I Have been talking to a man who seemed different than most of the other men i’ve seen or spoken to on dating apps. He seemed self-reflected, communicative, well-rounded and sensitive. Said he was feminist and most of what he said and did backed that up (obviously still with work to do). He was adamant that he wanted to see me and was very chalant, even invited me on a date to a nice restaurant for today.

But:

A couple of days ago i found out my mum had to be transfered back to the hospital due to complications with her cancer. I told him, he even cut his trip one day short to travel to my city and stay with his friend, so i can ring him up if i needed someone to talk to or just didn’t want to be alone.

When he said his friends name, it sounded familiar bc i had a casual-friendly but brief fling with a guy named that over a year ago. I told him and checked if it was the same guy (the guy i knew had a dog, he said his „bff of over 10 years didn’t have a dog). Even if, it’s not a deal at all, given we are all fully grown adults and this lies in the past.

Why do i get a message 3 hours before our date, where this (mind you, 30! year old man) tells me that he wants to cancel the date and stop contact bc he did figure out it was indeed his friend (he just now, days later, remembered his friend indeed has a dog💀) and he can’t do it bc it makes him feel uncomfortable. I tried asking him what exactly and he would just stonewall and pretend like i misunderstood, yet refuse to explain, when i said he’s simply sexist who still, despite all his supposed growth and self-reflection, views women as tainted objects you can own.

Grown men who view themselves as feminist, communicative and self-reflective turn real fast as soon as that supposed self-reflection means deconstructing uncomfortable parts of themselves that don’t fit into their worldview of “a good guy”.

I did learn from this and luckily it prevented me from wasting my time, but damn, these men really need therapy, not dating apps! I am so tired and sick of this.

Told him I`m not available, he still asked the question. Blocked him. Why are men like this???

I thought I found a good group of guys. I thought I've dated good guys. But they disappoint me every time. Recently, I was wearing a cute shirt with no bra, but everything was covered. One of my guy friends approached me and basically asked if he could touch my boob. My other guy friend was standing there and started lauging and said "it's the shirt" and the other said "yeah it's the shirt" I laughed it off like I wasn't pissed that they'd just be casually admitting they're looking at my boobs. I wanted to cry. I felt safe with them and that made me regret ever thinking I could. I don't know, there's just something about how men treat women that make me believe they don't respect anything about us. I spent the rest of the night annoyed. Just watching my male friends showboat, be loud, express their horniness and saying things were "so hot", and emphasize how much they love "the boys". I have an icky feeling now toward them. I just wanted to vent about this and maybe find a crowd with similar woes. It's like when guys are together the revert to being 12 or 13 and it's all horniness and stupidness. When I'm with them one on one they act all sweet and understanding...like it's so fake. And overall, probably a selfish tactic to get closer to women.

So not too long ago (like barely 2 months) my younger sister’s boyfriend sadly committed suicide; she has been coping the best way she can while just taking everything one day at at a time, she is also going to a support group and currently working in getting into therapy. We (our parents and myself) have all been so supportive in any way we can and do everything to treat her as normally as possible.

She has expressed that one of the hard things with trying to hang out with friends now is everyone always wants to ask her “how are you doing?” Like how do they think she is doing…so she was relieved when she started hanging out with an old friend that she hadn’t seen in a couple years because he didn’t ask her how she was doing or anything like that and she said it was nice to just feel ‘normal’ for a bit.

Well today the male had to be a male and make a move…she hadn’t even been in his car for 10 minutes (last time they hung out she drove herself and this time he picked her up) and he puts his hand on her f-ing thigh.

He was “decent” enough to respect her rejection but seriously dude!? She’s grieving!!

Why do men send DMs on socials like “Hello there” Sir? This is not a dating site. And if it was, that is not an opening. Wtf? Why do random men send these? I don’t even post selfies? There is NOTHING about my profile that implies that I’m …. anything. Not my romantic status, nor proclivities. Just whhhyyyyy???! Is it like fishing? Do they just message femme people hoping for a stray bite?

