Where Men Get the Audacity

The crash out has been three weeks long, tequila was five shots deep, and the question still ran through my head as I sat on a curb at 1am last night: where do men get the audacity?

Is this shit sold online somewhere? Because men would have that shit on auto-ship faster than Rhode reaching the Sephora stores. ANYWAYS, let’s start with the basics.

I hated the term situationship when it became a way to label a relationship. In my head, it was a middle ground, meaning the man probably didn’t want you enough to date but kept you around—and you let him. Sorry if that hits some nerves, but it’s true. I was all about the “if he wanted to, he would” mindset. And if you’re calling it a situationship, then he just doesn’t like you.

Of course, this can go both ways, not just men. But having a situationship by male definition means they get to treat a girl like their girlfriend while also having the freedom to do whatever they want, with whoever they want, because “he’s not locked down.” Therefore, you can’t be mad when he fucks up. It’s basically a relationship with training wheels.

A while ago, I wrote an entry called But I Love Him, which you can still find on my website. I wrote it after I found out my first love had a girlfriend. It was more of a projector post—something meant to warn others that feeling unstable in a toxic relationship will only cause you to hurt your own feelings.

Guys, let me tell you: I am a hypocrite. Full honesty, I re-read my own advice from that entry and clocked myself on my own bullshit. I specifically wrote this line: “But if you think your love for him is stronger than your love for yourself, then it won’t work; it just won’t.”

And I sat in silence for a minute, because here we are again. The same man who drove me crazy the first time around is now single, and round two hit me worse than a bag of very large spiky bricks. Hard, hard bricks.

Here I am, telling other girls not to make the same mistakes I made, and then the moment he decides to come over and hang out, I throw my own advice out the window. Of course—because I can’t follow my own truth—I got fucked over (shocker, right?) and found myself in that middle ground. We weren’t nothing, but we weren’t going to date. I found myself knee-deep in the most emotionally crippling situationship with a man who loved me, but not enough to date me. Damn.

Yes, go ahead, I give you full permission to point and laugh—I’m embarrassed for me.

So now that we’ve got the backstory and current situation locked in, here’s what we’re really talking about: Where do men get the audacity?

I think it stems from the ego and emotional maturity of a man. A man with a high ego will be overly confident, always trying to be the strongest or smartest in the room, because on the inside he feels the opposite. A loss of control for a man like this—especially with a girl he actually likes—is the perfect storm.

He lets his guard down. Someone sees the vulnerability he works so hard to hide. And instead of appreciating that, he panics, pushes her away, and pretends it never happened.

All for what? Congratulations, you lost someone who saw the real you and liked you for it, and you couldn’t get it through your stupid man brain that someone could love the real you.

The audacity men have comes from just that: insecurity. Not because they don’t like you. Not because they’re evil (though sometimes they are). But at the end of the day, they are just boys whose emotional maturity hasn’t caught up—and they can’t get out of their own way.

This is why I’m such a firm believer in not getting married super young. A man’s frontal lobe isn’t fully developed until 25. So when your boyfriend says he’s “not ready for a relationship” after stringing you along for months, it’s not because he’s protecting your feelings. His ego is just telling him he doesn’t need you.

Ever hear the phrase “they always come back”? Really think about why that’s such a common thing. It was never you—they all realize that eventually.

It’s been so long since I’ve published. I’m now using Substack, and I’m excited to grow my audience! Let me know what you’d like to read next.

Talk soon.

XO – Em