Women are done raising men we didn’t give birth to.
The thing about being suddenly single in your mid-30s is that it’s like waking up from a very long nap. Or worse, like being flash-frozen sometime in 2012 and waking up to find the entire landscape of dating unrecognizable. Men are podcasting. Women are making spreadsheets. Everyone is chronically online, and nobody seems to know what they actually want—but they’re very sure it involves minimal effort and maximum validation.
It’s disorienting.
One day you’re married and the next, you’re getting DMs from strangers asking if you’re “finally free now.” Free for what, exactly? Free to be love-bombed by a man whose idea of vulnerability is saying he has anxiety once and then ghosting you for two weeks? Free to be someone’s manic pixie dream girl on a weeklong trial subscription?
Being single now means knowing what peace feels like—and realizing how much chaos we once tolerated in the name of romance.
Ania (not her real name) recently told me about a man she met on Hinge who seemed, at first, like a dream. He cooked for her, sent daily affirmations (okay, this one’s a little too much), made her playlists, and memorized the way she took her coffee. And trust me–her coffee order is so complicated, it should be part of a calculus quiz. “I think he’s serious,” she said as she smiled during our catch-up. Three weeks later, he confessed he wasn’t over his ex and disappeared. Love bomb. Red flag. Sayonara.
Another friend, Libby (also not her real name), got into a situationship with a man who described himself as “emotionally intelligent” in his bio. “I don’t know, babe,” I told her as I sipped a cocktail. “I’m a believer of how truly kind people never call themselves kind and I think the same applies to this situation.” She didn’t like that and she huffed about it for most of the evening, even calling me bitter at one point after her fifth drink.
You see, I didn’t want to be right but trust me–that should’ve been the warning. He spent most of their time together monologuing about his personal growth, asked deep questions but never really listened to the answers, and dumped her when she pointed out that he hadn’t once asked how her week was, also calling her uptight and closed off because she didn’t want to try anal on the fifth date.
Male loneliness epidemic
There’s a term I heard recently: future-faking. It’s when someone fast-forwards the relationship fantasy—talks about trips you haven’t booked, weddings you haven’t been proposed to, babies you haven’t named—only to vanish the moment real intimacy threatens to make an actual appearance. It’s like selling a house with no foundation. Some men are incredibly good at this. They know the lines thanks to all the relationship content on TikTok. They know the gestures. But what they don’t know is how to show up when it’s inconvenient. Or boring. Or real.
And the real kicker? These men are lonely.
There’s been no shortage of articles about the so-called male loneliness epidemic—how men are struggling to form deep friendships, how they’re emotionally stunted, how they don’t have support systems the way women do. But somewhere along the way, this crisis got framed as women’s problem to solve. As if we’re supposed to swoop in and offer healing to people who won’t even do the bare minimum of introspection.
Here’s the truth: women are done raising men we didn’t give birth to.
We’ve read the books. We’ve gone to therapy. We’ve built friendships that hold us. We’ve learned to sit with our emotions, name them, and move through them. So no, we’re not going to be impressed by a man who “finally” started journaling. We’re not going to feel special because you listened to one Brené Brown or Mel Robbins podcast and suddenly know the word “vulnerability.”
Being single now means knowing what peace feels like—and realizing how much chaos we once tolerated in the name of romance.
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Bare minimum isn’t enough
Cassie, another friend freshly freed from a long-term relationship, met a guy almost immediately through mutual friends. She described him as the best sex she’d ever had—praising the universe for finally showing her what life could be like after a years of what she politely referred to as “just missionary and doggy because that’s all he could manage.”
“Now I’m being thrown around like a ragdoll and lifted like gravity is optional,” she announced over brunch one morning, loud enough for the next table to accidentally choke on their iced tea. (They definitely heard.)
But two months in, the ick arrived—and not subtly.
“I tried to push it down,” she admitted. “But one morning, I walked in on him listening to one of those Red Pill podcasts—talking about being a ‘high-value man’ who women should submit to. Submit to what, exactly? That’s when I knew.”
Her rose-colored glasses didn’t just fall off—they snapped in half, burst into flames, and filed a restraining order.
Dating, at least from my view, feels like a minefield I’m not quite ready to walk through. Not yet. I’ve had coffee with people who talk about their exes too much, work dinners with men who confuse confidence with arrogance, and exchanged texts with someone supposed to be a work contact but referred to me as “wifey material”. It’s exhausting. Performative. Often pointless.
So for now, I’m choosing observation over participation. Watching the red flags flap in the breeze from a safe distance. Choosing Pilates over another round of polite small talk. Choosing group chats with my favorite people over decoding texts that read like Morse code.
There’s power in pausing. In not jumping into the next thing just because the last one ended. In knowing that my life is already full—and anyone who wants to be part of it has to bring more than chaos and half-truths.
Because the bare minimum? It’s not enough. Not anymore.
So if love is coming—and I hope it is—it will have to arrive softly. Without the blinding lights and dizzying highs. No more fireworks that burn out fast. Just a steady warmth. A presence that doesn’t ask me to shrink or stretch or second-guess myself.
Until then, I’ll be here. Unfreezing. Observing. Becoming.
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