Molly: the trouble with the trouble with wanting men
It's only been a few months since I've written about something heteropessimism related but now there's even more of a doozy!! Earlier this week the paper of record ran an essay by Jean Garnett titled "The Trouble With Wanting Men". If you, like me, have a robust mental rollodex of online articles that have generated juicy discourse you may recognize Garnett's name from her 2022 essay about opening her marriage. I found that piece incredibly bleak. For one, I think non-monogamy is immoral at any point in a relationship. If you have committed your life to someone and think you can sleep with or love another, you do not in fact love the person you pledged yourself to. The depth of love and knowing possible in a devoted monogamous relationship eclipses anything the polyamorous can experience by orders of magnitude. But even beyond that, asking your recently postpartum wife (as the author's husband did) for an open marriage is jaw-droppingly cruel and displays a soulless lack of respect and honor for the woman who gave birth to your child. Garnett's often beautiful writing only highlights how fucking depressing it all is.
A few months into our arrangement, while my husband was on tour in Europe, I noticed a new playlist on his Spotify and put it on in the car, quiet enough not to wake my daughter. I knew right away: the songs were too expressive of his core taste to have been thrown together for his own casual listening or for a group. The sensation was disorienting. I opened a window, letting the noise of the highway roar against the beat of a great love song, a song we’d danced to at our wedding.
The new woman’s piney smell comes home on the neatly folded hand-me-downs she sends back with my husband, from her child to mine. As a rival I find her formidable in an unfamiliar way. A single mother’s time seems particularly dangerous to waste; she must plan ahead, must not be kept waiting or canceled on at the last minute. I have seen a picture of her son, his tangled dark hair framing a dreamy frown, and have allowed my daughter to go on playdates with him. My husband and I discuss the situation as we unload the dishwasher. Where is the relationship going? How does this other child fit in? Openness has placed his mother and me in this tender, fanged relation; I wish her well, but when it comes to the distribution of something finite—my husband’s ultimate loyalty—one of us is going to lose.
Yikes! This is not how marriage, let alone the precious years parenting a young child, are supposed to feel. So I wasn't shocked when the Garnett of 2025, of "The Trouble With Wanting Men," is recently divorced. I don't want to mock Garnett for her failed marriage or for admitting that she blew up the arrangement when she fell in love with someone who, in the end, did not committ to her. But in light of these details I do think it's worth considering that she is not exactly the average single woman.
Honestly it took me multiple reads to figure out what the essay's thesis was supposed to be. Garnett examines "heterofatalism," a depressing level-up of Asa Seresin's watershed articulation of heteropessimism. If you haven't read Seresin's essay I really recommend it. Garnett describe's Seresin's term as "women fed up with the mating behavior of men," but Seresin's piece is much more complex. The original examination of heteropessimism does not absolve straight women, but also posits the behavior as an attempt to shrug away our own complicity and power to change. "...heteropessimism actually reinforces the privatizing function of heterosexuality," writes Seresin. As a self-proclaimed hetero-optimist, I don't share a lot of Seresin's worldview, and the reasons I find heteropessimism a destructive and futile mode are undoubtedly different than his. But I respect the skill with which he named and dissected it. (I also respect anyone writing seriously about Love Island)
But back to Jean Garnett. Her problem is that she desires men but isn't getting the kind of attention and reciprocity she really wants from them. Like any good heteropessimist Garnett is an incurable straight woman - straight enough to wax poetic about dick, even. Aside I've found this combination of being sick of men but loving dick in another place recently, the propulsive but ultimately not good novel Liars by Sarah Manguso. It's as if appreciating a good penis is offered up as the irrefutable disclaimer that the author truly has no choice but to be straight and mad about it. End Aside
Early in the piece Garnett acknowledges that she and her fellow single friends sitting and complaining about men in New York City is a little like a certain iconic TV show, but I actually think the ladies of Sex & The City had a healthier outlook on men than Garnett and co. Samantha, who never has trouble finding enthusiastic lovers, has a mercenary, almost misandrist streak that I think gets overlooked by a lot of fans in the overwhelming force of her sexual voracity. She loves having sex with men, yes, but she exclusively prefers friendship with women. This allows her to (successfully) sexually pursue men who exhibit the full range of masculine behavior. Carrie and Charlotte, the romantics, have plenty of heartbreak, but bravely open themselves up to men. As cringe as it may be, I have always related to Carrie's tension between wanting a great love and commitment and her terminal inability to compromise her sense of self. She gets into some real pickles! But she also ends up with the love of her life, who certainly does not feel embarrassed about being a man. The most heteropessimistic character, Miranda, has the most trouble. (note: I am not talking or thinking about And Just Like That at this time)
I think Garnett accidentally blows the whole game wide open in this paragraph, describing her type:
He is gentle, goofy, self-deprecating, rather deferential, a passionate humanist, a sweet guy, a “good guy.” He tends to signal, in various ways, his exemption from the tainted category of “men,” and it is perfectly understandable that he would wish to do so. It must be mildly embarrassing to be a straight man, and it is incumbent upon each of them to mitigate this embarrassment in a way that feels authentic to him.
As usual I worry about being called reactionary or having internalized misogyny despite the fact that my internalized misogyny, like the Tim and Eric sketch "The Beaver Boys" shrimp and white wine levels, is constantly being balanced by a healthy and equal amount of misandry. With that said here's my radical pro-man statement. I don't think being ashamed or embarrassed about being men makes men better. Selfishly, it does not make them treat women better! By actively seeking men who feel a little bad about it, Garnett is selecting for the exact group that displays the behaviors she complains about: shiftiness, lack of devotion, lack of enthusiasm.
I've never agreed with the idea that you can't love someone else until you love yourself. But Paul pointed out that maybe in the sense of accepting things you fundamentally are, like a man, or straight, might be necessary for a good relationship. I don't think that letting men be cool with being men means that we should accept poor treatment, just that a concern with being "one of the good ones" is not a deterrent to treating women poorly. It's better to devote yourself to the person in front of you than to the optics surrounding it. As I said in my last rant about this kind of thing, I think the only road to healilng for men and women who want to fall in love with each other is to embrace that desire. Heterofatalism, or whatever the term evolves to be, is just making us sadder, lonelier, and less able to appreciate the beauty in the other.