The Biodegradable Man: Men Who Need Women to Stay Intact

At some point in a man’s life, he looks closely at his friend group and feels a certain despair. Not because the group lacks quality. Nor because he feels inferior or superior to them. It’s because he realizes that, for some of those men, their season of growth has already met its end.

By the time you hit 30, your personality has been cemented. By 35, your life is navigating towards gears of permanence – and you better hope that those gears are circling in your favor. One of the most important things to have in your toolbelt as a man approaching 40 is a resume featuring strong life averages. Do you have a job? (You better.) Do you have at least $20,000 in savings? (You’ll need it.) Do you have a woman? Do you have a good woman? Do you have a good woman who makes your life easier?

Some men simply cannot function without a woman in their lives. I may be one of these types. The truth is, I don’t know — and I’ll probably never know. Luckily — and this isn’t to brag, it’s just a fact — I’m smooth like Country Crock and haven’t had at least one woman to idle away with since I was 17 years old. At my most daring, in my early twenties, I actually juggled four women. There was the main girl–the girl I would date for years, the ex-girl–unreliable and moody, the back-up to the main girl–mostly interesting but not built to last, and the loose one who thought she was playing the same game as me. These were all fun, but they also served a purpose. Three of these girls were insurance policies to their superiors.

In your early to mid twenties, especially, you’re coming out of high school-level optimism and grooving through relationships that could actually be ‘forever’ if you play your cards right. At the same time, as a young man, you’re in the prime of your youth. You are most likely to enter the period of your life where you will want to stake claim to as many women as possible. (If you are reading this and that wasn’t your 20s, this period will hit you eventually – even as your testosterone levels drop.)

21-year-old LowRes had no issue with being a selfish and morally crooked individual. My first long-term relationship began as a high school junior and ended during my sophomore year of college. My heart was hammered into a coma when this girl ended our 4 year relationship to leave Massachusetts. It was a serious lesson in choosing to go romancing without a contingency plan. There was suddenly no one to talk to on a deep level anymore, nothing exciting to chase. Oh, what a terrible feeling. It can lead a man in the wrong direction, and often does.

Luckily, I had time on my side. Yes, the rebound hookup from Keene was a maniac. Yes, there were a string of questionable girls from OKCupid and Tinder. But for a young person in 2012, your 20s were meant for haphazard choices and figuring out how to clean up the trails they left behind. It helped you understand your character. Some men are at that moment in their lives right now, at 35, or 37, or 40, and have aged beyond gleaning new wisdom. Instead, the toxic plaque that builds from constant bad decision-making is melding them into a fixed position.

One of my closest friends, comedian and actor Kenney Dorcely, regularly tells me unflattering stories about his former boss — a man named “Steve.” Steve is a mid-60s white male who frequently falls prey to WhatsApp crypto scams from ‘Asian women’ — one of whom baited him into driving all the way from Boston, Massachusetts to Flushing, New York. ‘She’ then ghosted him upon his arrival at their rendezvous point, leaving him waiting outside a restaurant before he could even lay eyes on her.

Not long before that, Steve was on his second marriage. His wife was a 28-year-old stripper. She came with her own baggage: two fatherless children and the name “Ahmed” tattooed along her wrist. This young woman entertained Steve and sought to seize ownership of his house and construction business. To my understanding, she succeeded. It forced Steve to consider relocation to Alabama.

What Steve recognized was that his life resume was an advantage going back into dating — even at his age. Owning a home, a business… it’ll get you dinner with the stripper 35 years your junior. But Steve, likely considering that the road ahead was already limited due to his age, never prepared for his worst case scenario. That may be because Steve was in a loving marriage that ran from his 20s until his first wife’s passing—somewhere along his 40s or 50s. Tragic, and certainly sad, but it doesn’t excuse turning a blind eye to the dregs of female nature. That’s why he’s now choosing to fall victim to WhatsApp crypto arrangements with Asian women whose profile pictures come up on Shutterstock. ‘Steves’ do not learn from their missteps. Steves circle the drain until they die.

The years between 35 and 40 can be difficult for men without women in their lives. Not only because stepping into life’s most consequential chapter without a partner, or the specter of family looming, can feel daunting, but because it can stir the beginnings of a premature midlife crisis.

How often have we seen a media figure in this age bracket go through a divorce and then abruptly reinvent himself with a more ‘badass’ and ‘hard-edged’ persona? Following the breakdown of his marriage, political commentator Elijah Schaffer decidedly became more vulgar, brash, and confrontational in a way that read as deeply inauthentic. Music critic Anthony Fantano seemed to move in a similar direction after facing a critical profile from The Fader and later going through a divorce filing. Fantano leaned harder into leftism and, like Schaffer, vulgarities to reclaim a sense of bruised masculinity.

This type of behavior is an absolute no. Never do that. It telegraphs to everyone around you that you don’t really know who you are or what you’re doing. This is the stage of a man’s life when others should be able to lean on him, not discover that he’s gone adrift within himself. If you are not capable of being that person, then it’s okay to disappear for a while.

There is also a type of man who gets by without thinking he needs a woman, but to everyone around him, it’s clear that he does. Often desperately so. When he’s in a relationship, he cleans up. He looks after his appearance. He cares about what he eats. He lives in a house, not a motor vehicle.

The man who thinks he is fine, but isn’t, is on a fast track to decomposition. It’s more lethal than slipping into the delusional “Steve” archetype. At least Steve has hope.

The kind of man I’m describing has quietly emptied himself of his optimism, whether he knows it or not. He has grown so comfortable in his own decline that he can no longer see what has happened to him and avoid its escalation. It’s the point where living paycheck to paycheck no longer alarms him, when summoning UberEats every night feels normal, and basic self-care like washing his face or brushing his teeth is no longer a daily duty. It brings to mind the Jordan Peterson “Clean Your Room” thesis, frequently dismissed for its common sense wisdom and memetic transformation in the late-2010s. But common sense is not useless simply because it is obvious. In fact, people need to hear plain, practical truths repeated regularly. Otherwise, they may wind up on a diet of Jack Daniels and food from a polypropylene bag.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that some in my peer circle fit this description. What’s frustrating is that they’re not beyond repair. They just need someone to mother them. Someone to tidy them up, comb their hair, and send them off to work. Or, at the very least, they need the presence of a woman they want to impress to motivate them to start doing those things on their own. This is the only thing that will actually pull them out of the mudslide and save them.

That may sound like a pessimistic opinion borrowed from somebody with a ‘simp’ mindset, but it’s less about ‘woman being the key’ and more about external forces adjusting your path. You need to allow room for social luck. The greater failure of this kind of man is that he has become an isolationist, either by choice or by being physically repellent to others. And when you stand alone, you have no one to bounce off of. No one to step in and correct your posture when you likely really need it.