I’ve been thinking about this recently and it’s one of those innocent sayings that are quite insensitive. Growing up I heard this quite a lot, usually in response to being shy about asking someone out.
As an adult it’s hard to view this as an encouragement when the flip side is women dislike men with insecurities, women dislike men who feel vulnerable when putting themselves out there.
I don’t believe any of the connotations that I skewed from the phrase but it’s better to suggest “women love a man who are brave enough to fail” as encouragement rather, if you want a basic encouragement.
Just wanted to shar this somewhere appropriate
The meaning of this phrase depends pretty heavily on the meaning of confidence, and there are many. I had a woman coworker once tell me: the most attractive thing in a man is confidence and the least attractive thing is arrogance. Her differentiation of confidence versus arrogance helped clarify the former. I think what she said is probably true of all genders, not just women attracted to men, and probably extends beyond romantic relationships as well. I think it’d apply to teamwork in general. I get what you’re saying, but in my experience everyone has insecurities about somethings and confidence about others. The presence of insecurities doesn’t mean that one lacks confidence. Going a step further, the most insecure people generally do not acknowledge their insecurities. Gendered relationship scripts, like “a man must ask the woman out,” tend to take on less and less relevance the further removed I am from my high school years, but I do seek out progressive-minded people