^ This. So much this. Thanks, David.

Dr. Roy Baumeister (a social psychologist) and his wife (also a social psychologist) once conducted an impromptu study on TV commercials in the United States that featured couples and found that in every single one of where there was a comedy dynamic the man was treated as the idiot, the instigator, the manchild, etc...

I assume that there are some where that doesn't happen. But it's a great illustration of a cultural problem. Men are taught by TV that they're the "wrong" one by default in the relationship. The lovable idiot, the bad communicator - all those tropes, which basically amount to a ringing cultural endorsement that they have nothing respectable to offer a woman at the emotional level.

That doesn't mean that all men internalize this, of course. And it doesn't minimize the fact that the opposing dynamic of abusive men is more prevalent.

It also doesn't minimize that there are similar forms of messaging out there that prime women for being abused and denigrated in relationships too. Arguably the same messages, even.

For example, if the expectation set by the media is that the husband is basically just an extra child, then that primes expectations for abusive relationship dynamics where the man is a shame target, for sure. But it also primes expectations for abusive relationship dynamics where the woman is constantly overloaded with responsibility past the point of burnout while her husband ignores the suffering his childish negligence is putting her through.

I suppose it depends on which couple watches the commercials.

But different messges hit people in different ways, and I think there are a lot of men out there who reflexively assume because of cultural programming that all they'll get out of a relationship is a chance to be the lovable idiot whose only hope in the relationship is that his wife won't find him intolerable enough to boot him.