Not a "man hater" but I'm gonna go on a little personal rant for a sec.
I met my last (last meaning my most recent stay focused) boyfriend in college. We were both 18, and he was just "different". He listened to me when I talked. He cared about my feelings. He was romantic, took me on fantastic dates and bought me presents. I never met a boy so sweet and so good.
We moved in together after freshman year because 1: it was conveniently cheaper to rent an apartment together than live in the dorms and 2: we wanted to test the waters and see if we were really compatible.
We dated for four years and lived together 3. It wasn't perfect. We had issues, problems, fights. A lot of the fights ended up being sex related.
To cut a long story short, his mom hated me, which led to many instances where my ex would threaten to leave me unless I changed some behavior or do something different, otherwise his mom is right and we weren't right for each other.
I think y'all know where this is going. After the 4th "breakup" I decided I had had enough. Instead of fighting for him, because I loved him, I let him go. I moved out and found my own place. We did the whole "let's stay friends thing" because even though we didn't want to be together, we still cared for one another and enjoyed each others company.
I was fine but very lonely, it was the first time I had lived by myself.
After about 2-3 months (I forget) we met for drinks and to "catch up" because we hadn't seen each other in a while. He admitted that he missed me, that "he didn't know what he had until it was gone". I stupidly took him back.
It was great at first, he was romantic again, we went out more, he was trying. Unfortunately, it didn't last.
Let me just tell y'all, this boy was hopeless without me. When we lived together, I made sure the rent was in on time, I took care of maintenance issues, I made sure we always stocked up on essentials (tp, dish soap, detergent, etc.), all the furniture was mine because I bought it when we moved out of the dorms.
When I moved out one of his friends moved in with him. In the handful of times I visited their apartment:
My ex bought a bed, but put the mattress on the floor and never actually built the bedframe.
He never had clean clothes. Every time I visited his laundry was all over the floor, and he always put the same shirt on he wore the night before.
His bathroom floor was always sticky. ALWAYS STICKY.
He never bought an actual set of dishes. When I moved out I asked him if he wanted to keep the mismatched plates we had collected (because he kept breaking my dishes, then I'd buy a new set and make him use the incomplete ones in case he broke more). The last time I visited he was down to 2 plates, one bowl, and a single set of tacky gold silverware.
Their heat went out when winter came and they never called their landlord. They warmed their place up by turning on the gas oven in their kitchen and letting it run with the door open.
He and his room mate also got bed bugs, and had them for literally months because they didn't do anything about it. (They probably still do tbh)
All the while we were fighting about sex, again.
Skip forward to his birthday, we had a fight. About sex. He felt entitled to me giving him sex because it was his birthday, and after taking him out and indulging him, I still had to get up for work at 4am, and it was already almost midnight. Guys. He told me I "ruined his birthday".
After that he didn't talk to me for a week and didn't want me at his birthday party.
I broke up with him. I had enough. It was a mistake to take him back. In looking back, almost all of our fights were sex related. He always played it like "healthy relationships" have sex a few times a week, because he read it in a journal or some shit.
His constant warping of our relationship to get more sex out of me made me resent sex and him. I was always anxious, always worried about how I looked, I grew my hair out because he wanted me to, I did a lot of things that made me uncomfortable, and not to my benefit.
No matter how nice a guy seems, its always gonna come down to his wants and needs first. And not conforming to their idea of femininity gets you punished.
One last note, if you're non-binary and a guy makes you feel bad because "you're a girl and I'm straight so you're a girl" leave him.
