How Bad Men Benefit the Less Bad Men

Quick favor before we start: These are the last two weeks for filling in my survey on waiting in relationships. I’d love your input and after I analyze all responses I will publish the results in an article here. You can fill it in here. Thank you!

I will start today’s topic with a story I previously shared in a note:

Yesterday I had to sit in an Uber ride of over 20 minutes while the driver bragged to me about what a great guy he is for not cheating on his wife. I kid you not.

This was all packaged in softer, kinder language: he complained that most of his work colleagues are openly cheating on their wives and no one in the work environment is even trying to hide it (like bringing affair partners to work outings etc) and that he is personally saddened to see how little respect and consideration these men have for their wives.

He also talked about how fatherhood changed his perception of his wife because he now sees how patient and caring she is with their baby and what tremendous strength it must take. (This part about complimenting his wife sounded super-rehearsed by the way).

Next, he said that he also has had opportunities to cheat because ‘women throw themselves at him’ but he declined because he sees what a strong and dedicated woman his wife is and he couldn’t do that to her. I thought ‘Sure, buddy, I bet you don’t encourage all those women at all, if they even exist’.

Also notice how his faithfulness is apparently some prize earned by the wife for her dedication and strength and patience, aka for doing the parenting work for him as well.

So I said casually ‘Yeah, but that’s just normal behavior in a marriage, right? Even if so many of your colleagues are behaving badly’ and I swear his face changed and he was disappointed and angry for the entire remainder of the ride. I denied him the medal and praise he was expecting. :))

I wonder, if I had acted as if I’m more impressed and admirative that he’s such a good boy for not cheating, would I have ended up as a story about one of those ‘women who throw themselves at him’? I mean, he has to compensate with something for comparing himself to his colleagues, right?

There is something very revealing about this interaction, beyond the fact that I apparently spent twenty minutes trapped in a moving vehicle with a man campaigning for the title of Most Faithful Husband in a workplace where the competition was apparently nonexistent.

He wasn’t telling me that he was a particularly loving husband or that he did half the childcare, that he carried an equal share of the domestic workload, that he supported his wife’s career, that he communicated well during conflict, or that he made an effort to maintain intimacy and companionship in his marriage. He was telling me that he did not cheat, and he expected this to establish that he was an exceptionally good man.

This is a surprisingly common feature of heterosexual culture: men are often evaluated against the worst men in the room, rather than against any meaningful standard of equality. A man doesn’t beat his wife, so he is a good husband. He doesn’t cheat, so he is loyal. He doesn’t scream at his girlfriend, so he is emotionally mature. He doesn’t expect his wife to quit her job, so he is progressive. He occasionally cooks dinner, so he is an equal partner. He changes a diaper without being asked, so apparently we should alert the newspapers to come interview him. The worse the surrounding men behave, the easier this becomes.

And this is how bad men benefit the less bad men.

The ‘At Least I’m Not Like Him’ Discount

There is a very simple psychological mechanism at work here: comparison. Human beings rarely evaluate themselves in an absolute vacuum. We compare ourselves with the people around us. Our income, appearance, intelligence, success, morality and social status all acquire meaning partly through comparison. This can be perfectly harmless, but it can also become a fantastic way of laundering mediocrity.

If the man standing next to you is cheating on his wife, the man who isn’t cheating suddenly looks like a saint. If another man is openly misogynistic, the man who merely remains silent can congratulate himself for being respectful. If another man is abusive, the man who is emotionally neglectful can look positively enlightened. The moral standard quietly shifts from ‘What should a decent person do?’ to ‘Am I better than that guy?’ The first question requires an actual standard; the second one just requires a sufficiently terrible comparison point.

This is why the existence of spectacularly bad men can be socially useful to mediocre men. They provide a bottom of the scale against which everybody else gets to look better. There is a whole category of male virtue that consists almost entirely of not being the worst guy you know. And because the worst guy you know can always be made worse, this is an extraordinarily forgiving system.

Bad Men Make Women’s Standards Look Insane

This also helps explain one of the most persistent complaints in heterosexual culture: women allegedly expect too much from men. Women want men who are emotionally available, who contribute equally to housework and childcare, who are faithful, sexually considerate, respectful of boundaries, capable of communicating without turning every disagreement into a referendum on their masculinity, and who do not expect to be mothered. Apparently, this is an outrageous list.

And one reason it can seem outrageous is that the comparison pool is so terrible.