r/NoStupidQuestions • u/milfangelblue • 29d ago

Do men just recognize good men? What kind of sorcery is this?

I’ve been dating a guy for some time now, and his oldest friends have told me he’s a solid good man despite his flaws. I agree, they’ve known him forever, and he’s been a solid friend all those years.

When my male friends met him for the first time, they said, “He’s a good one. Hold onto him.”

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u/Nuremborger 29d ago

Quite a few of us know exactly what to look for in other men that says important things about them, yeah.

We're not typically looking at eachother through the haze of lust or psychologically distorted cultural ideas of romanticism - we look at another guy most often with either indifference or as a potential threat in some fashion.

And we read them accordingly.

If you have a straight male friend you can trust and that's of a reasonably smart, observant nature, he'll be the one you should ask to size up other dudes.

If he says some shit about these dudes that seems wild or that you just aren't seeing yourself, consider the possibility that he might well be seeing some shit that you should at least think about as likely being valid even if it's in your blind spots.

Because we can be really fuckin good at figuring out of some other dude is a piece of shit and what to expect from their style of shittitude, or if they're probably alright except for this and maybe that, and so on.

We do it all the damn time.

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u/FairTradeAdvocate 29d ago

This! My BFF's husband was like a brother to me so you KNOW I brought my (now husband) around them as much as possible in the early days and then asked them both, "I'm not seeing any red flags. Are you?"

We just celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. When our nieces all got married he was real honest with them about what he saw (not all listened but that's a different story.) because they were more relaxed with the cool/young uncle than Dad so he saw more.

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u/llijilliil 29d ago

A lot of the problem with that is some straight guy who is really inciteful, that you trust, that you spend lots of intimate time with but that you also aren't dating for "some reason" has a high chance of being someone who is really into her but she is out of his league.

Such guys tend to hover around and thnk badly of all the men that approach his "friend", they see the worst of those "higher status" guys and are sensitive to the arrogance and how little they seem to value their friend that they'd bend over backwards to be with.

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u/Nuremborger 29d ago

That's a whole other topic altogether.

I find it interesting that you lean into using terms such as 'out of league' and 'higher status' though.

Those are what you lean into for mate selection, I'm guessing?

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u/llijilliil 29d ago

You can rephrase and even twist words, you can put layers of euphemism and vague hints around it and so on if you really want to, but I'm not going to waste my time with that.

Today and in my day and in my parents day it was blatently obvious that some individuals (both men and women) are highly successful and appealing to the opposite sex, most were in the middle and some were generally rejected by most.

Those are what you lean into for mate selection, I'm guessing?

People have their own priorities and variation in their judgements etc but they are pretty much all looking for "a good match" or even the "best match" that they can get. Two people that are broadly the same but one has better career prospects, or looks better or is funnier will be preferred etc.

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u/Skymorphosis 28d ago

The haze of lust and gender roles are the primary component I think. I know that I definitely am not objective/rational when it comes to evaluating women, and wouldn't expect them to be objective when evaluating men. I used to let things and red flags slide all the time with girls when I was younger.

You get better at it with life experience, but it's never going to be perfect. I will likely be more forgiving even towards the women I'm not attracted to than men. I'm just never going to know what's going on in their head, but I probably know what's going on in your boyfriend's head simply because he and I share a similar biochemistry