AlteredEgo
O don't know how old are you or where you live.But what do you think,do young men these days have the same qualities that made you love your husband?If yes,does this frequency decrease or increase ?
Also many of my opinions are based on my personal experience.Romania is not really a developed country and of course there are shocking differences between the US.
who knows,maybe the gender differences aren't as obvious in more developed countries.
My husband is a young man; he is 26. I tend to be very good at picking friends and acquaintance who really suit me, and I can really only know the behavior of people whom I permit to get close.
I only dated one man who I do not think of as a man, and then only for as long as I could tolerate him behaving like a adolescent female. Honestly, the immaturity of his behavior bothered me more than any effeminate aspect of his routines or behaviors. That he was too-fastidious just meant he always looked great, though it bothered me that it took him so very, very long to get ready to do anything. That he had such a detailed skin-care regimen only means that he will remain youthful in appearance into his mature years, which in his field may serve him well. His method of relating was not manly enough for me, and ultimately led to our agreeing not to see each other anymore.
For example, he fights like a girl. One time we were visiting Los Angeles, and he wanted to introduce me to "the best burritos outside of Mexico". He was from a small, beach community in Virginia. I was from a cosmopolitan port city, New York. I tried to tell him we didn't have to go out of our way for burritos; New York foodies can get excellent Mexican. I only resisted because usually he was deathly afraid to explore neighborhoods he wasn't too familiar with, another trait which I don't think is either manly, or womanly. He insisted, and dragged me into the scariest neighborhood I have ever seen, and I'm from the Bronx!
A digression: Never before that did I know that there were Americans who lived like the people I have seen in photos of under-developed countries. The neighborhood was completely deserted. All but two businesses were closed. All that were open were the restaurant we sought, and a gas station across the street from it. Even the supermarket was out of business. None of the houses were occupied. Everyone was at work or school. Everyone. None of the lots had dogs. Dogs would be an extra mouth to feed. No one there could afford that. The lots were minuscule, the rooftops were tin. Tin! The small houses looked flimsy enough to kick over. There was no grass, there were few trees. It was, however, very clean, immaculately so. We could tell we'd entered a depressed area immediately, because as I drove, the streets changed from wide, well-maintained, well delineated streets, to wide, cracked, unlined streets. It was hard to know what lane I was in. Years prior, someone had painted lines, and stuck reflectors on those lines. Now, in the sunshine, it was just a dazzling, seemingly disorganized sprinkling of glitter. No one was in the street. As we drove around lost, we passed no other cars. This was the middle of the day, at a time when the American economy was still flowering. I would hate to see the same area now.
Back to the point of the story. So, he refuses to go with me to Beverly Hills because we don't really know how to get there, and he is "afraid we'll end up lost in Compton"- no lie! But he takes me to fucking Carajo (my nickname for that awful place) for a burrito I don't need, AND he makes me do the driving, as he always does, another un-masculine thing. When we get to the street where the place is, he keeps poorly communicating to me
the exact location. Because he is in the passenger seat, he can see the sign atop the 70 foot pole, and I cannot. After circling the block several times because it never occurs to him to say, "It's right on the corner, " I ask him (admittedly rudely) to just let me find the place on my own, without his confusing help. I find it on the corner, and he says something nasty to me, so I say, "You know, just get out of the fucking car and eat a fucking burrito." Not only does he refuse to eat, but he gives me the silent treatment for the remaining three days of our vacation, despite the fact that I was financing the trip, AND had apologized for swearing at him, and asked how I could make up for getting frustrated and speaking harshly to him. Little girls fight like that, not grown men.
Anyway, his tendency to preen and invest hours and hours a day in his appearance, and his tendency to want me to take care of him, never drive, never take the initiative in anything, his fear of anything new, and the fact that he fights like someone's teenaged daughter conspired to turn me off to him. I thought of him as a little punk bitch. I can't be with a "man" like that. From then on I was distinctly biased against any man with a beauty routine better than mine in terms of his eligibility for mating. Men who are pussies disgust me. Men who preen to much gross me out; they remind me of my time with this loser.
I see men and women as being able to be equal within a relationship, and at the same time I see us as having differences in roles and behavior in part because of the practical demands of having different genders, and in part because of cultural expectations.
You asked if I think other young men possess the qualities that made me love my husband. I suppose many do; he's not a weirdo. He's a typical guy, as far as the guys I have run into. He is responsible, cautious but not afraid, ready to protect, but not eager to fight, vulnerable, but not weak, principled, but not a zealot, opinionated, but not a bully. These are among the things I was looking for in a partner, and the men at his work mostly seem to fit these criteria as well. There are two who are extreme preeners. One is gay, and as prejudicial as this sounds, that isn't going to hold him back. His expected role in a relationship, because of the kind of man he is, is just going to be adjusted to accommodate that tendency. His is not going to seem any less manly by those in his dating pool. That appears to be a difference between male/female and male/male relationships. However, the other preener is straight, and cannot seem to keep a woman for very long. He is a very, very nice guy, a genuine, caring, and generous person. He's just does not seem very masculine. He has a fairly high-pitched voice for a man, he is too hesitant to defend his home, himself, or his companions. He does not have strong opinions, and if he does, he cannot defend them well, despite being very articulate and intelligent. He is a bit weak sometimes, too easy to steamroll without even meaning to. His body is ridiculously hot, and so is his pretty face. He has no trouble meeting women, just keeping them. I have no idea why they leave, but I know why I would, even though I adore him as a friend.
Among my long-time friends, there is only one man who preens excessively, but he has OCD, and that is what causes that. He cannot stop himself from indulging in his ridiculous hygiene routine. He's sick. That level of control-freaking does spill over into other aspects of his life, and I think that makes a lot of women find him to be more masculine than he actually is. Women have specifically told me they have left him because of his OCD, and they always go on and on about his bathroom habits. I don;t know what can be learned from that.
I don't know what you mean by "does this frequency increase or decrease". If you mean are there fewer and fewer men that I think of as masculine coming of age in the world, I do not know. But as I already said, I don;t think paying some extra attention to skincare or haircare or even fashion makes a man less masculine. But culturally, there are differences between just how much attention to these things men and women pay, and those differences do seem to be slowly narrowing.