Then he drunk-dialed me to tell me he loved me, and broke up with me 12 hours later when I told him what he’d said. With the next guy, I thought I was finally playing my cards right - being patient and waiting for him to make an effort and treat me right. The guy after that was probably the only time I’d say I’ve been in love, but he didn’t want to have a long-distance relationship and then six months later slept with someone else in our same industry and basically made me feel like a pile of garbage. The guy after that also turned out to have a girlfriend, only he got me pregnant, too, so I had to get an abortion (which is obviously a blast). The next guy I got involved with turned out to have a girlfriend. The next guy I got involved with - my longest relationship, if you could call sporadic cross-country liaisons that - had literally been a pimp. I got to college and still had no success dating (plenty of lovely male friends, though!), and finally lost my virginity while studying abroad to a guy who had a girlfriend.

I went to an all-girls high school, which I realize in retrospect was the only thing that gave me the room to become the person I am now - naturally, I spent the whole time afraid no guy would ever actually like me, which unfortunately seems as pertinent now as it was hyperbolic then. After an ugly divorce from my mom while I was in high school, he showed up at my graduation uninvited. My stepfather was an immature creep who would catcall women while I was in the car with him. I’ve never met my father, and the only times we’ve spoken he’s been heinous - most recently, he slid into my DMs (really) to get my email in order to ask me for a paternity test because “you know how your mother is.” I was 24 at the time, and have never asked him for anything. I’m incredibly lucky in every single part of my life except my interactions with the opposite sex, which have been almost universally awful from day one. I’m almost 27, live in a major city, have a job doing things I’m passionate about, have friends I like, have a good relationship with my mom - the whole works. It’s an opinion that feels more timely now in the era of Trump and Weinstein and Cosby and Ailes and, but one that I’m afraid might ultimately ruin any chance I have of contentment if I can’t figure out a way to stop being angry all the time.

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How to date men if you hate men