Women Waste Too Much Time Waiting for Men to Be Ready.

So, what are we waiting for? Are you dating a Haas avocado? Rarely in season, ripe for about five minutes before it starts to rot, waiting for its time to shine.

Waiting is an unfortunate part of women's lives. We are told to wait for that career opportunity, to wait for the right love, to wait until we feel ready to have children, only to reach our childbearing years and realise that pregnancy isn't as simple as our high school teachers made it seem. But I digress.

Did you know that to ripen an avocado within a few days, you simply pair it with a banana in a paper bag and let the banana work its magic? Sound familiar? An avocado has always been an accurate representation of a woman's uterus, and a banana... well, you remember high school sex ed. But flip the roles, flip the fruit, and it sounds remarkably like that relationship you're constantly waiting to work. The one where you're ready but your partner isn't, so you nurture, you wait, you potentially hold yourself back for their comfort, only to realise that something has rotted. You have rotted.

Creative director and filmmaker Yasmin Suteja first brought this concept to my attention. Once we'd discussed it, neither of us could let it go. We are born with an expiration date. Dark, but true. As part of nature, much like fruit, we have seasons of ripeness and seasons of decay, all leading towards an ending we don't know when or how will arrive. But its arrival is guaranteed. If you want to become a mother, you have two expiration dates. If you're a woman in the arts, well, that's another expiration date. A woman in front of a camera? A huge expiration date. And so, we're taught to wait. We're born with the innate ability to nurture.

As women, our love often runs a little more freely than men's, and we're more inclined to make things work. Pregnancy? I'll work through it. Children? I can still pursue my dreams. Men, on the other hand, often seem to work to a much tighter schedule. Well, some men. It's not uncommon for love to find us early. Big dreams are shared, big plans are made, but as the years pass, women make things work, while men become like an avocado. They're just not ready. Their career isn't where they want it to be.

Financially, it's a bad time. They haven't reached their highest potential. Not realising they could still reach that potential in their seventies. Meanwhile, women, the bananas, have spent so much time waiting and nurturing that they've rotted to the core with resentment. Hell hath no fury like a woman whose time has been wasted.

So, we wait. Change is scary. Change in your thirties is terrifying because we do have a biological clock.

And do we really have it in us to nurture another avocado when the one we already have is, apparently, so close to being ripe? "I promise."

The truth is, most women have had a relationship like the banana and the avocado. But the real truth? If you're in that relationship, you're dating a secret hater.

Women are hard-wired to make things work. However, if your partner is acting like a Haas avocado, then it's not that he isn't ready. It's that he hates seeing you thrive while he isn't. A real partner is nothing but happy to watch the person they love soar. They're not embarrassed to take a back seat, and they're certainly not sabotaging your dreams of children, marriage, or whatever it was you made abundantly clear you wanted at the beginning of the relationship because they "just aren't ready."

Is anyone ever ready for anything? Absolutely not. We know that. Your avocado boyfriend doesn't.

He won't pull the pin on the relationship because making a decision is too scary. Instead, he'll wait until you make the move. Because the avocado isn't a bad guy. He won't be the one to end years of love, plans, and waiting. So much waiting. No, we must make the decision ourselves. We tell ourselves we couldn't possibly have wasted all those years. We're smarter than that. And we are. But this is a woman's Achilles' heel. The constant pressure of our expiration date. That expiration date can make us do crazy things, like marry someone who's secretly hoping for our downfall, or apologise for our success just to protect our partner's ego.

We're wrong. And there's nothing we hate more than being wrong, especially about someone we love.

The obvious answer is to cut your losses and realise your boyfriend was never meant to be the ever-so-sensitive avocado you tiptoe around. He's meant to be your partner. Someone who shares the plans.

Someone who shares the work. Someone who shares the nurturing. Cher told us to believe in life after love. But we actually have to believe it if we're ever going to find happiness, with or without a partner.

Nature so often reflects our lives because we are nature. Which is probably why you're looking back at every relationship where the guy "just wasn't ready" and thinking:

"Oh my God... I was dating an avocado."

Perhaps it's a rite of passage. It certainly became creative fuel for Yasmin Suteja and me. But that creative fuel was filled with anger and disappointment that this is such a common experience, one women are taught to accept as normal. Generations before us lived through it. Generations after us continue to. Because we're taught to make things work. To make things comfortable for everyone else. But at what cost?

The cost is that the banana rots inside the paper bag while the avocado ripens, ever so briefly, only to rot soon after itself. A fruitless endeavour. Much like your ex.

Watch the full short film Called EXP. DATE by Director Yasmin Suteja & Writer Sophie Irvine

Video © Directed by Yasmin Suteja / Written by Sophia Irvine / Produced by Culture Machine / Cast: Yan Yan Chan & Ewan Peddley / Director of Photography Hossein Khodabandehloo / Edited by Sarah Saw / 1st AC Konrad McCarthy / Casting: Angus Della Bosca / Set Stylist: Soraya Wanya / Hair & Makeup: Georgia Gaillard / Music & Sound Design: William Scullin / Colourist: Keiran Lee / Sound Recordist: Bruce Armstrong / Script Supervisor: Kiara Haewon / Florals: XFlos