I've Discovered the Cheat Codes to Happiness on a Dating App
Juuuuust kidding. But someone on Tinder surely thinks he has the cheat codes to my joy and fulfillment.
Buckle up, kiddos, because I’m about to give you a peek inside my dating app life.
This is me:
I’m just as much an open book in dating as I am everywhere else in my life. Considering I’m 40 and perpetually single, you can see how well that’s worked out for me.
Now, despite taking the time to fill out everything I can on my profile, men have demonstrated time and time again that they don’t know how to read. Or would prefer not to since it’s much easier to swipe right on a cute face and later ghost said cute face if she shows any signs of a red flag.
That means my conversations usually die the second a man discovers that:
I don’t want kids.
I have lots of tattoos.
I didn’t get the clot shot.
And honestly? I’d much rather we unmatched or that he ghosted me right away.
I’m a firm believer in not wasting anyone’s time. Because we are who we are. While I might have believed in my 20s that I could help fix or save a man that I cared about, or that he could do the same for me, I damn well sure know now that it’s impossible to change someone.
You gotta just accept the person for who they are, flaws and all. Or move along and let your trash become someone else’s treasure.
Meet William
I recently matched with a man named William who seemed promising for a whole 5 minutes. And then he asked me the question that every man 35 and up asks:
“Do you want kids?”
I told him I did not and that’s when he gave me the response that the vast majority of men who want kids gives me:
“That’s okay. We can still fuck.”
Correction: Men up north use that phrasing. Men down here like to pretend like they’re more respectful and usually say something along the lines of, “We can still have fun” or “We can just be friends”. I didn’t know these were euphemisms when I first moved here and it led to many an awkward situation. But I’m quiet fluent in Southern dating lingo now.
So anyway, I politely declined. I told him that was incredibly offensive and I was tired of hearing it.
Many conservative (usually of the strictly Christian variety) and even some libertarian men claim to live their lives by the big Fs — Faith, Family, and Fitness. These would all be admirable values and traits, but it’s nothing more than a slogan for most of them. (At least this is true for the ones I’ve encountered on dating apps. Men seem really scared by me when I smile or talk to them in public, so I don’t have a good sample size of that particular group’s values or beliefs to work with.)
So yeah, I wasn’t good enough for William to date because I don’t want to bring children into this world, but I was good enough to stick his dick in. Awesome.
Usually at this point, I get ghosted. But not William. Nope. He decided that I needed to be set on the right path.
The Cheat Codes to Happiness
I would not say that this was an enlightening conversation. It felt like I was sitting on the other side of the screen from Andrew Tate. Or Steven Crowder. Or Tony Soprano.
I knew what was coming. I just didn’t realize this dude was going to be so persistent in trying to convince me that I was wrong, that I was in biological denial, and that it was high time I contribute to populating the world.
TL;DR: In the Book of William, men want women who are:
Child-bearing
Good housekeepers
Beautiful
Loving
Caring
Supportive
Faithful
Non-argumentative
Avid listeners
Codependent
Submissive
Silent
Simple
Helpless
Idolizing
I’m not knocking all of these traits. I believe that a lot of these traits are needed from both sides in order to have a successful relationship. But you’ll see how none of this is really about finding the perfect mate and having a loving and supportive relationship with them.
The Craziest Conversation I’ve Ever Had on a Dating App
William asked me if I was a “traditional woman”. I explained that I am in the sense that I share many of my values with conservatives, a lot of which come from being raised in the Roman Catholic Church. But, no, I don’t really live a traditional life that society expects of me.
He also wanted to know why I didn’t want kids. I think he was hoping I’d redeem myself in some way. But I don’t know. If I’d had uterine cancer and a hysterectomy, would that have made me worthy of dating or marriage? Or would I have been thrown on the scrap heap anyway?
In case you’re curious, I explain all the reasons why I personally don’t want kids in this episode of The Honest Uproar podcast.
I didn’t go into that much detail for William. I knew he didn’t want to hear it. So, instead, I explained that I watched the women in my family — going back generations — fall into place based on this mentality, societal pressure, and spousal control. I also watched these women do a terrible job raising children they didn’t want, badly perform household chores they had no interest in, and submit to and express their undying love for men who cheated on them and abused them at every turn.
Of course, William didn’t care about that either. Here’s how the conversation went:
William: “Well we have to say that your childhood was absolutely not ideal. But your situation was not typical. And a woman staying home and having children is not necessarily a societal thing, it is in fact biological. Thousands of years ago the women and children stayed at camp while the men went out and hunted for food. Every man on the face of this Earth including me and all of the men I’ve ever talked to about this all want women that will fill that biological feminine role of being a mother and a housekeeper. If you want to go out and get a job and you know of course do all those things that women do all the time no problem. That’s what you want to do but that is not something that turns men on, it actually turns them off to a degree. Men don’t care what your degree is in or how much money you make or when you get your nails done or what kind of shoes you have. Men are extremely simple. We want a woman that is attractive and loving and supportive and caring and non-argumentative.
