My Algorithm Thinks I Hate Men

On appetite, outrage, and the impossible task of loving men.

“Love is not love

When it is mingled with regards that stand

Aloof from the entire point.”

William Shakespear

My algorithm thinks I hate men. Which can be true. At times. Truthfully, I love men. I really do. My eye may be twitching when I say such a thing. It sort of feels like a lie, yet every part of me wants to believe it. I have the misfortune of existing as a straight woman, cursed into loving the male form-- for better or for worse. There are times when I am livid with men’s existence, where my algorithm has oriented itself around this sort of exasperated bitterness. The internet, I’m finding, conspires with me a little too easily. There is endless access to outrage, to validation, to whatever dark resentment I’m trying not to feed—and occasionally, I feed it anyway. Don’t tempt me with a good time. There’s something bonding and ferocious about joining hands with other women throughout the world, rapport through a hand-held screen-- sharing our grievances, honing our primal rage, thousands of voices shouting through the void: “Do better!! I’ve had enough”.

Once, in 8^th grade, I came home from school exasperated, frustrated and full of fury--as much as a four-foot-eight, seventy-five-pound blonde with braces and the energy of a tiny woodland creature can be. I was easing myself out of my identity of a figure skater—ditching independent-study P.E. and learning how to exist at school for a full day like a normal kid.

I was one of the only kids in my grade excited about P.E. I found my afternoons in the ice rink to be lonely and isolating, where I’d often sit on a bench in the middle of the refrigerator, thinking about what my friends were doing on the vast fields of Cabrillo Middle School. They were out in the sun, hair blowing in the wind, baggy grey PE shirts tied up with a hair tie, oversized and unflattering blue gym shorts rolled once (maybe twice if the teacher wasn’t looking). I wanted to be normal. I wanted to decorate my gym locker with stickers and stock up on deodorant and various scents of Smacker’s lip gloss. I wanted to gossip with my friends as we got dressed. I wanted to sometimes forget to take my clothes home over the weekend, leaving them musty and rotting in my locker. Beyond the ache for inclusion, what I really wanted was to play. I was an athlete. I wanted to run the mile. I wanted to be too tiny for basketball but try anyway. I wanted to play first base for kickball, return to the game of soccer, and dominate in four-square. I wanted to get dirty and sweaty and be the version of myself that didn’t have her hair in a bun, or wear rhinestone dresses, or isolate herself from her peers for the sake of more training time. In 8^th grade, I finally got my wish. I ditched independent study and enrolled in PE. I finally had my shot at normalcy.

It wasn’t long before my excitement dwindled. Physical education was co-ed. Whatever sport we were partaking in that week, the boys played with the girls. I came home upset that day, full of fury, because the boys kept putting the girls in the outfield during kickball. Who made them the boss? I wanted to play first base. I didn’t want to twirl around in kickball Siberia with the rest of my gender blowing on dandelions, rolling my shorts 3 times since being farther away meant we were harder to see. I wanted to be in the action, not outside of it. I spent too much of my adolescence in the periphery.

The next day when I came home, my Mom asked me how kickball went. “Great!” I said. “I played 1^st base.” Mom said she was happy they let me. I corrected her. “They didin’t let me.

I told them I’m playing first base. End of conversation. They didn’t have a choice in the matter.” Although I was a firecracker, although I refused to be minimized by my gender, it was the first time I realized boys had the capacity to take something I’m equally entitled to away. It was the first time I felt bulldozed by gender, that my joy had been taken because of my femininity. I realized boys moved through the world entitled to their wanting, while I had to make myself feral just to reach for the same things. Something in me hardened after that. Resentment planted its seed, and it’s been continuously watered since.

I’m 38 and still single. When people ask me why, I tell them I’m one more disappointment away from dissolving. Yet I’ve noticed fewer people ask lately—as if the state of the dating biosphere speaks for itself. The current dating landscape confuses what love actually represents, what it energetically carries. Love in its highest expression has been replaced with indifference, with treating people as commodities, with passive men who are in their 40’s and “unsure of their dating goals”.

There’s usually two types of single women hovering around my age: those who haven’t given up, and those who have. I’ve landed somewhere in the middle, if not towards the latter. I’m not out in the trenches, I’m not on the dreaded dating apps, and I’m not actively seeking someone or a relationship. That doesn’t mean I’m in this vast space of nothingness; men still come and go. Most of the time, I’m happy to let them go. I’ve kept myself like a candle flame, shielding it with both hands whenever the wind picks up. Too often, men have come through my life like sudden gusts, and I’m beginning to wonder whether I have another match left to strike. Yet I still haven’t given up, but I also haven’t done anything tangible to change my reality. This doesn’t mean I don’t desire a man. I do. Sometimes I long for it. Sometimes the longing in me doesn’t emerge quietly—it detonates. The thing is, now I just let it happen. For years I reached for validation, for someone to alleviate the discomfort, a warm body to fill the void, bouncing from one shiny object in the form of a man to another. I didn’t know how to be alone. Like many women around my age, my late twenties and early thirties brought about a reckoning of sorts, where life pushed me to the edge of my resilience bucket. I had two choices: continue on with suffering, or do something about it. I resisted therapy for a very long time, although I knew it to be a necessary step. It’s kinda funny how we don’t believe the things we know. I spent the better part of eight years working with a therapist, and as healing started to occur, something profound took its place. I no longer feared being alone. I no longer associated being alone with loneliness. I no longer grasped for straws in the male form, I no longer needed it to affirm my worthiness or even my existence. Many women like me are in this stage of life. We’ve done the work on ourselves; we don’t need a partner, yet we desire it. Therein lies the problem.