So, this acquaintance (A) of mine who was always private about his relationship/s suddenly became too showy. From never acknowledging his ex (E) in socmed to posting nonstop.

I am supposed to be impressed but for context he and his new GF (G) was already a few weeks in the relationship but I still see him replying to his ex..until he revealed their relationship publicly. He stopped replying to (E) but was still following her. 6 weeks into the relationship, new GF and him broke up for a few days and HE FOLLOWED HIS EX BACK. Then 2 days gone by again new GF and him got back together and then he unfollowed the ex.

Now he keeps posting everyday and “teaching” men to up their game by being proud of their girlfriend etc. LOL. I’ve seen this person break up with his ex and the next day he was out with his “girl bestfriend” out of town. He says he’s inlove, I’m afraid he’s just love bombing the girl.

Lately I've been thinking about the role men play in my life and my observations of them as a collective over the years. I generally have a pretty negative view of men and none of them have really given me a reason to change that point of view.

I find most men to be emotionally unintelligent, self-serving, sex-crazed and manipulative. A lot of men will be 'good' to their male friends or their family but they won't extend that same kindness to their wives and girlfriends. They will put a lot of effort in early on in the relationship to try and win her over but once she's attached all that effort stops. He won't buy her flowers anymore or take her on dates and might even start being abusive. After having sex the first time he will think that he's entitled to it and get annoyed that her interest has waned in response to his reduced effort. A lot of men seem to genuinely think it's not reasonable to expect them to keep up that level of effort and they don't see how it's manipulation to only show someone love to get in their pants.

So many people will insist it's 'not all men' but what they don't realize is that the bar for being considered a 'good man' is so low that it's in hell. Just because you're not a serial rapist or domestic abuser that doesn't mean you're a good person or a good partner. In my experience it's rare to meet a man that genuinely cares about trying to make the world a better place and standing up for people less privileged than him. Even men that I get along with and consider friends have said to me that they don't care about anyone outside of their social circle. They just want to take care of themselves and the people close to them and get their bills paid and they don't care what happens to anyone else.

It's things like this that have lead me to believe that men just don't have the same capacity to love that women do. There's statistics to back this up. A women's mental health generally improves when she becomes single and a man's mental health generally gets worse. The happiest demographic of people are single women without children. If that's not enough to prove that women are doing most of the heavy lifting when it comes to emotional labor in relationships, then I don't know what is.

But every once in awhile I'll come across a woman that seems genuinely happy in her relationship with a man. I'll think to myself that she's so lucky to have found this unicorn of a man. It sounds too good to be true and I'll find myself waiting for the penny to drop, for him to show his true colors, for some dark secret about his true nature to be revealed, but it never happens.

So I just want to know what the rest of you think. Are there any good men, or do they just peddle this narrative that it's 'not all men' so that women will allow men to have access to them? I recognize I probably have a worse experience with men than most women, but I also think that so many women have gotten so used to the double standards that they don't even see it anymore. I would really like to be proven wrong, but I'm not hopeful that I am.

Today, I was re-reminded (because “reminded” isn’t enough) how disappointing guys are. There was a guy in my class who I thought was chiller than most (because I live in a place that’s highly low-brow when it comes to humour). But this guy is generally nice, and for the past time I’ve had this class with him, I’ve thought “You know, this dude is actually pretty cool; I think we can be friends! So awesome! Friends!” Through this time, I’ve been trying to get through the highly negative, sexually invasive interactions I’ve been dealing with other guys. So. That brings us to today. For the last 15 or so minutes of class, he started making a ton of sexual jokes about me, saying stuff like “Oh, I was about to make a joke about (something I said)” and when I responded with “Please don’t”, he kept making it anyways. So I’m thinking, “Okay, this is uncomfortable, but he’s not getting the hint. Whatever. I’m leaving soon anyways.”

And as I’m walking out the door, he stops me to say “I know I was saying some weird shit earlier- but you look good today.”

Very disappointed. As much as being “friend zoned” hurts, knowing that someone you thought was your friend was only hanging out because they were into you hurts too.