u/Nearby-Specific6421

TW: mentions of SA

Hi! This will be a long rant. I, F24, grew up without romantic love or attention and I still haven’t been in a relationship. I have swept tears off from my friend’s faces million times over years because men have breaked them and treated them the worst, then I’ve went home to cry myself to sleep because I felt so unlovable as a girl who lived without romantic experience or attention. It has been the biggest insecurity of mine but the more I learn about dating and witness the romantic relationships of these people, the more proud I’ll get that I haven’t been in a relationship since they seem like they’ll give you cardiac arrest sooner or later, propably sooner.

I’m bisexual, I’ve dated women and men, and yes, overall women are better to date, like in consent, equality, dynamics, etc. But when I started to date, I lost my hope to find a partner of any gender. It’s very common to ghost and dump your date without saying any word due to this capitalistic material reality where everyone is thinking ”oh maybe I’ll find a better one” even about relationships. It’s not normal to see so much ”options” in such multimodal ways.

I’ve heard that especially hetero relationships struggle a lot with men having porn addictions and following and lusting IG models. It’s creepy to have access to any type of (sexual) content, literally, _any type_. You can get anything nowadays with AI. You can get any type of porn performed by any type of perfect person – of course it’s addicting! In addition, it’s ruining women’s mental health when they see in social media all these beautiful IG models with tons of expensive plastic surgery done. It shapes the reality you experience. This world of hyper-commercial stimuli have ruined my perception of love. I feel like every man I’ve dated have thought in some way that they’ll find someone prettier and better and every woman have just dumped me without saying anything or they went back to their ex. It has killed my self-esteem. I believe that no one would ever love me, I’m never enough. When some talking stage fails, I can’t think ”oh they’d never find anyone better than me!” because I know they will.

I still have little bit belief that there might be a woman who’d love me sincerely but I struggle to believe that I’d trust man’s ”love”. I’ve noticed that they’ll enjoy the benefits a woman gives to them – food, emotional and domestical labour, well-behaved kids (because his gf/wife is the one who is raising them) and sex. All female-male-relationships I’ve witnessed has been like this: the woman is giving everything and performing beauty and labour 24/7, and the man is just… simply existing? I’m so sad that I don’t believe in reciprocal heterosexual love. When I see a happy straight couple, I’m like ”oh she’s not telling everything what is happening inside of that relationship like what she has to do to ”keep” him.” However, it feels so dumb to generalize an entire large group of people as being all alike, but literally capitalism is so deeply rooted inside everyone’s brain, so therefore, the patterns will exist everywhere, in everyone. More or less.

I’ve never felt loved in my life (I don’t have a healthy loving family, I didn’t have a good childhood), and I’ve always struggled to trust anyone or show my vulnerabilities because I’ve believed that people will take advange of it and I end up to be very ashamed that I gave myself to someone in a raw and stripped state. So when I was younger, I thought maybe I should just be in poly relationships because one thing I noticed in my circles, where everyone was bi, anarchist, vegan, leftist, poly…etc, they’ll have many lovers and partners and they didn’t have that deep connection with any of their partners – when things got real, they’d find a new one or they took a space for a bit or just dump them.

Poly relationships of some of my friends in my local communities seemed so much more secure since I was afraid that women would switch me to a new one or get back to their ex and men would sooner or later manipulate me, rape me, assault me or even kill me. I know I’ve only witnessed poly people with attaching issues, but this was the way I was thinking. Disclaimer, I have nothing against poly people, polyamory is real and valid, but sometimes some poly people I know are examples of this modern time where you’d just want to find new dopamine and a whole new lover is giving you that, so is a new Tiktok-video you’re doom scrolling and a new Tinder match, a new useless junk you buy from online shop when you saw an influencer promoting it… You get the point? I feel like people need to get EVERYTHING they want RIGHT AWAY, they can’t wait. That’s one reason why I think I’ve been sexually assaulted by multiple guys and one time by a girl who couldn’t take a no as a no, she coerced me to have sex with her.

Yeah, so I don’t believe in love after seeing how many people just settle down with a loser and takes all the bullshit and how people get treating in a dating world. The dating pool is awful, no wonder why women don’t want to start new families and are focusing on their careers and friends. I’m so disappointed that life turned this way because I have to be honest, I’m a big lover girl and I’d like to have a gf/bf, but I don’t think there’s healthy fulfilling love under patriarchy and capitalism. But at least I have great friends (even though some of their relationships give me gray hair lol) and a loving cat.

When I was younger, I thought I was a lesbian. One of the reasons for that was social media. Today, and then when I was younger, I saw many videos of lesbians who make ”signs that you’re gay”-content. Their experiences and reasons are totally valid, of course, but they should be treated with caution.

Some of the reasons I’ve seen many times have been stuff like ”I couldn’t see myself marrying a man or having a kid with a man, I only saw it happening with woman” or ”I had more crushes on girls”.

Later in life I realized I was a bisexual who can’t see herself marrying a man. I can only marry if the love of my life is woman and she wants to get married. In addition, I don’t want kids, but if I wanted, I’d have a kid only with a woman. I’ve had more deeper feelings on women than men. Despite of that, I’m still bi, it doesn’t remove my attraction to men (which can vary unpredictably).

I think this is the reason why there are so many queer women like me, who thought they were lesbian but then realized that they were bi. We have to normalize that this is some bi women’s experience. I’ve heard so many times that I’m just a lesbian and one lesbian I dated said that ”I’ve never met a bi woman who’d prefer women in dating”. It’s crazy how male-centred the world is.

When I started to read about feminism and learned all the horrifying statistics of men, I see the patterns everywhere, in every men. Some men are worse than others but still, patterns everywhere.

Now I struggle to believe my friends who happen to be men could be good people, queer or not. I know this is fucked up. I think reading too much feminism, learning about the statistics and getting my heart broken by a man over and over again as a lover girl, has really messed my mental health. I don’t understand how women can trust that men truly like them and are not using them.

I struggle to hear about my friend’s boyfriends because I fear that the men don’t love them, I fear that they do something that my friends don’t tell about, like coercing or emotional manipulation etc. I feel like a devil when I think about this of my friends. I disagree with many of their feminist opinions that include men. I’m sad that I have no good men rolemodels, my brothers and dad are quite bad people too.

How to deal with this heartbreak that I have to live in patriarchy like this? I know my sadness is deeper now because I just ended things with a man and I was really thinking that he’d love me. Those love hormons make me dumb but I can’t help it. I’d really love to experience love from men, that someone proved me they can be good. But men don’t love women as women love men.