Men Want Girlfriends Without Having to Be Boyfriends.

Caitlin Kaur

7 minutes ago

4 min read

It’s 2010. He cycles to my house and bangs on my door. ‘Can you give Caitlin this?’

When I get home that night, I pop open my pink CD player and hit play on the mixtape he made me. Cheesy love songs and some of my favourite artists blare out. I call him on the landline, and even though it’s a school night, we speak for hours, legs climbing up the wall.

It’s 2026. I stare at my WhatsApp, wondering when he’s going to reply after sending him my Instagram upon request. We had a two-hour phone call, and I thought we’d got on well. I quickly realise I won’t be hearing from him again.

In recent years, the fourth-wave feminist concept of ‘decentring men’ has gained momentum. But I can’t help feeling that, no matter the discourse on the topic, for straight women, men unfortunately still hold a lot of the power. Because while we want autonomy, most of us also want love. But the current standard is just not cutting it.

Freeing ourselves from the male gaze and reclaiming our power is something I am fully for. It means that men finally have to offer us more. They have to be more and do more, as we are no longer settling for the bare minimum. If a man wants to be in our lives, he needs to add to them and bring something to the table that we don’t already provide for ourselves.

So if they need to do more to win us over, why does it seem that men are making less effort than ever?

Men used to start wars over women. Even in the animal kingdom, males know they need to woo the female. I needn’t remind you that the egg does not swim to the sperm. Yet here we are in the age of modern dating, where the idea of a man taking you for dinner is too ‘awkward’, texting is the new dating, and ghosting is more common than ever. And as this is happening at a time when women are realising they deserve and expect more from men, the whole thing feels horribly ironic, like one big practical joke.

Of course, people are meeting far less organically now that everything has moved online. Some men feel less confident approaching women, and some don’t want to make women uncomfortable (which is obviously positive, although it can cause confusion about how to act). Traditional gender roles and expectations are changing for the better, but that doesn’t mean women don’t want effort. And with dating apps, swapping socials, and never-ending access to each other at the click of a button, why would he send me a love letter when he can just react to my story? Then disappear until six months later at 1 a.m. because ‘something reminded him of me’.

My girlfriends spill stories over wine of men getting complacent after one date or, worse, cancelling on the day. The number of times I’ve heard ‘if he wanted to, he would’, followed by ‘but where are the men who will?’

I once dated a man I met on Hinge for four months. I met his family and even went on holiday. Then we argued over text, and I never heard from him again. Just as quickly as a left swipe, he deleted me from his life like I meant nothing.

I worry people are so exhausted by modern dating that they’re no longer living for beautiful romantic experiences, to woo and be wooed. Women are no longer expecting it, and men are no longer trying. We’ve collectively decided that texting in between meeting up allows you to skip five stages. Suddenly, no more actual effort is required, and ghosting someone is a snap decision.

Of course, women are just as culpable in perpetuating the ‘ghosting’ trope, and if both parties continue to fuel it, things will never change. But at this point, people are disillusioned. What I’m starting to witness is that a lot of us, both men and women alike, are beginning to realise that this attitude, combined with the hellscape that is online dating, isn’t getting anyone anywhere.

Is IRL making a comeback?

People are moving away from apps like Hinge and towards things like old-fashioned speed dating, curated singles house parties where phones are banned and the focus is solely on connection, and even single sauna raves. Only yesterday, I got invited to a talk on ‘How to Flirt IRL’.

People aren’t approaching each other straight off the bat like ‘back in the day’, but we’ve all got Hinge fatigue, so we’re having to adapt. If you’ve met someone in person, it feels less likely that you’re going to get ghosted because the brain registers them as a real person, not just an option you can control-alt-delete.

I don’t know if these events will make a real difference, but it’s a start. At the moment, it’s mostly women attending, which comes as no surprise given that we are all dying for an attitude shift. But is how you meet a person really the issue, or has technology permeated our lives so much that romance is a lost form entirely? Maybe if we all threw away our phones, we’d remember what true connection feels like, and men would step up their romantic game.

Women have already started to revolt by rejecting traditional relationships, with single-mother adoptions reaching record highs in recent years. I love that for us, but it also makes me sad that we might be doing it because men are not meeting us where we’re at.

The answer isn’t women’s standards dropping. It’s men stepping up to meet them, and us as a society working together to combat the complacency caused by technology and social media.

If we don’t rediscover romance soon, we could lose it forever. So send the love letter, make the mixtape, be curious! And for God’s sake, don’t ghost them.