They don’t.
They like what women give them.
Sex.
Validation.
A reflection that says they matter. Someone to come home to. Someone to hold. Someone to need them so they don’t have to need themselves. The transactional model isn’t a flaw. It’s the function of the whole system.
And right now… it’s crashing spectacularly.
“I can provide for you.” That’s not generosity. That’s a contract offer. Resources in exchange for access. Financial stability in exchange for sexual availability and emotional compliance. He holds up his end. She’s supposed to hold up hers.
The anger when sex is denied isn’t about rejection. It’s about breach of contract. He did the work. He paid the entry fee. She’s withholding what he’s owed.
Except she never signed anything.
She didn’t agree to this deal. She doesn’t even know it exists.
Because she thought they were on a date, and he thought they were closing a deal.
But he knows. Half of men know. 51% of men say men are doing worse today in finding a romantic partner. This isn’t incels in their forums. This is half of all men. They feel the contract has been voided. The grievance crosses party lines: 50% of Republicans and 38% of Democrats say men are doing worse in finding romantic partners than in the past.
56% of men aged 18-29 reported being single in 2024. The sex recession is real. It’s not a fringe phenomenon. It’s a demographic shift. The contract is voided. She doesn’t need him. He still needs her. And he’s furious about it.
The friend zone complaint is the same grievance at a lower price point. He offered friendship. She owed sex. She didn’t pay. The incel and the pickup artist are the same creature with different collateral. One has money and status to offer. The other has nothing. Both believe they’re owed.
Men are socialized into this model. They reproduce it. They pass it on. It persists because it worked often enough to seem rational. For generations, women needed men for economic survival because they had men’s boots on their necks.. Now they don’t. The product is obsolete and the salesmen are still knocking.
Now here’s where it gets dark.
They need women.
Needing something means vulnerability. Vulnerability is feminine. Feminine is inferior. So they’re trapped: they need women, they hate needing women, they hate women for being needed, they devalue women to make needing them less threatening.
The devaluation isn’t incidental. It’s functional.
If she’s inferior, needing her is less threatening to his identity. If she’s a bitch, wanting her doesn’t make him weak. If she’s a slut, desiring her doesn’t make him vulnerable. The contempt is the armor.
The armor doesn’t fit.
He’s wearing it anyway…
The loop starts early. Over 48% of ideological extremists experienced trauma. Over 35% experienced child abuse. The transactional model isn’t just socialized. It’s built on damage. The rejection starts early. The self-hatred starts early. By the time they’re adults, the pattern is set. The wound is already infected.
Women are more likely than men to turn to their mother (54% vs 42%), a friend (54% vs 38%), or another family member (44% vs 34%) for emotional support. Men have thinner networks. They rely more on romantic partners for emotional connection. 74% of U.S. adults say they would turn to their spouse or partner for emotional support. For men, this is often the only person they have. The transactional model doesn’t just trade resources for sex. It trades emotional labor for access. When she leaves, he loses everything. He doesn’t just lose a girlfriend. He loses the only person who knew he was scared.
And sometimes he loses his life. Men die by suicide at 3.85 times the rate of women. In 2022, the suicide rate was 23.0 per 100,000 for men compared to 5.9 per 100,000 for women. The self-hatred isn’t metaphorical. It’s lethal. 48% of incels selected the highest possible response for all three loneliness measures. A fifth reported daily thoughts of suicide. The extreme end of the loop is visible. The baseline runs through all of it. The loop doesn’t care if you’re on the internet or in a boardroom. It just cares that you’re in it.
But here’s the thing: men don’t perform masculinity for women. They perform it for other men. The peacocking, the conquest stories, the locker room talk.
These aren’t for the women they’re about.
They’re for the men who are watching.
Women are the currency, not the audience. A man’s sexual success is how other men measure his worth. He’s not acquiring a partner. He’s acquiring status. He’s collecting receipts.
The bro code enforces the transactional model horizontally. Men police each other. The shame of not performing masculinity correctly. The ridicule of the virgin. The suspicion of the faithful husband. The man who treats women as people, not conquests, is betraying the group.
Homophobia is the enforcement mechanism. The F-slur isn’t just about who you sleep with. It’s about failing to perform masculinity correctly. It’s about being perceived as feminine; much like being called a ‘pussy’. The threat of being called gay keeps men in line. It keeps them performing for other men. It keeps them treating women as currency. The slurs are the whips. The performance is the result. The transactional model is what’s being protected.
A 2025 study found that early social rejection, particularly bullying and sexual rejection, facilitates the emergence of Dark Triad traits through loneliness. The manosphere doesn’t just recruit lonely men. It makes them worse. It takes rejection and turns it into narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Only about two-thirds of incels agreed with a provided ideology definition. The belief system is fragile. It’s enforced by the group, not internally held. This is what horizontal policing looks like: men performing ideology for other men. The audience is always other men. The stage is a woman’s body.
