“Real Man”
scroll to the bottom for the audio version
The other day Derrick and I were chatting and he said “Can I ask you a question”. Of course, I was ready to chat about our move or something along those lines but he asked me, “Do you expect me to order your food for you at restaurants?” He explained that he saw a video of one of those male podcasters saying that if you don’t order your dates meals then you’re not a “real man”. I laughed but we had a conversation about how I don’t expect him to order for me but since we have been together for about half a year I wouldn’t mind if he did. But it got me thinking about the different dynamics of romantic relationships - there are so many! I have known that based on studying interpersonal relationships in undergrad and in my free time but I haven’t been in a situation where my relationship dynamic is the one I am looking at.
I am going to be speaking to heterosexual, monogamous relationships throughout this entry but I recognize this is not the only relationship that exists - but it is the only one I can speak to. Before we look at the relationship, we need to break down the individuals within the relationship. I want to focus mostly on the men in this entry and we can review women later on.
This is not a credible chart. I literally spent 5 minutes copying it from a Google search and maybe an hour and a half of research on this topic (because the topic of this sociosexual hierarchy is mostly relevant to mice, wolves, and surprisingly rainbow fish.) The thing I have come across in this research is pure comedy.
Basically the further up the pyramid you go the more those traits on the right are pertinent to the group of individuals. But I want to give you the definitions I found for these different categories of men.
Alpha: “Self-assured leader of men whose swagger and aloofness make him very successful with women”
Sigma: “The '‘lone wolf’ antithesis of the alpha. Defies placement in the social hierarchy but yet is successful with women”
Beta: “The worker bees of society. Women will tolerate them if they have resources”
Delta: “Regular guys, participates in society and finds pleasure in it”
Gamma: “Clueless about women and often check out of the mating game”
Omega: “The hopeless. Often filled with rage because of their total rejection by women”
Now reading those definitions from, as I said, unreliable sourced sites had me laughing for a while. Are we as a society doing okay? If you subscribe to these ideas you might at well stop reading while you’re ahead.
This concept of hierarchy is extreme, but it generally makes sense. These definitions are very exaggerated but speaking for myself I have met one of these guys in each piece of the pyramid. Here are some examples to paint a picture. The alpha guy who boasts about how much money he makes or subscribes to the mindset of ‘I am better than you cause I grind sun up to sun down’. The Sigma guy can’t be bothered to date appropriately aged women or wear the proper attire on a date. The beta who complains about how nice guys always finish last. Delta guy from my point of view is a finance bro. The gamma man is such a cutie but is so socially awkward. And the omega man who says seems to say women are so shallow - but in actuality, we don’t like you not because you’re a short king but because you’re an ass. After reviewing each of these categories and my interactions with them just based on the extreme definitions - there isn’t a hierarchy because they all suck.
Harsh.
But I wanted to bring up the concept of the hierarchy because this is what tik tok, Twitter, podcasts, YouTube, etc. is filled with. A group of middle-aged men sitting in a circle speaking into microphones popping up on my For You page at least once a day - I don’t ask for that, I don’t follow, I don’t subscribe or like or share but media is so saturated with it that they trickle into my feed. I can only imagine what it is like being a male and having this shoved in your face growing up and existing day to day. I honestly feel sad for them, especially sad for the men that subscribe to the concept and strive to be the alpha man.
Now that we have laid the foundation of this concept I want to talk about myself and my man and the point of this entry lol
I have stood on the “independent women, I don’t need a man” podium before. My parents raised me to be incredibly independent but even though I was independent I knew that I wanted someone I could rely on. When I was causally dating I wasn’t finding that. I wasn’t finding it not because I sucked but because the type of men I was dating was the guys ^^^up there in that pyramid. When I first met Derrick I made it clear that I was independent - not by being in his face about it but I let him know I can get my own flights and I will do XYZ by myself. Now did that help or hurt us in the long run who knows? As he and I have gotten comfortable in our relationship, I have gotten more and more comfortable being in my “feminine energy” not because he is an alpha man but instead because he is a man of high value. And a high-value man knows how to be respectful, how to communicate clearly, and overall just knows how to make their significant other feel like they don’t have to always do everything on their own. THIIIIIS is something that none of the men in the pyramid, in my opinion, know how to do. My theory is that the men in the pyramid are so caught up in the competition with other men and a high-value man is more so focused on his own well-being and the people who matter most to him.
After Derrick and I talked about him ordering for me, we joked around about who wears the pants in the relationship and it was really funny because I would say we have a traditional relationship in the sense that he is the provider and a protector then I do the cooking, planning, and more nurturing things but in terms of who wears the pants, we think we mutually wear the pants, the pants being decisions. And I think that is normal??? IDK, I don’t know a ton about other couples’ relationship dynamics but I would assume that is how a majority of relationships are?
But I do think with this oversaturation of men with microphones talking to girls half their age about hypothetical situations the idea of you both of you wearing the pants in the relationship and having roles based on your relationship’s needs tends to get lost. I know it gets lost, when I was dating the podcast topics were what I was experiencing which is why I think, paired with my upbringing, lead me to be very firm in my independence when Derrick and I first started dating. And now that I am confident in my partner being able to provide what I am expecting and vice versa we can relax in our relationship.
All that to say - I hope you can take a step back and evaluate what type of man you are and what type of man you want to be. And if you are not a man then what type of men you are attracting OR what type of man do you want? I don’t think that every man can be a high-value man but I am positive that with communication of needs and expectations, you can find your match, even if your match is an ‘alpha man’. Good luck!
xoxx,
B
If you want to hear this in a sort of podcast format please click play below.