The idea that a good man is hard to find is becoming increasingly more common. The trend of hating on men has been pretty hard to miss, especially with Vogue publishing a viral article titled “Is having a boyfriend embarrassing now?” According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 47% of adults under 30 are single, with 34% of that group being women and 63% being men. This gap between the number of single men and women highlights the challenges women face in finding suitable partners.
Perhaps this deficit of “good men” is not due to any change in men at all, but instead a reflection of their failure to change in the midst of a rapidly changing world. A good man is hard to find due to a shift in our priorities and expectations of the role a romantic partner should play in our lives, changing the general idea of what it means to be a “good man.” This is something many men are struggling to adapt to or even recognize is happening.
As a society, we’ve begun to prioritize building a life of success and accomplishment over building a traditional family. This shift has changed which traits
we view as most valuable in a life partner, especially for women, as they challenge traditional gender roles and take control of their future.
According to another 2023 survey by the Pew Research Center, “some 28% of men, compared with 18% of women, say being married is extremely or very important for a fulfilling life.” Similarly, the study shows that men and women are likely to say the same thing about having children, with women being 7% less likely to emphasize having children as a central life goal.
Today, getting married or having kids is simply seen as a nice addition to one’s life. The decentering and deprioritization of the nuclear family model has allowed women to move towards building a life that meets their own individual needs, goals and dreams before finding a partner and starting a family, allowing Generation Z (Gen Z) women to be more picky about who they choose as partners and set their standards higher.
These changing priorities include an increasing emphasis on finding an emotionally mature partner. According to the Institute for Family Studies, young women’s top priorities include someone who is “kind” and “mentally and emotionally stable.”
Tinder’s Year in Swipe 2025 corroborates this, stating that 64% of daters on the app say “emotional honesty is what dating needs most” and 60% want “clearer communication around intentions.” For Gen Z women, traits like kindness, emotional connection and honesty are highly desirable in a partner. Listening and empathizing might just be one of the hottest things a man can do right now. If that’s all it takes, why are men struggling so much to meet those standards? They lack the emotional maturity to live up to these new standards.
Societal mechanisms that stunt their emotional development are at the root of the cause. It’s no secret that “toxic masculinity” teaches men to suppress their emotions, steer clear of anything considered “feminine” and hide any sign of emotional vulnerability.
For generations, the average man’s lack of emotional skills has been rationalized by the claim that men just naturally lack emotional sensitivity. However, it’s beliefs like this that allow the problem to go unchecked. Psychology Today explains that “boys are born just as sensitive as girls,” but through “the socialization process, boys lose permission to feel and become disconnected from their core.” Emotional connection is central to the human experience and the belief that men are cut off from that by nature is not only absurd but also detrimental to society as it normalizes and perpetuates the problem.
The National Institute of Health recently published a paper on a condition called “normative male alexithymia,” which is defined as “a unidimensional measure of some men’s limitations in expressing emotion that results from gender-based socialization informed by the masculine norm of restrictive emotionality.” While this lack of emotional development in men may not be inherently their fault, it does severely affect their ability to be competent romantic partners in today’s society. This is an issue that is becoming increasingly highlighted by the growing demand for emotionally intelligent men.
Many young men are failing to meet today’s standards of what it means to be a “good man.” This is because modern standards are placing more value on emotional skills that others actively stamp out of boys from a young age. This does not mean we should absolve men of meeting our standards or discourage women from upholding them. Rather, we should encourage recognition of these deficits so that steps can be taken to correct them.
By identifying that men are failing to meet certain standards of emotional maturity and why, we can begin to dismantle the longstanding narratives and social structures that have created this problem and begin to prevent them from continuing to occur.
