SeeingSomeone: 'The men I meet don’t measure up. They are literally the freaking worst. They are bad communicators, emotionally stunted, and don’t act their age. The guys that want to date me are unattractive, normie, or dorky.' Read Randa Sakallah's take
to this phenomenon as heteropessimism: “performative disaffiliations with heterosexuality, usually expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment, or hopelessness about straight experience.” Heteropessimists rarely stop dating men, Seresin pointed out; they just talk about how men suck. Sound familiar?
I don’t think you should compromise on those qualities, so I understand your frustration. But finding someone emotionally available isn’t necessarily a matter of gender and age. The extent to which someone is able to communicate about their feelings depends on all sorts of stuff, like their childhood, past relationships, and current life circumstances.
Speaking of aesthetics, Damsel Unimpressed, your other concerns about the dudes who want to date you as being “normie” or “dorky?” Let’s try to unpack those a little.are, respectively, uninspired conformity and total misunderstanding of what’s cool — basically, things that aren’t a big deal and don’t matter much when it comes to whether they’d be good boyfriends.