My Ex Secretly Hated Women—Here Are The Signs I Missed

He seemed like a charming man, but he was hiding a horrible secret: he was a raging misogynist. I don’t know how I didn’t notice it right away, but over time, it became appallingly obvious that he hated women. Here are 11 signs that I eventually couldn’t ignore and that led me to run in the other direction.

1. He was all about “women in general.” He would say things like, “Women in general are bad drivers” or “Women in general are crazy” and then he’d think he was flattering me by saying I was different from them. It was such an insult! You can’t put down all women and then think that will impress me.
2. He dragged down all his exes. This guy was always moaning about his ex-girlfriends. They were all crazy, stupid, and pathetic. This was a huge red flag for me because it’s impossible that everyone he dated was the problem. What about things he’d done? Was he not going to take any responsibility for his past at all? Not only did this guy have an ego problem, but he was hating on women and it made me sick.
3. He blamed women in all areas of his life. Not only did he have a problem with his exes, but he was always acting as though women in other areas of his life had a problem with him. He’d regularly moan about his female boss and I could tell that he was super arrogant. Yet he always played the victim card, acting as though she was the one attacking him. It was ridiculous. I really started to lose my patience when he claimed that she was secretly into him and it was making her treat him badly. WTF?! He had to get over himself!
4. He was ridiculously cocky. When I saw him around other women, he became so cocky. He always tried to get a reaction out of them and he thought he was so smart. Ugh. I could see that he was insecure and was always trying to win or have more power.
5. He competed against women. I experienced this firsthand. When I was better than him at something, he just didn’t want to accept it. He once had the nerve to tell me, “But women aren’t supposed to be better at tennis than men!” It got even worse. When I succeeded at something, he’d criticize me as though to rain on my parade. I think he just couldn’t handle a woman kicking his butt.
6. He was a serial ghoster. This guy had ghosted lots of women in his past, and that’s a huge problem. As Psychology Today reports, a misogynist might run away from relationships without properly ending them. In addition, he might return weeks or months later with excuses to try to get the woman back. This guy did that to many of his exes, and it made me see that he was all about playing games and trying to gain control over his partners.
7. He was insulting. He’d tease me all the time, but it didn’t make me laugh. It made me so mad. The guy would always put me down and then claim he was just joking around and I shouldn’t be so uptight or sensitive. That just made it even worse.
8. He used the word “feminist” as an insult. He claimed to support women, but that was a load of BS because he didn’t flinch when making disparaging comments about feminists, or calling a woman a feminist if she wore a certain item of clothing or behaved in a certain way. The word became an insult. To add insult to injury, he would walk around with a t-shirt bearing the word “feminist.” What a jerk.
9. He denied sexism. He would completely deny it if a woman had been harassed in the workplace or treated negatively in a social situation based on her gender. He’d roll his eyes and say that that was an “overreaction” or that people were “too sensitive.” Hell no.
10. He claimed to love his mom. I’ve always thought that how a guy treats his mother says a lot about him, but this guy tried to use that as a manipulation tactic. He’d talk about how much he loved his mother and phoned her daily, and I thought that was sweet. But then when he was with her, he’d constantly insult her in the way he claimed to “gently tease” people—and do it right in front of me. I could see she hated it. Interestingly, he treated his brother and his male best friends in much more respectful ways.
11. He treated women like idiots. When I first met him, he was charming and polite, even chivalrous. But looking back, it was an insult for him to think that he could hook me with those behaviors. Once he got me where he wanted me, he showed me his nasty sexist side. It’s clear that he used those charming behaviors to try to control me, thinking that they would work on me because I was a woman. Ha, he had another thing coming his way—a huge breakup.