Hi! I (23M) am recovering from complex childhood developmental trauma. I've considered myself an outside observer to human society because I was unable to bond with or relate much to other people until this year.
I grew up in an environment with abusive parents where any kind of softness or vulnerability in men was considered "gay". Subsequently, I encountered a lot of male peers in school who had the same attitude. It seemed like the entire world had the same message: wanting to be vulnerable as a man represents a sexual perversion because it is a "feminine" trait. I was bullied for the bits of vulnerability that I showed, echoing my abusive parents punishing my vulnerability. This sent me into a suicidal spiral that I thankfully made it out of.
I had this inexplicable desire to be vulnerable that I couldn't suppress. It made me believe that I was somehow "gay" despite only being attracted to women, and that women who like men could never find me attractive because they were only attracted to "straight" masculinity -- invulnerable, competitive, and dominating -- consigning me to a permanent ontological friendzone. Ultimately, I decided to take the Faustian bargain of trading my sexual potential for the freedom to be soft, releasing me from the internal pressure to conform to patriarchy.
(To clarify, I was confused in a specific way where I thought "straight" = patriarchy and "gay" = anything that challenges patriarchy. I concluded that the latter was morally superior and adopted softness and progressive beliefs on purpose even though I falsely believed at the time that this would lead to my celibacy based on the right-wing echo chamber I grew up in.)
Through healing from my trauma and talking to friends years later, I'm starting to think that this belief was kinda bullshit? How can you avoid being vulnerable when merely existing in the presence of your partner opens you up to their potential judgement? How can you avoid being vulnerable when you ask someone out, knowing they can reject you? It's almost like I actually didn't want to be vulnerable despite thinking otherwise, and refusing to even appear in front of people actually made me the most invulnerable and therefore manliest man who ever manned, or something. Also, accepting my fate of being in the perma-friendzone led to me making a female friend who emphatically told me that I actually could find a girlfriend because I have this adorable charm and clumsiness that seems to make her instinctively want to baby me, which I always thought was the exact opposite of desirable. I'm slowly coming around to believing her after 6 years.
Most importantly, love requires both partners to be emotionally vulnerable, right? So then under gender roles, men can't love women, only objectify them? Wouldn't this make society one giant trauma factory where men are traumatized into detached sociopathy and women are traumatized into servitude? So what the hell are conservatives doing in relationships? Are they all loveless relationships, or did all of the men cheat their gender role to develop romantic feelings? If men didn't cheat a little in the past decades where gender roles were the strongest, shouldn't we see a kind of generational trauma so severe that violent crime is rampant and secure attachment is very scarce?
Yep.
Exactly what you just said.
A little column A, a little column B
*Looks around at the state of the world...* Yeah, sounds about right.
(Most of that violent crime is in the form of unreported domestic violence, and that lack of secure attachment is masked by relationships held together by obligation.)
Glibness aside, you're 100% correct, and the reason you're struggling is because oh boy is it hard to be slapped in the face by this realization all in one go.
Is love possible under rigorously enforced traditional gender roles? Yes, of a sort, but it will never be healthy. It will never be truly free and alive.
But when we say "traditional gender roles", do note how I added the "rigorously enforced" there. Breaking out of the conservative mold does not require you to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
I work in IT, I dress, look and act very masculine, I have a basement full of power tools, I know more than anyone should about guns, I play violent video games, I have a dog, I like to fire up the smoker on a Sunday and cook some ribs... There are plenty of ways that I fit the ideal of traditional male gender roles. And there are plenty of ways that I don't. I could talk about the small ones, but the most significant would be that I'm bisexual, and I'm married to a woman who is in the army. And not, like, a clerk or something, she's infantry. Could kick my ass ten times over, and I'm very comfortable with that.
The thing about traditional ideas of gender is that once you understand that they're bullshit, you're no longer required to accept the bad with the good. You get to pick and choose what you want from the buffet. My wife is one of the toughest motherfuckers you will ever meet, and a lot of her interests skew more "manly". She likes military history, she's a gun nerd, she plays shooters and complicated strategy games. But she still likes to dress up pretty and put on makeup, and she still likes to curl up in my arms and be the little spoon. I can cry at sad movies, but I can also be the tall, strong man who will wrap her up in his arms when she's sad or stressed.
It's not an either/or. It's a whatever you want. Be the person you are most comfortable being, whatever that may. Because the best part is, when you are your most genuine self, people will be drawn to that. There is nothing, nothing more attractive than someone who truly knows who they are and gives zero fucks what anyone else thinks. The more you shed the rules that were imposed upon you, and the rules you imposed upon yourself, the more you grow into a version of you that makes you happy, the more people will be drawn to that. Don't worry about trying to be someone else's ideal. Be your own ideal. The rest will happen naturally.
Your last two paragraphs perfectly encapsulate a sentiment that I wanted to include in my comment, but couldn't capture well enough.
You said it better than I could. Great comment.