Dysfunctional Men Don't Have Standards, But Should

There is a very good video by Monday FA Monday called Men Have Preferences but not Standards. Approach this with care, because it could trigger all sorts of hidden firecrackers you didn’t know you had.

My preferences express what I would like, but could live without. Standards are what something has to meet to be a functioning instance of what it is. Preferences are whether you want it in red or green, tall or short, shaken or stirred. Standards are deal-breakers: stuff that doesn’t meet the standards are reajected or excluded.

Would you drive a car with brakes that don’t work? Take a job that pays less than minimum wage? Go to a holiday hotel when you know there’s building going on? Buy an umbrella with a hole in it? Sit on a chair with a missing leg? Eat uncooked chicken? Go out in the equatorial sun without sun-block? Swim near the Red Flag? Marry a Borderline? (Why does that last feel different from the others? And yet it isn’t.)

A man who has only preferences can be talked round. A man who has standards can’t be. When mavens talk about “settling”, they want you to think they are asking you to go easy on your preferences, but actually they are saying you should abandon your standards.

It is dismaying that givens actually need to be adopted explicitly as standards. Monday’s examples for a potential partner are “I like spending time with this person”, and “This person is kind to me”. He points out that some men will take anybody, no matter how awful, because they believe that any relationship is a win for them. Those men don’t have standards.

Now imagine you have standards, deal-breakers. It doesn’t matter for what. Assume that you are not being silly, that your standards are what should be givens, rather than wanting something from the top one per cent. Now imagine that you never meet anyone, or find anything, that meets those standards. Not even basic stuff, not even what should be givens.

And then other people tell you that you’re afraid to take a chance, that you’re too picky or fussy, that you can’t commit, that you expect perfection. That you should be prepared to compromise and make it work. That you should take a partner who may not really like you, or has a personality disorder (remember, I’m an alcoholic, and no-one should have taken me). Because that’s what grown-ups do.

Would you think there was something wrong with you? Or something wrong with the people telling you to drive a car with no brakes? A lot of people think there is something wrong with them. I did. Until I understood what was really wrong with me, got sober, and understood that some of my actions for many years were way smarter than my thoughts. (Some of my actions were dumb, however, especially around my career.)

Towards the end of the video, Monday asks if we really are living in a world where we can either have standards or relationships, but not both. He doesn’t want to believe it, and I don’t blame him. People like him and me live in such a world. That’s hard to accept. Here’s why it’s true:

Functional people are good at recognising other functional people and also at avoiding dysfunctional people. So functional people marry other functional people, and the rest of us are stuck sharing our varying degrees of crazy, damaged and nasty with each other. So far, so well-known. Now let me throw some stats out:

Estimates vary, but about ten per cent of the population suffers from psychiatric disorders at some point in their lives.

By age 16 almost half the children in the UK will not be living with both their birth parents.

Even when they do live with their birth parents, around twenty per cent live in self-reported unhappy marriages.

Coming from a broken home, or an unhappy home, can serve as a proxy for emotional damage. Perhaps half of the population may have lacked the experience of seeing how functional adults manage intimate and domestic relationships. Never having seen this, they lack the upbringing and skills successfully to manage family life and long-term relationships.

How surprising is it that someone can go through their whole lives and never meet anyone who meets the minimum standards for a relationship? Not at all, when you understand that it’s half the population and the only available people they meet will be from that messed-up half.

Dysfunctional people need standards too. Especially if we want to have lives that are not miseries. Having and living by standards means missing dysfunctional and unsatisfying relationships with possibly high exit costs.

Wait. How is that missing anything?

Sounds more like dodging an artillery bombardment to me.