“Men have to go out and conquer the world everyday and don’t want to come home to more stress. They want to come home to someone who will be there to listen to them and to bring peace to their life. Women that have too much going on and don’t have enough time for me I really don’t even pay attention to. It’s great if you’re a millionaire or you have this or you have that but that doesn’t do anything for men. All men care about is having a loving, caring, faithful woman that will be there for them. If I was a multi-multi-millionaire I would absolutely date a girl that worked at McDonald’s if she was beautiful and made me happy.
“My recommendation to you would be to, once you find a man that you like and want to start a long-term relationship with, to put him in the leadership role in the relationship and make him feel that he is wanted and needed and valued. If the man feels like you truly respect him and value his opinion and want to follow his lead he will be loyal to you forever generally speaking.”
Me: “You’re conflating very different things. Yes, a woman is built to bear babies. And it’s in women’s nature to be warm and empathetic. But were women built for housekeeping? To be submissive? There was a time when the idea of “it takes a village…” was an actual practice. Because it does. Modern men don’t want that though. They want a sole servant. They have this idea that the women seen in 50s advertisements and movies — the ones perfectly done up, with a baby always in their belly, and a hot meal waiting on the table — was some utopia. All that did was turn women into shallow husks who lived to serve. Who didn’t really light up or live until their husband walked through the door. Men always talk about what they need from women. Be pretty. Be quiet. Be obedient. Be led around on an invisible leash. But what do you give them in return? Just a bunch of stuff and chores to keep them occupied. That’s not love. That’s not partnership. And that’s definitely not respect.
“Maybe if men hadn’t treated women like disposable slaves for so long, they wouldn’t have been so eager to gain their freedom. And, for the record, none of us independent chicks who have a career or our own lives are looking for applause. We do this to protect ourselves from men who seek to exploit and throw us away the second a prettier, more submissive woman comes along. To give ourselves a life worth living because we [i.e. our ancestors] never had that before. I feel sorry that you hold onto such a caveman-like mentality. Maybe if men were more like Spartans — actually strong men who brought something of value to the table instead of being superficially strong and morally weak — we’d have something to respect and love.”
William: “Honey I feel like you’re taking all of this personally. All I’m trying to do is give you the cheat codes to help you beat the game. If you want to get married and have a husband for the rest of your life being submissive is the way to do it. This little experiment called feminism that we have started is destroying the nuclear family and our country as a whole.
“Regardless of the way it makes you feel or what you think the answer is I am telling you that what men want in a long-term partner is a beautiful, submissive, silent, caring, loving woman. It’s as simple as that.
“If you don’t need a man then why do you still yearn to have a man in your life? Because that’s the way that women are biologically designed. You do need a man in your life. It will make you happy. Please don’t spend the rest of your life alone and unhappy.
“Look at it like this: Statistically you’ll spend the last 5 to 10 years of your life alone anyway because men typically die before women.
“You can’t take the way life has been for all of human civilization for tens of thousands of years and want to change the way that it works in the past 60 years. It just will not turn out the way that you have envisioned it or the way that you have thought it should be from the time you were a child. Disney movies in these fairy tales paint these false senses of reality for young women into thinking that they can in fact be men themselves when they really just need to let the men be men and let women be women. If you want a man to love you and hold you and cherish you and be your faithful partner for the rest of your life, you’re going to need to be seriously introspective and make some changes to your personality and the way you think about the world to get a man to ask you to marry him.
“By the year 2030, 50% of women over the age of 30 are slated to be childless and single. The lowest number ever in human history. It is all due to feminism. Please don’t be part of that statistic.
“I’m googling s*** now just for this conversation with you. I really am trying to give you the cheat codes on how to get what you want and biologically desire. Don’t shoot the messenger just take it from a man that what I’m telling you is the absolute truth.”
Me: “I don’t want marriage or children. I have no biological or personal desire for either. And I don’t want to be a man. I want to be free to make my own choices and to have agency over my life. When I say I want a man, I want someone to share a life with. To go out and explore the world, to share my bed, to support each other in whatever we do. Not someone to lobotomize and enslave me. Those aren’t cheat codes to getting what women want. That’s a recipe for indentured servitude, all because men want to make women as simple and convenient and easy to program as their smartphone.
“You do realize that feminism (the real feminism, not the insanity that passes for it today) arose because there was a need for it. As society and technology evolved, humanity needs to as well. But a lot of men want to keep women in the dark ages. Because it scares them to have a woman that won’t take their shit. Why should anyone love and respect a man who treats her like a second class citizen? Who makes their love and support contingent on how well they conform and obey? I’m happy to be part of that statistic if it means I get to avoid being with a man like that. And you should do some self reflection on why it is you clearly hate and fear women so much.”
