When it comes to dating, we’re making connections now predominantly in the palm of our hands, with apps and text messaging leading the way in creating attraction. It’s made all of us a lot lazier than in previous eras, but there are certain crappy behaviors men still pull in the dating world.
- Purposely taking forever to respond to messages. Taking days at a time to respond to text messages is completely ridiculous when you’re supposed to be showing an interest in dating someone. It’s completely cool to be busy for a few hours at a time because that’s reasonable, but disappearing for days at a time and acting like it’s not a big deal and that women are the crazy ones if we react is a rude behavior that needs to stop.
- Using emojis as a way to express feelings. No, your winky face and kissy emoji don’t count as romance. Try harder. Stop being so lazy.
- Ghosting as a means to end things. The ghosting phenomenon is alive and well, and while I know women are completely guilty of this as well, men seem to be the most frequent offenders. Pro tip: if you’re not into someone, say so like a grown up.
- Expecting sex on demand. Thanks to apps like Tinder, sex is apparently readily available, so if we’re dating someone we like but aren’t into sleeping with a near-stranger, men can be pretty quick to move on to the next thing quickly. Also, please stop assuming every single woman you meet is dying to jump your bones. A lot of us are still old-fashioned and prefer to know who you are as a person first.
- Counting Netflix as a real and proper date. We live in a world where going over to a guy’s house to “watch a movie” is a justified date. This one goes out to my ladies — if we stop saying yes, they’ll stop asking and hopefully come to the conclusion that proper dates are the only thing we’ll be investing our time into.
- Taking the mystery out of the equation with dick pics. It used to be that we had some mystery before unwrapping the complete package once we’re ready to take that plunge. But now, we have the unwanted “luxury” [insert eye roll here] of being given our very own tiny portrait of what’s to come (which we never asked for, BTW).
- Prolonging commitment with unnecessary added steps. Men have been given the perfect platform to run even faster and harder from actual committed relationships than ever before. Nowadays, the Facebook add is a HUGE and monumental step. Then there’s the stage of finally going public (by uploading pictures together), followed by the agreement to delete dating apps. But even then, you’re still not “officially a couple.” It’s so frustrating when it should be so simple.
- Popping back into our lives after being complete jerks. Text messaging and messenger apps give exes the perfect entry back into our lives even months (or in the worst cases, years) after things have gone sideways. They wouldn’t show up on our doorsteps to “see how we’re doing,” but they sure as hell don’t hesitate to drop the “hey stranger, long time no talk” text to your phone. At 2 a.m. On a Friday night. When they obviously struck out with someone else.
- Avoiding feelings with the press of a button. The most annoying thing men do is avoid us in a way that wouldn’t have happened 10 years ago. Calls are set to reject, texts go ignored for eternity and we’re unfriended as a means of saying goodbye (yes, a man actually broke up with me that way). But if we were to show up at your doorstep to ask you for answers, we would be labeled the crazy ones. We could all stand to stop hiding behind our technology a little more and to the bros out there, who are guilty of any of these things, please try to do better, because technology isn’t an excuse to be a jerk.
