And women wonder why there aren't any good men out there lately.
But it's kind of true. It goes both ways, too. And Japanese culture has probably always had a heightened sensitivity to personal distance and the lack thereof (see their elaborate
keigo system, or the variety of pronouns and their registers).
There's not a lot of "good"
anyone out there, lately, to be sure. There probably never were many of those-- "being good" is an active and lifelong self-comment constantly threatened by derailment.
I imagine, even with arranged marriages where you were (are, in some cultures still) expected to come to love your spouse
after the marriage rather than before, there was still substantial difficulty in finding a mate that was "suitable" or "good enough" in even just temperament.
But now, it feels as if we're hedgehogs becoming less shy about digging our spines into the other while still demanding warmth.
Still, I don't know much about what preceded my life, so perhaps it's always been like this.