Ralph Brewer explores the tension between the "lover" and "provider" archetypes, arguing many men struggle to find one person who combines sexual excitement with long-term stability. He traces a pattern where playboy-to-marriage transitions often cool after the honeymoon phase, sometimes leading to cheating, and notes women face a similar Madonna-whore judgment.
Chapters
Spencer from YouTube says, it's not that we can compare notes with the angry hurt men, but we can also compare notes with the men who are the quote one-night stand type, and we see the double standard. Yes, so what you're saying is, Spencer, we don't only compare notes as a bunch of guys getting hurt by women, women that presumably in your example went out and screwed around and had fun with Mr. Playboy type only to settle down with Mr. Father type, I guess. But you also hear from the playboy type himself, and you get to hear the, um, yeah, so what are we talking about? The old, um, yin and yang here, the old, uh, the lover versus the provider. Again, this sounds like red meat for red pill types, for some of the stuff that kind of pushes towards more misogyny and other things, you know, woman-hating type stuff. But like a lot of things that rub us the wrong way Don't just throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are nuggets of truth within some of that stuff, and one of those nuggets of truth is the old dichotomy between, uh, the lover and the provider. This person is for short-term, carnal, lustful, sex-focused fun, and this person is for more sedate, settle down, uh, get comfortable live the rest of my life type of thing. And it is very difficult to find a person that has both qualities and to marry the two together. Oftentimes we settle for one or the other. And by the way, this is not a gendered thing. It's just that maybe women are more apt to experience that than men. I'll explain. So you have a guy who's Mr. Playboy. The dude you're talking about who does the one-night stands with women. So he's got a conga line of women, one woman after the other, week after week. He just sees 3 a week, let's say, 3 different women a week for years and years. One of those guys. Those guys exist. Not many of us out there— I say us, I'm not one of them, nor have I ever been, not to that degree, that's for sure. Sounds exhausting. But they're out there. And then that guy after experiencing all that easy fun with the easy women, says, this is nuts. All these women are crazy. All it's doing is causing chaos, drama. Enough's enough. Time out. I want to find a really good gal to settle down with. And from the male's perspective, often what happens is, um, they settle down, they find one, they have the honeymoon period of that relationship, so they're still able to maintain some semblance of that hypersexual behavior that they're used to with all these other gals, usually in like nightclub bar settings and stuff like that. Um, and then that dissipates, and that, that energy dissipates, that sexual energy with wife, and then he's left with this very comfortable, sedate, whatever relationship. And then he realizes, I kind of settled for this one. She's not Miss Sexy, she's not Miss Fun, she's not Miss all that other stuff I used to have over here. With those gals in my previous years. I kind of missed that fun. I missed that excitement. I missed that validation from all those women. Now I'm with this relationship with this gal and 2, 3 kids, and it's just like, eh, it's stressful. It's boring in a lot of ways. It's very, very kid-focused. Well, this life over here was very adult, sex-focused. And he misses that. And by the way, those guys tend to cheat like crazy. 'Cause I talk to them. Not often, but enough that I start to paint a picture for them. And what I just painted there, that's pretty much it. I've heard a bunch of those guys. So we have the old, what do they call it, the Madonna whore complex. She can be a real freak or whatever, and she can be super over-the-top sexual and very easy, as they say, promiscuous. I'll have fun with her, take her out, whatever, but I sure as hell ain't gonna commit to her. Sound familiar, guys? This is what we're seeing from the ladies in our life. I guess you could say we as men recognize that that's a thing amongst the men in our life, but that's so few of us men that we don't even take that into account. But maybe it's way, way, way more common for the ladies over here, simply because they arguably have more easy sex available to them, I guess. You know, often illustrate the point that I used to illustrate is that I could I could stick my head out this office door here. I rent a little office space here in Plano and, um, and say, hey, who here wants to have sex? And they will probably call the police or the security on me real quick, rightfully so. But if a gal did that, some other dude would probably poke his head out the door next to her and go, are you serious? Because, you know, I got 10 minutes until my next meeting. Just different worlds. Um, the wolves are always circling. That's what I tell a lot of women. Um, there's always an opportunity out there. That's why I think we all know that. Let's be honest. Now, most of those dudes are creeps, weirdos, and women want nothing to do with them. But that, that's there. We men, most of us don't live in that world at all. But, um, you have to understand it's not necessarily a gender thing that exists. The old, this one's hypersexual, super fun, but probably crazy, definitely not relationship material. This one's more relationship material, but not necessarily super sexy fun. Hmm, wouldn't it be nice to have both in one person? I think that's what all of us men want, and a lot of us are finding like, oof, that's almost damn near impossible. It's not impossible, but it's tough to find, that's for sure. And, uh, welcome to the wonderful wacky world of relationships.
