44 percent of men say they have given up on ever finding love. 63 percent of men say that no one cares if men are okay these days. Nearly two thirds of men say they have to look out for themselves because no one else has their back.
More than 40 percent say they have thought about self-harm or suicide in the past two weeks, and over two-thirds report symptoms of anxiety and distress.
These findings come from The State of UK Men 2025, produced by Beyond Equality and Equinundo: Center for Masculinities and Social Justice. The study was published on Nov 14 at equimundo.org. 2,000 British men and women aged 18-45 were surveyed for the publication across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
The Times newspaper did a short instagram reel covering the findings of the survey. It was flooded with comments from women who immediately went on the defence. “Blaming women again…brilliant,” was one top-liked comment. “Idk, wasn’t there a recent report that 1 in 3 [men] don’t care about women’s rights?” was another from an angry liberal.
“If they want to be connected, caring humans, why aren’t they?” another woman asked, receiving a flurry of pink Instagram hearts in return for the jibe.
But if we are to take the findings seriously, they would indicate that men have reached a crisis point that would have been unprecedented just one or two decades ago. Men are retreating.
I’m 29, and I’m confident that many women in my generation, those who remain single and those in committed relationships alike, have been taught to deeply distrust men. To think the absolute worst of them. Make sure you never give them the benefit of the doubt, and always assume the worst.
The result? Many of us remain single, unable to let our guard down. We are less capable than the generations before us of building secure relationships, whether that be within ourselves or in the context of romance.
And then there is this question: Are we looking for too much? We’ve been so fixated on the concept of not settling and waiting for ‘the one’ that many of us now realise that we could be waiting forever. We’ve probably turned down the attention of some decent men because they weren’t the ideal. This romcom-inspired idealism was probably best summed up last summer when the satirical TikTok song, ‘Man in Finance’ almost accidentally became the Gen Z song of the summer.
“I’m looking for a man in finance/ Trust fund, 6’5″, blue eyes,” the song went, with the original video quickly amassing something like 60 million views and being remixed into one of the summer’s viral hits. It was funny, and was meant as a joke, but it revealed truth at the heart of the wish-list mentality of single women, including Megan Bon, who originally posted it on her TikTok account. She was being honest about what she wanted in a man.
But declaring we need, and we all deserve, those things in a spouse and nothing less is silly and unrealistic. It’s a delusion on the part of women and it’s paralysing for men. 57% of men, for example, told the survey that they “feel pressure to look a certain way” to be successful in the world of dating – twice as many men than women. 1 in 4 believed no one will fall in love with them – that is, bleakly, a quarter of men surveyed.
I believe that it’s better to be single than with the wrong person. But what I think is deeply flawed is seeing women buying into the delusion en masse that it’s actually fashionable and superior to be single. Solo travel, yoga retreats and elaborate skincare routines are now far more important than engagement rings and having babies. Look at that recent British Vogue article, which outright declared that boyfriends are now unfashionable. The ultimate result of all this will be widespread, crippling loneliness in the years to come.
“Is Having A Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” the magazine asked, declaring that there’s a “norminess” to partnership that we should actively disapprove of.
Some women are so mortified that they are trying to hide their male partners, according to Vogue.
“You have faces blurred out of wedding pictures or entire professionally edited videos with the fiancé conveniently cropped out of all shots. Women are obscuring their partner’s face when they post, as if they want to erase the fact they exist without actually not posting them.”
“Where being single was once a cautionary tale (you’ll end up a “spinster” with loads of cats), it is now becoming a desirable and coveted status, another nail in the coffin of a centuries-old heterosexual fairytale that never really benefited women to begin with,” Vogue said.
I’m sure men read this nonsense, and rightfully think, why would I bother? Women complain that there are no good men out there – all the while pushing them away.
Things seem more divided than ever, but at the core of everything remains this truth: we are human beings designed to be in loving relationships, starting with God and then with each other. When we no longer seek to value that, things are broken. The data has long shown that people who are married have better health outcomes, as well as improved economic outcomes. Whether we like it or not, the social data constantly points to relationships and that they matter. But this is not a mainstream conversation. It should be.
Maybe men really are from Mars and women are from Venus. But what the survey shows is that both sexes hold many of the same ideas about manhood. There are huge expectations that can be quite traditional among women, even ironically among liberal women who tell themselves – and the internet – they don’t need a man.
More women than men, for example, agreed that “things are generally better when men earn the money and women take care of kids”. Again, a greater number of women than men said “you must be an alpha male these days to get a partner” (78 per cent of women to 43 per cent of men). So women, even the so-called feminists, want manly men. I can testify that this is true, and the number-one frustration felt by women my age who are still single is that they cannot find “a manly man.”
Progressive women scolding men on social media and the tremors left by Me Too have caused men to tone themselves down. An obvious solution to the problem would be that men allow themselves to be real men, to be their natural, authentic selves, and women embrace their femininity. If you think I am wrong that women love masculine men, you need only look at progressive pop princess Taylor Swift choosing a hunky, rough-around-the-edges NFL player as her future husband, and the over the top celebrations it sparked. Even the most liberal of women want a manly man.
When asked to rank the 18 traits that defined “being a man,” the results were very wholesome. This is good news. For both men and women, the top-ranked, in descending order, were “being a friend,” “helping those who need it” and “providing for a family.” The traits ranked the lowest were “being in charge,” “making lots of money,” “managing conflict with violence” and “having many sexual partners”- all of which rated higher for men than for women. Again, good news.
Interestingly enough, more men than women – 80 percent of men – said that “being a parent is the most important job in the world.”
Amid the division and the rise in singleness, there remain good reasons to be optimistic about the prospect of both men and women finding love. Men are capable of love, and they do love. We must reject a popular culture that tells us otherwise.