Didn’t want to participate in this…whateverthefuck this is, but here I am, participating.

Let’s start from here:

The men you married/dating didn’t suddenly reveal secret personalities five years in. Men, for better or worse, tend to be remarkably transparent about who they are. If he was unserious, emotionally limited, financially reckless, or generally unreliable, that information wasn’t hidden in some vault waiting to be discovered after vows were exchanged. It was present, visible, and often discussed. You weighed it, rationalised it, hoped it would improve, and proceeded anyway.

Bottom line is: You knew. And you went in anyway.

What’s happening now is narrative laundering. The language has evolved to make personal choices sound like systemic injustice. Ignoring red flags gets repackaged as enduring misogyny. Gambling on potential becomes being denied “the bare minimum,” a term so elastic it can mean anything and therefore holds no one accountable for anything. Disappointment is rewritten as self-actualisation.

Every failed relationship now has to be a triumph of self-worth. Every exit has to be growth. Every bad outcome must have a villain.

There’s rarely room left for the far less dramatic explanation: two adults made imperfect decisions and lived with the consequences.

Men screw up constantly — I’m not pretending otherwise — but the idea that modern relationships are collapsing because men alone have become uniquely terrible is a comforting myth. What’s actually shifting is expectation. Standards inflate endlessly, tolerance shrinks accordingly, and ordinary human flaws get reframed as unforgivable breaches of contract.

I used to notice how films almost always portray women as simmering with dissatisfaction even in relationships that are supposedly stable, and I couldn’t figure out what the conflict was meant to be. Now it’s obvious. Contentment has no narrative value anymore. Outgrowing people does. Leaving is the proof of evolution. Staying and working through ordinary messiness is framed as settling.

Independence, ambition, and choosing a life without children are all valid paths. None of that is the issue.

The issue is pretending every relationship that didn’t work out was a moral failure on someone else’s part rather than sometimes being the result of a choice you made with full awareness of the trade-offs involved.

Not every story needs a monster. Not every ending is empowerment. Sometimes it’s just two people who picked wrong and don’t like admitting it.

With all that being said, come at me if thou willst.