Pseudo-science is dressing up a few true facts as a vehicle for opinion. It’s typically relatively harmless, except perhaps when it happens to reflect a regressive zeitgeist.

My own experience suggests all men take a lot more care on this point, but the effect of that been mostly overwhelmed by increased competition.

That is not the point.

The point is that an emotional support network will help you in these situations and suggesting that someone build one is not "infantilizing" them but giving them valuable tools.

I could care less if you find one personally valuable or not (I don't have trouble imagining that there are people for which they are not), but I object to your generalizations and implication that men who pursue them are somehow lesser.

Ok, I think at some point I might have been mildly helpful to one friend who had a crisis by just sorta being there, I can see that, but that was literally a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence so far.

What are 20 people for, like how does it work?

You have a dozen people who would give you emotional support but you don't ask for any because you aren't sure you could give emotional support in return.

You have a dozen people you think might give you emotional support but you don't want to burden them with your problems.

You have a dozen people that would give you emotional support, maybe once, but you are too afraid to burn the single emotional support coupon until its more important.

Next question.

and the same goes in reverse. i love my wife and only wish the best for her. but that does not mean i need to be blind to her problems, or not expect her to stop doing things that hurt me or others. but it does mean that my love for her does not stop even if we should separate.

however, this assumes a different kind of love than the love that most people think they have for their partner. a kind of love that is exclusive and can only ever go to one person. unconditional love is the kind of love that accepts everyone for what they are. the kind of love that all the major religions out there are talking about.

(edit: expanded further)

That's not what I was doing.

Like, I'm an extreme introvert. Most people are more extroverted than I am. Despite this, I have more than two close friends.

Whatever's causing some people to have small emotional support networks is something that should be studied by scientists, rather than taken for granted like this article does. Preventing unnecessary suffering is a net-positive for society.

But the article excluded the people who have more than two close friends, and kind of took that for granted. So I was responding to the article, not the circumstances other people suffer through.

I can see how someone could misread my comment to mean something else, but that wasn't what I was stating.

Like commenters above mention, emotional support is table stakes in friendship among women. It is a kinder, gentler world - the kind of world you perhaps remember growing up in. That world still exists, but it's typically not accessible to men once they reach adulthood.

How could men access the world of emotional support? By disassociating the idea of gender and emotional support. Growing up in the 90s and 2000s, I remember emotional vulnerability being associated with homosexuality - it was "gay" for men to be emotionally vulnerable with eachother, typically leaving men with women[spouses] or family members as their only source of emotional support. The way out is decouple these two things, to un-"gay" emotional vulnerability between men.

What does it look like? Checking in on friends, learning to open up yourself, increasing emotional intelligence, learning how to hold space and reflectively listen. Not trying to solve people's problems when what they want is to be heard. All of these skills and norms exist within feminine spaces as a matter of course and when folks say "putting in the work" it means learning to employ these things.

It means that being emotionally vulnerable doesn't imply a sexual advancement. It means enforcing that as a reality.

With all due respect, chances are this view won't be helpful in the long run. It's challenging enough to influence our own minds or predict with certainty what journeys they'll embark on, let alone assume we can be responsible for another person's happiness.

What a weird point of view. I assume that asking your SO if they’re upset because she’s on her period, you might start to have a good idea of why your SO isn’t happy.

I’d rather be the person I want to be in a relationship, than play weird games about whose happiness matters more, like it’s a competition. But you do you.

I like that phrasing as it doesn't sound selfish in that context and most people can immediately understand why it's necessary.

In many, it’s typical to discuss everything from the sex habits of them and their partners (in excruciating detail), their own and others affairs, to every embarrassing detail of their kids lives. It often seems to be a competition to see who can get the most exciting ‘tea’ out of each other.

In my experience, having indirectly seen/overheard many of these discussions, most men would be horrified if they knew what was really going on.

It happens in some men’s groups, but is much, much rarer.

As for my story - I’ve seen quite a few.

Office politics where a senior woman leader was essentially running a ‘sex for leverage’ campaign against all the men (and a couple women) in the group, using the women in the group as ‘bait’.

A church where the pastor got convicted of child molestation, but where the community insisted he be forgiven (after getting out), and he was indeed reinstated - while another part of the congregation had their entire family driven from the group (and harassed socially in the community for years) because the father divorced his spouse because of infidelity and physically abusive behaviors.

Oh, and the classic ‘ex wives club’ stalking and harassing an ex, and any new wife - and manipulating her into ruining herself and joining the club.

I’ve seen all these play out first hand, and they are just a drop in the bucket. I’ve ceased to be amazed at the cruelty often demonstrated.

Abusive men tend to work a bit differently, so their setups often look more directly hierarchical and have less information sharing going on. They tend to operate more off secrecy and/or threats of explicit violence, than manipulation.

But I’ve seen a few (rare) instances of similar setups. People can be awesome. People can be terrible.

They do show up at my art and DnD meetups and some of them can barely talk, at first, but after a while you can see them start to come out of their shell, I find it takes about two years before their lives become transformed.

But again, they have to show up and thats on them.

The emotional support thing is a consequence of building relationships when you do not need help, when you are fine. If you build them only when you need emotional support, you will be perceived as needy and people will get tired of it.

Totally not. They seek validation and venting. Men in general don't like being given advice, rarely seek it and when they do, they are explicit a put seeking it.