In her recent Modern Love essay, Men Where Have You Gone, Please Come Back, Rachel Drucker asks a piercing question that echoes in countless group chats and late-night conversations: Where have the men gone? To her, and many others, the answer appears as a slow, bewildering cultural disappearance. Men seem to be retreating from intimacy, avoiding vulnerability, and opting instead for passivity, performative engagement, or outright absence from the emotional front lines.
But what if we’re misdiagnosing the moment? What if this isn’t abandonment, but a complex and necessary adjustment? What Drucker mourns as a void may, in fact, be a market correction…a long overdue rebalancing in the emotional economy of dating, sex, and partnership. The rules of engagement have changed, fundamentally and forever. And men, rather than fleeing the game, may simply be repricing intimacy.
The Myth of Emotional Cowardice
Let’s begin by dismantling the most common critique: that men have grown afraid of intimacy, commitment, or vulnerability. This narrative is seductive because it’s simple, but it rests on a faulty premise: that men were once widely fluent in these domains.
They weren’t. For generations, male identity was scaffolded by a different set of metrics: provision, control, stoicism, and a calculated emotional opacity. “Showing up,” in our grandfathers’ time, often meant showing ownership, providing financial security, and maintaining a stoic calm. It was a performance of stability, not a demonstration of presence.
So, if today’s men seem “absent,” it’s not because they’ve suddenly become cowards. It’s because the market demands have shifted, and no one has issued an updated operating manual. Women today rightfully desire emotional fluency, genuine attunement, and a partnership built on mutuality. This isn’t an evolution; it’s a revolution in relational expectations. But this demand shift requires time, tools, and a deep rewiring of masculine conditioning. What is being widely interpreted as a mass disappearance might be more accurately described as a collective pause—a moment to recalibrate, retool, and renegotiate the terms of engagement.
Cost, Scarcity, and Signaling in the Intimacy Market
Viewed through a behavioral economist’s lens, every relationship market is shaped by signals, incentives, and risk-adjusted returns. When we apply this framework to the current dating economy, the behavior we call “withdrawal” starts to look less like a pathology and more like a rational response to market conditions.
Consider the current landscape:
- The cost of vulnerability is high. In an age of screenshot justice and digital permanence, emotional exposure carries unprecedented reputational risk. A misstep is not a private lesson but a public liability.
- The payoff is ambiguous. The traditional returns on romantic commitment—clear social status, predictable family structures, and defined financial partnerships—have become diffuse. The modern world offers many paths to a fulfilling life, and partnership is no longer the sole, or even primary, gateway.
- The signals are noisy. Swiping, ghosting, breadcrumbing, and the curated perfection of social media have polluted the signaling environment. It’s become incredibly difficult to discern genuine interest from casual entertainment, making it nearly impossible to gauge whether an emotional investment will be reciprocated or even acknowledged.
Men aren’t opting out of love. They are responding rationally to an environment where the marginal cost of romantic effort has begun to outpace the marginal benefit. If intimacy is priced like a luxury good but sold in a chaotic, unpredictable market, men—especially those without elite reserves of social or emotional capital—are making a logical choice to minimize their investment.
The Overcorrection of Female Independence
In her essay, Drucker rightfully positions women as continuing to show up, often with immense tenderness, courage, and emotional generosity. But that’s only half the picture.
Women have also evolved, and not always toward softness. In response to the same market forces, many have (understandably) optimized for independence, professional achievement, and emotional self-containment. In many urban social spheres, there’s a performative casualness on all sides—a no-needs, no-pressure posture that ironically mirrors the very detachment women criticize in men.
So what happens when both parties are performing autonomy while secretly longing for surrender? You get a standoff. Each side waits for the other to lower their weapons, to send a clear, unambiguous signal that vulnerability will be met not with exploitation, but with care. The hunger for connection is mutual, but the perceived costs and unspoken expectations have grown asymmetrical. Men are not running away from women; they’re waiting for a clear signal that the risk of opening up will be met with a genuine reward.
Porn, Algorithms, and the Substitution Effect
Much of the discourse laments men’s turn toward digital intimacy, OnlyFans, Instagram lurking, and pornography, as a shallow substitute for real connection. This is often framed as a moral failure, another symptom of emotional cowardice.
But substitution isn’t failure. It’s market feedback.
If low-effort digital stimuli provide a consistent dopamine hit with zero risk of rejection, why wouldn’t a rational actor retreat into it? It’s not pathological; it’s economically efficient. When the real-world marketplace for intimacy is volatile and high-risk, a predictable, low-cost alternative will always gain market share.
Blame the algorithms that gamify desire. Blame the platforms that commodify human connection. But don’t confuse dopamine saturation with a lack of heart. The medium isn’t the message—it’s the marketplace speaking back, telling us that the price of real-world connection has become, for many, too high to pay.
The Need for New Scripts, Not Old Shame
Instead of asking, “Where have all the men gone?” the more productive and urgent question is this:
What culture, rituals, and signals have we created to invite men back into a new kind of relational space?
Where are the updated scripts that teach men how to stay, not through power or performance, but through authentic presence? Where are the cultural models for mutual emotional labor, for slowness, for the graceful navigation of conflict, and for the equitable sharing of relational risk?
Shaming men for their absence is like blaming a worker for going on strike when their contract is no longer viable. It addresses the symptom, not the systemic issue. Men are not unreachable; they are under-invited. They are waiting to be invited into spaces where their imperfection doesn’t disqualify them, where the courage to be vulnerable is seen as an asset, not a liability. Presence will return not by shaming men back into a broken model, but by co-creating a new one where connection feels like a worthy gain, not a reckless gamble.
VII. Conclusion: The Intimacy Market Is Not Broken…It’s Repricing
What we are witnessing is not a terminal crisis of masculinity or a permanent collapse of intimacy. It is a market amid a turbulent, painful, but ultimately necessary transition.
We are between scripts. Between incentive structures. Between emotional economies.
Drucker’s longing for connection is real, valid, and deeply felt by many. But so is men’s hesitation. Both are crucial signals from a system in flux. They point to a collective need to slow down, renegotiate our expectations, and begin the difficult work of co-creating a model of intimacy that is less extractive and more mutual, less performative and more present.
So no, the men haven’t vanished. They’re standing on the other side of a chasm, waiting for a clear reason to build a bridge. And they’re waiting for a sign that if they do, someone will be there to meet them halfway.