Men of Reddit, how has your view on romantic relationships changed from when you were a kid to now?

40 comments

  2. As a kid I never wanted to get married, as an adult, I’ve now been married 25 years.

  3. I used to think they were great, I still think romantic relationships are great, and can help especially a guy in a more well rounded emotional growth, plus its awesome to know someone Loves you, cares for you, etc.
    I do think the same as an adult, but have realized that after my last relationship, I don’t have the emotional or mental strength to go through another relationship and it not working out, So I just gave up on it. I’d rather protect my emotions and sanity than risk losing it all.

  7. I was interested without be aware of it and than I was interested. Now I say that a leader need to be méchant and this, romance, is not compatible with this need.

  10. – Butterflies only last a year.

    – A romantic relationship is like a valtz, can’t dance if your partner only pretends to.

    – The juice ain’t worth the sqeeze 99% of times.

  11. As a kid I always thought finding a girlfriend set you for life. You’ll go on to marry her have kids and all that shit.

    As I grew older I realized relationships are complex. There are countless variables and tweaking even one of those variables can lead to drastic changes in your life. I always wanted a girlfriend growing up but now it’s mellowed down. I’ll go with the flow

  12. My last relationship showed me how hard it is for me to make the effort to include someone else in my life. I thought that I was the type of person who could just roll with changes but I was surprisingly unadaptable to how being in a relationship changed how I lived life. I’ve grown up thinking that relationships are supposed to be easy but I think I confused “easy” with “effortless”.

  13. It’s less about the romantic spark with an attractive girl and more about the two getting along enjoying each other’s company.

  16. As a kid, I thought it would be some sort of magical thing that completes you as a person.

    As an adult, fucking hell I was a dumb kid. Romantic relationships are almost always complete shams built on the comfort of familiarity rather than any actual profound emotional feelings.

  17. …….. Long story short.

    When I was young?
    All rainbows, flowers, I’ll meat and treat the one to paradise on earth..

    Now?
    ….. I will likely leave this world as I came in… Alone, unwanted and Loved only by my mother.

  18. After having been married for over a decade, I no longer consider anything people who are dating do to be cheating. To me dating now is a joke, there is no real commitment so unless you’re engaged or living together at least, who cares.

  21. Women aren’t angels, you will get burned if you don’t have discernment. Society doesn’t care about what you went through either. As far as they’re concerned we’re the bad guys. The entire male experience is gaslit.

    If you try and express any of what you went through you’re told, “WHO HURT YOU”, GET OVER IT, GET THERAPY. It’s not at all sincere, it’s just a means of dismissing your feelings and lived experiences

    We were raised to provide and protect, never hit a woman, women are wonderful, women are always right, HAPPY WIFE HAPPY LIFE …study hard, get a good job and provide for a woman.

    Take her out, be a gentleman, open doors, buy her a drink, put yourself in the way of danger and put your life on the line to protect her. WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST.

    We get bombarded daily with messages like “MEN ARE TRASH”, “MEN ARE DOGS”, “MEN ARE RAPISTS”

    “Cross the street preemptively when walking alone To make women feel more comfortable at night”

    A young boy is too energetic in a class room where we want to make him sit still for 6+ hours a day? THE GIRLS CAN DO IT, HE MUST HAVE ADHD, DRUG HIM UP ON RITALIN AND ADDERRAL. It can’t be that as a male, he needs an outlet in physical activity…

    Husbands are made to sleep on couches like dogs in the houses they slave away to pay for, if she wants to take your house and kids she can do so at the drop of a hat.

    It’s all bullshit programming.

  22. Not really as a kid, but when I was younger, I didn’t understand how adults could be single and not looking for a relationship, now I’m in that boat and I fully understand it

  23. I didn’t really have any expectations as I don’t come from a culture where romance is even a concept, except among those who are maybe from large cities/more “westernized” areas.

    I’d like to experience it some day, but into adulthood it’s still been something I’m having some difficulty wrapping my head around. So in that sense I don’t know if it’s changed, I think just in childhood that was “normal” in the sense that it was all I knew, but now I just feel like an alien visiting another planet.