Final Thoughts
Why did I put William on blast like this? It’s because I’m frightened. Not of William or any other man who has talked to me in such a demeaning and hateful way.
I’m frightened by this trend of female subjugation. It seems to be coming from every angle — from the trannies dominating women’s sports to men saying the most degrading shit online that they likely wouldn’t have the guts to say in person.
It’s not just on dating apps or podcasts that I’ve encountered this type of rhetoric.
For instance, I stumbled upon this comment on Instagram recently:
It was in response to a post about the new Unjected dating site/app and how women can go there to find high value man. Here’s what the dude says:
“Trust me, girl. You never had a high value man and will never get one. Do you want to know why? We don’t accept single mothers, girls over 23, bodycount over 3 and feminists. You had your value in the age between 18 and 25. Men have their value between 30 and 50 if they hustled. But the problem is that women 30+ still think they have the same value as a 20 year old girl. You don’t understand how high value men think. With your mindset you will get a guy who takes Thailand holidays each year. Watch the video of Andrew Tate.”
I’ve seen this type of condescension take place on Twitter too (when I was still on there). Men calling women “crazy”, blaming them for high divorce rates, calling to have their voting rights stripped away because they predominantly vote Democrat.
That’s not the only thing that frightens me about all this. Look back at the way that William talked.
He talked about how I shouldn’t dare to question any of this because it was an “absolute truth” coming from a man. He essentially wants women like me to give up our body sovereignty because it’s our duty to procreate and submit. And though he didn’t describe it in these terms, he advocates for the greater good over individualism.
Men (and women — because I’ve definitely encountered them) who think this way are no better than the liberals who insisted we trust the science without question, that we hold out our arms and take the shot, and that we shut down our lives so that everyone can feel safe.
They’re two sides of the same coin.
I remember when Trump was elected and women did those Handmaid’s Tale protests and the pink pussy hat protests. A friend of mine from Boston to went to one of them. I remember her warning me that Trump and MAGA were going to sexually enslave all of us. I laughed and said she was being ridiculous.
I still laugh at that suggestion. It was ridiculous. Trump may be a disgusting, cheating pig. But he never would’ve done anything to harm women or take away their rights on a grand scale.
You know what I think happened? I think the #metoo movement took things to the extreme. While some cases were completely justified — like Harvey Weinstein — way too many people took advantage of what was a valid concern and weaponized it against men.
Men, in turn, were vilified as a whole. They decided that the best course of action was to pull away and not allow themselves to be vulnerable to women who might cry “rape” after kissing them at the end of a date.
As someone who’s been single for a very long time, I can tell you that I’ve felt this reverberate through the dating scene. You add COVID on top of it and relations between the sexes have turned downright cold and transactional.
And I believe we’re now entering a time where the pendulum is swinging to the other extreme. Women extremists had the upper hand before… Now I think it’s moving over to the men’s side.
That’s why we’re seeing men pretending to be women take over women’s sports and entering their otherwise secure and safe spaces. Why we’re seeing men like Andrew Tate being revered as a hero. Why tradwives are trending. Why no one is batting an eyelash that senior citizens like Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro are having babies with women young enough to be their granddaughters.
To be clear, I’m not some crazy femi-nazi or progressive. I simply want everyone to be able to live their lives however they want so long as they’re not hurting anyone else. And I’m talking serious hurting like sexually abusing children, not like hurting a man’s feelings because I don’t want to treat him like a conquering hero after he spent 8 hours sitting at a desk all day.
Where our society goes with this, I don’t know. I think it’s going to get much darker for women if we don’t stand up for ourselves and for each other. Sadly, I don’t see that happening since it seems like many women will speak out only when there’s a mass progressive movement running the show.
I wish someone would just stop the pendulum. Enough with the extreme takes. I’d love to exist in some in-between realm where we don’t have a bunch of people from either extreme yelling at us for living our lives the wrong way and trying to enforce legislation or encourage societal norms that push us to where they want us to be.
Live and fucking let live.
Here is an interesting article by Katie Roiphe on the subject of #MeToo, which was a social media phenomenon that IMHO bore little relationship to reality.
https://harpers.org/archive/2018/03/the-other-whisper-network-2/
I think that the men who claim to be women are embittered towards all women for whatever reasons and what is worse is that those men are being enabled by women who consider themselves to be 'progressive'. I agree that a lot of women are now frightened by what is happening and need the likes of Sharron Davies, a former British Olympic swimmer, to speak out which she is doing.
I wouldn't say that COVID has made relationships between the sexes any worse though, if anything the protest movement against lockdowns, vaxx passports etc was one of the first, if not the first, in which women had equal status to men and none of the men involved found that threatening.
As for the 'Unjected' site, an app collecting people's medical status, the word 'entrapment' springs to mind. And as for 'William', you'd have been better off just cutting him off, rather than feeling that you have to explain yourself.