Sex without marriage? Fine.
Children without marriage? Fine.
Abortion without marriage? Fine.
But cooking without marriage is where the line gets drawn? Your priorities are completely backwards.
My dad retired at 59
I will not
He had a pension. I have a 401k I can barely fund.
He bought his house at 28.
I can't touch a down payment at 30.
He paid $90 a month for health insurance. I pay $430.
At dinner he told me I need to be smarter with money.
I nodded.
Didn't tell him his entire life was built on an economy that no longer exists.
Didn't tell him my generation is paying for his Social Security while ours gets gutted.
Didn't tell him the ladder he climbed got pulled up right after him.
Just passed the potatoes.
Make it make sense
This is simple, really. He's giving you the power to choose to engage. If you engage, you're interested, if you don't, no one is pestering you when you know you're not interested. W-W, really.
The word "narcissist" has almost entirely lost its clinical meaning in modern dating. Ninety percent of the time, it is now just a convenient umbrella term used to describe a man who finally enforced a boundary you didn’t like, or a man who refused to tolerate bad behavior. It’s easier to diagnose him with a personality disorder than to admit you were the villain in that specific chapter.
Having 50 men aggressively camping in your Instagram DMs isn't "pretty privilege" or proof of high value. It’s an illusion of abundance. Forty-eight of those men wouldn't buy you a pack of Panadol if you were shivering with a fever; they are literally just hovering, waiting for a moment of emotional weakness to get free access. Confusing cheap attention for high value is how people end up utterly exhausted and single at 35.
France made this wastefulness illegal cause it’s cruel and only causes more waste issues. Any food market or restaurant over 400 square meters has to donate all their good unsold food to charities and are fined if they do anything like this. That law should be applied everywhere
If you are sharing a bed, sharing bodily fluids, and planning to build a whole life and raise children with someone, the idea that your phone is a "highly classified, impenetrable vault of extreme privacy" is a massive red flag. If your partner picking up your phone to check the time or change a song causes your heart rate to spike, you are not protecting your "autonomy," you are hiding something. Period.
A lot of women demand absolute perfection from men while bringing nothing but "their presence" to the relationship. We expect average, hardworking guys to have the emotional intelligence of a licensed therapist, the income of a CEO, and the patience of a saint. Meanwhile, if a man asks what we bring to the table, we get deeply offended. Good men deserve effort, romance, and to be spoiled just as much as we do.