  24. As a kid, I think I was much more of a hopeless romantic. True love finds a way and it comes for everyone type of thing.

    Man, how naive I was.

  26. I learned that:

    A) love is not forever

    B) unconditional love doesn’t exist, at least not between adult humans.

    C) when poverty comes through the door, love flies out of the window

    D) people who are married for a long time, it’s not because of love, it’s because they learned to coexist

  27. You have to be much more careful. From my own experience, you will meet a LOT of women who don’t really want a relationship, they are just looking for someone to give them something. Maybe thats a father figure for their kids, maybe thats a check book to pay for all the things they feel they are owed, maybe they just like the rush of a new relationship and when that feeling dwindles they lose interest. Once I hit my mid 30’s the manipulation level of a lot of the women I met was astounding.

  28. I thought it would be a wonderful thing, but for me it turned out to be nothing but constant frustration and pain.

  31. Surprisingly, I think my view has gotten more positive, because when I was a kid every adult relationship I saw was a miserable, hostile bordering on abusive marriage where people stayed together for the kids (which is part of the reason I swore them off early); since becoming an adult my friends and peers have gone on to largely have loving, stable relationships. Time will tell if they last but at least right now they’re not nearly as bad as all the ones I saw as a kid.

  32. I remember one reason I looked forward to college was that I would finally getting a chance to date and experience what that was like – having a relationship seemed like it would be something fun and exciting. Now, several decades later, a relationship mostly seems like a gigantic pain in the ass that’s not really worth the effort. What a waste of time.

  33. Drastically. I didn’t realize people could lie so easily in relationships when I was younger.

  34. Get to know the person, and don’t judge them like a book cover. Ps… age doesn’t matter either.

  35. When I was a kid, I thought if you were really dedicated to somebody and really cared about them and worked hard, then it would work out in the end. This came largely from what tv and movies show.

    This is not the way the world works and it took pretty much all of my teenage years to figure that out. Relationships are nuanced. Sometimes people are into you and sometimes you’re not, just like sometimes you’re into someone and sometimes you’re not. You can’t make somebody like you no matter what you do. If you focus all of your attention on one person with the hopes of changing their mind and making them see that you’re the right guy, you’re not being romantic – you’re being creepy. You’re not caring about them, you’re actively disrespecting them by not taking no for an answer.

    You deserve to be with someone who is interested in you and vice versa. Dating is a weird dance that can be difficult to navigate, and learning how to navigate it is part of growing up. It took me a while to figure it out because I was so certain that it worked the way it did in movies and on tv, and it took me years of real life experience to realize that’s not the case. I had a lot more success once I learned to be myself (in a good way), be more self-confident, and keep myself available to new opportunities.

  36. I use to think that love was this beautiful thing for both men and women.

    Now I feel like it’s a inherit drug addiction, in which men are born as the addicts and women the drug dealers.

  37. I think I used to have a very unrealistic view of what love and my future would be like.

    I used to think that someone would magically see who I was inside and would fall in love with me.

    I remember attending a wedding for a friend and sitting outside on my own under a star lit night sky, “happy drunk”, and was suddenly struck with the unfathomable notion that the love if my life would come sit with me.

    No one came.

    Reality is everyone has standards. Everyone has wants and needs. Everyone looks and judges and everyone found me wanting.

    I’m going to die alone. I know this now and I’ve accepted it. My focus is providing for my brother’s family when I go. My house, my savings (such as they are) are already willed to my family.

    I’m just running out the clock now.

  38. I used to think love was all you needed. Being in a romantic relationship requires communication, time and planning like a partnership. Arguments suck especially when I comes to the end. The heart break hurts way more than I ever expected.

  39. Romance is a myth that is sold to women. It’s an expectation men have to live up to to earn a women’s time. A man is expected to “romance” a woman with no reciprocation. Once he stops he is no longer “a good man”.

    Relationships are built on quid pro quo and the partner will happily abuse your generosity.

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