believe that offering their love to the man is sufficient and that men should just be grateful to have them. The idea that women suddenly make a man happier by their presence is a storybook sentiment.

Still, more emphasis is put on being fierce in a “yas, slay queen! You’re a goddess and you deserve to be treated like one!” kind of world.

So they offer nothing and expect everything. They’re useless within the bounds of their own relationships with the only thing they bring to the table is what’s in between their legs, and even that’s something that can’t be taken on a whim, and even then, the value of that fades over time.

What doesn’t help — and what often isn’t discussed enough — is that women take an emotional toll on men. Men are simple creatures who tend to know what we want when we want it. We don’t lend too much time to analyzing our emotions. We’re more likely to spend time thinking about how fast a gerbil could run if we gave it horse legs than trying to connect with ourselves on an emotional level. We don’t really have that need. Hell, if we need to, we can hop into our mind’s “nothing box” and give it all a break.

Women can’t do that. Thanks to the design of the female brain, women have trouble having a thought without attaching an emotion to it. They’re more likely to feel their thoughts than men are, and what’s more, they’re more likely to be expressive about it. In a relationship, women want to express these emotions to their male partners, which is typically fine. Expressing feelings both positive and negative in a trusting and steady environment is good communication.

But there’s a hitch.

In today’s society, emotion is increasingly valued over logistical thinking. Especially for women, the pitfalls are numerous. “Your truth” is pushed over THE truth. Girls are more likely to get a lesson on how to deal with and express emotion from popularly unstable figures like Taylor Swift than they are from people who actually deal in this subject like Jordan Peterson. On top of that, they live in a society where the emotions and feelings of men are devalued to a point of ridicule.

In fact, this problem has gotten so bad that men’s suicide rates have steadily risen over the course of the past decade and now makeup three-quarters of all suicides that happen.

Along the lines of never learning how to treat a man, women are never taught how to value a man’s emotions unless they pertain positively to her. He must prove every day how much he values her for just existing. She expects this but is taught by our society to not reciprocate unless he earns it.

Men feel this weight, and the thing that would give them strength is withheld. Men suffer attempting to emotionally support the partner who has no interest in uplifting him in return. It’s a lonely existence in a relationship for two, making it, in truth, a relationship for one…her. What makes matters worse is that women are confused by their men’s lack of emotions. They were never taught how we think, much less appreciate it.

Now, let’s say you’re a young man entering into the stage of your life where dating to marry becomes typical. Looking at your prospects for marriage you see career-oriented women, some of whom make more money than you do and are very proud of this fact. Many of them display a complete lack of interest, if not downright revulsion to what is considered “traditional” gender roles. Many of them have no idea how to cook, some hardly clean, and their opinions on any given subject seem more trendy than well thought out. They seem shallow as a result.

You see these women in your dating pool consistently exhibit opinions about your sex that are less than kind on social media. They’re taught they’re your intellectual superiors, that they’re right in any given argument no matter what, and that what makes them happy is being given things, and they believe it. Very rarely do they display any joy in being giving or of service to their men. Even more rare are displays of humility. It reeks of narcissism.

You see your friends get into relationships with these women. Some of them disappear entirely as the woman forces these men to break contact with previous relationships. Some of them constantly report stress and/or empty wallets. Some of them report emotional abuse and sometimes even physical as their women lack the tools to handle their own emotions. You see a lot of things, but what you see most is misery.

This is all capped off by the fact that you probably saw your own parents divorce. Their relationship didn’t last, nor maybe did your friend’s parents. So why should you have any hope? All in all, marriage now seems like a time-consuming, stressful, and expensive venture that has no benefit for you.

Oh, but what about sex? Well, there’s an app for that. Another byproduct of modernity is the widespread feminist ideal of “sexual liberation” which, in truth, actually made the sexual value of women decrease by leaps and bounds. If Girl A won’t give it up then Girl B probably will, and technology has made finding her easy.

It’s the perfect recipe for bachelorhood. A man can avoid marriage, keep his money, save himself the stress, have more time to accomplish goals, and avoid involving himself in the crushing weight of emotional slavery.

The solution to the problem is easier said than done. We’ll need a complete societal rework of how women and men are raised as well as portrayed. Men not only need to be taught how to treat a woman but how to be treated and what to expect in order to achieve a solid, stable relationship. Women should, likewise, be taught how to treat a man as well as what to expect.

We also need to leave behind the idea that men and women are the same. We’re not. Everything from our brain function to our bodies is built differently. More accurately, we’re built for different tasks. From the way we process information to the way we interact with the physical world, we are two different entities that belong to the same species.

We should be taught to be mutually beneficial to one another in our own capacities as men and women, not fall prey to these modern ideas. Women shouldn’t be taught that in order to be happy, they must be childless go-getting ball-busters and not waste their life and potential on marriage and children where they become subservient to men. It’s a narrative that sells well in youth but breaks down quickly as women get older, desire children, and wish to leave the workplace to do it.

Men want to feel welcome in their own relationships. Right now, they aren’t. They feel like passengers, or maybe even more accurately, chauffeurs. If women want men to marry them, then women will have to become marriage material and that means leaving behind the mainstream pop-philosophy and looking into the idea that maybe the feminists were wrong. So very, very wrong.