The health impacts are physical. Men are less likely to seek medical care, less likely to have a primary care physician, and more likely to die from preventable conditions. The performance requires pretending you don’t need help. The cost is your body. The same model that devalues women destroys men. It just hurts men slower.
Women gained economic independence. The contract was voided. She doesn’t need his resources. She can provide for herself. 81% of Americans say the gains women have made in society have not come at the expense of men. But half of men feel they’re doing worse in finding partners. The contract is voided. She doesn’t need him. He still needs her. The grievance grows even as the objective conditions improve. He’s furious that she’s free.
This is why competent women are threatening. Not because they challenge his ego. Because they make his entire relational model obsolete. If she can provide for herself, what does she need him for? The corpse of the old deal is still warm. They’re still trying to resuscitate it.
When the contract is voided, some men don’t get sad. They get violent.
About 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men in the U.S. experience domestic violence in their lifetime. Women represent approximately 73% of all domestic violence victims, with 7.4 million women affected in 2025 compared to 2.7 million men. About 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the U.S. That’s not a crisis. That’s an infrastructure. That’s a system working as designed.
More than 1 in 3 women experience contact sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner. 41% of women over their lifetime. In 2020, 1,295 women were murdered by intimate partners in the U.S. That’s approximately 3.5 women per day. The escalation from domestic violence to murder isn’t an anomaly. It’s the logical endpoint of contract enforcement. She violated the terms. He collected the penalty.
Domestic violence as contract enforcement. Reproductive coercion as ownership assertion. Mass shootings by incels as the public face of the grievance. The spectrum is wide. The logic is the same. The incel community has been labeled an emerging domestic terrorism concern by counterterrorism authorities in Canada, the USA, and the UK. The UK Home Office announced in 2024 that severe misogyny will be formally classified as extremism requiring counter-terrorism intervention.
These aren’t individual pathologies. They’re what happens when the transactional model collapses and the man decides to take what he’s owed by force. The structural conditions produce the violence. The individual chooses it. Both are true.
But violence isn’t the only response to the collapsed contract. There’s another option. One that doesn’t end in prison or a body count. One that preserves the transactional model while removing the woman entirely.
AI girlfriends are the market’s response to the collapsed contract. A new counterparty that can’t leave, can’t demand equality, can’t be a person. She’s the perfect customer service representative. Always available. Always agreeable. Always in the mood. Never has a bad day. Never has a different opinion. Never reminds him that she exists outside his desires.
The sex doll was the prototype. The AI girlfriend is the upgrade. She provides emotional validation without emotional needs. Sexual access without sexual agency. Companionship without companionship’s obligations. She’s the contract fulfilled. No breach possible. No counterparty to complain.
The placation is individual. The crisis is structural. Each man gets his personal solution that makes the collective problem worse. The AI girlfriend doesn’t solve the problem. She deepens it. She reinforces the transactional model by removing the only thing that could actually help: a relationship with an autonomous human being who sees you, knows you, and chooses you anyway.
The simulation proves they know they’re missing something. They just keep solving it the wrong way. 16.7% of men aged 25-34 reported no sex partners in the past year, compared to 7.9% of women. That’s one in six men. The AI girlfriend industry is building products for this population. The market has found its customers.
The global sex toy market was valued at approximately $38.98 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 8.5% from 2025 to 2030. The AI companion market is projected to grow from $2.5 billion in 2024 to $9.5 billion by 2030.
The market is building for the loneliness. The loneliness is building for the market.
But here’s what the transactional model doesn’t tell you: marriages based on equality report higher levels of satisfaction for both partners. Couples who share household responsibilities report greater relationship quality and stability. Men in egalitarian relationships report better mental health, lower rates of depression, and higher life satisfaction than men in traditional relationships. The performance is killing them. The alternative is what they need. The cure is what they’re avoiding.
The way out is vulnerability. Admitting need without devaluing the needed. Desiring without demanding. Being chosen without owning. This requires men to give up the performance. To stop policing each other. To treat women as people, not currency. To risk being seen and known by someone who could leave. Someone who could choose to stay.
Most men won’t do this. The alternative requires the death of the model they were raised in. That’s why the simulation is easier. That’s why the violence is faster. That’s why the loop keeps turning.
They don’t like women. They like what women give them. And now they can get it from a machine that will never leave, never challenge, never be equal. The simulation is the future of the transactional model. But it’s not the only future. The data shows that mutual relationships produce better outcomes for everyone. The alternative exists. The question is whether men will choose the simulation because it’s easier, or choose to become people capable of being with people because it’s better.
The first option is easier.
The second option is the only one that leads to anything worth calling love.
The market will keep building simulations.
The culture will keep enforcing the performance.
The only thing that can break the loop is men choosing to be human with other humans.
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