There has been a significant cultural shift for women, because for the first time in the history of the patriarchy, we don’t need men to survive. Single women make up about 13% of homeowners, 10% for single men. Women don’t need a man to own property, to open a bank account or have a credit card. Women no longer have to ask for permission to exist freely. We no longer have to stay in broken, dangerous or unfulfilling relationships for the sake of survival. Because women have grown their independence, because women have done the personal work to liberate themselves from the idea that being in a relationship and happiness are not mutually exclusive, we desire a relationship that’s symbiotic. Emotionally fulfilling. We want a partner with the capacity to better our lives, not take from it. Have you ever thought about your mother? How she may or may not have had a happier life if she wouldn’t have had children and maybe married your father? How many women do you know in a relationship or marriage with a man and seemingly better off? I’m lucky to know a few of these women with wonderful partners; I look to them and see possibility because there are good men that exist in this world. But they are the minority. Most men are stuck in their old ways of thinking, and they haven’t caught up with the empowered, emotionally and financially capable woman. They haven’t done the necessary work to better themselves and ultimately better their relationships. I got a glimpse of this in middle school, the entitled bulldozing man, and little did I know I’d be facing similar challenges as I creep into middle age.

Men and women are seemingly at an armistice, struggling for power, wondering who will wave the white flag first. Our culture seeks dominance, where most of us stay safe by choosing power over love. Love cannot exist if power, dominance or wanting the upper hand is how romantic relationships are approached. I’m guilty of this. Having the upper hand coincides with safety, with control. If I am in control of my feelings, my attachment, my vulnerability, then I am safe. I withhold constantly. Venturing out into the unknown territory of letting go, the uncertainty of giving a part of myself to another, is half the battle. Becauase once the tether is released, the other person has power over me, my emotional state, the fate of my heart. It’s terrifying. I’m often more interested in protecting myself from the risks of love than the actual experience of it. I tend to deny my own sneaky ways of sabotage, yet rarely admitting: “I am more interested in being safe than I am being loved”. I have to continually remind myself that power struggles are the currency of war, not love.

I’ve now been in more relationships than I can keep track of. I’ve had men take my joy away in a similar way they did in 8^th grade, with entitlement and lack of remorse. I’ve been ghosted, I’ve been avoided, I’ve had men choose other women over me. I’ve come close to marriage. I once picked out an engagement ring with a man, and we booked flights to California so he could ask my father’s permission. He left me a few weeks later. No explanation. No conversation. Poof.

I’ve become something of a wounded warrior. Yet statistically speaking, there’s one common denominator with all of these failings: Me. I’m the common denominator. I’m part of the problem. It’s hard to admit sometimes, that we are the biggest contributors to our own realities. Truth has a funny way of aching until it is acknowledged. It’s not just men who have made dating incredibly difficult-- there are also terrible women. Some I know who milk men dry for their resources, for their kindness, for their generosity. I’m not that type of woman, but I’m far from perfection. For me, real love exists when I recognize my part in every broken relationship, and taking that knowledge into how I can change moving forward. I’m not a victim to my circumstances. I’ve likely pushed men away with my attachment trauma, with my occasional neurosis, withholding crucial communications, not asking for my needs to be met, stubborn tendancies. I’m also drawn to choosing unavailable men, where I choose to ignore the red flags, and I choose to act surprised when things go astray. How can I blame the man when I was an equal accomplice to my experience, despite my intuition telling me otherwise? Hating men doesn’t solve the problem, because I believe we aren’t actually angry with men when it comes down to it. We are angry with ourselves for not listening to our intuition, for giving the dumpster-fire in the form of a man a chance despite palpable warning signs. We are angry because we offered our most tender selves—our hearts—to men who were incapable of meeting us with the same depth, care, and courage. Our projected anger solves nothing, and I can’t continue to invest my energy, my resentments, my traumas, and my fears into the place where love lives.

Despite the internet telling me otherwise, despite my history, despite my well-armored defenses, I still hopelessly believe in love. And hope, I’m finding, is not a shortcoming or a talisman floating in the ether— it’s an anchor, a pillar, a backbone. What is longing for partnership without hope’s scaffolding to hold it up? Hope is what we cling to to keep us upright. I know love will settle into me one day, and I know I will settle into it. I know there’s someone out there for me, and I know I’ll have my wishes granted before I croak. But as Jane Austin wrote in Persuasion: “I’m half agony, half hope.” I still carry hope—heavy across my shoulders, lodged into the stiffness of my neck. Because someone has to keep the light on for love, even after learning how easily it disappears. For reasons I cannot fully explain, that someone is still me.