I’ll be honest in admitting that, for pretty much my entire life, I’ve believed that all men are evil. And in all of my 23 years of living, I have yet to be proved wrong.
Throughout all of the experiences I’ve had in dating, things have pretty much always gone the same. I catch feelings for a great guy who treats me well, then things abruptly take a sudden 180. Whether it’s been a man saying really mean and hurtful things post-breakup, or just randomly turning toxic mid-relationship, I’ve come across only a few men where I’ve told myself, “Well, maybe this one’s different.” And we all know how that ends — the same as all the others, wondering why I ever thought a man could be different.
However, for some God-awful reason, I recently fell into that same headspace: this one really is different. I found myself talking to a man and things were going great. Sure, maybe we were moving a little quickly, but he genuinely seemed like a really great guy. He was super nerdy, really cute, so sweet, and didn’t seem to get much play from what he told me, IYKWIM (no more manwhores!) Most importantly, though, he really did seem to like me.
And through our many FaceTime calls and texts exchanged, I truthfully did think he was different. On the day of a date we had planned, however, I got a phone call from him saying he had to cancel. Not because his car broke down or he was sick or his grandma was in the hospital — but because (in his words) he’d rather play pickleball with his friends, as he’d gotten used to doing everyday for the past two weeks. No exaggeration — he straight-up told me he wanted to spend his Friday night playing pickleball over hanging out with me.
I was baffled, to say the least. This phone call came post-everything shower, in the midst of curling my hair, so to say that I was pissed off would be an understatement TBH. Our plans were for him to come over and we’d cook dinner together, then watch a movie — a cute, yet intimate, date that I was, truthfully, really excited for. While I kept my cool on the phone, I did tell him how rude this felt, canceling on our date a mere few hours before because he’d rather hangout with his friends — only for him to tell me that he didn’t “owe me” anything.
Sure, you can ask a girl to fall asleep on FaceTime multiple nights in a row and even beg her to keep talking on the phone so you can fall asleep to her voice, and you can totally promise that you’ll come visit her at school and stay at her place for the weekend — but who says you’re actually obligated to hangout with her and follow through on plans y’all made?
Now, this wouldn’t be a big deal if I didn’t drive two hours back home solely because I wanted to see him, and I wouldn’t care that much if I wasn’t planning on coming home only one more time that month — but unfortunately, our date was the only time I’d be able to see him for the next two weeks. And after asking him several times if he was serious (he was, BTW), I was hit with the realization that I’d dreaded coming to: he’s just like all the others.
Eventually, I came to a life-changing revelation — all men are evil, and you can’t convince me otherwise. Sure, maybe you think your boyfriend is “actually a good guy” because he’s treated you nicely, but do you seriously expect me to believe he’s been the “perfect boyfriend” to all of his exes and past talking stages? Newsflash: he definitely hasn’t.
Sure, it could totally be my trauma and past experiences talking (and it probably is, TBH), but I’m truly convinced that all men are evil — they just only show their evilness on a girl-to-girl basis. If a man likes you enough? Congratulations! He’ll be the perfect partner; everything you’ve ever dreamed of. But if he doesn’t find you worthy? Might as well just visit the devil in Hell over experiencing the way he’s inevitably going to treat you.
Now, maybe I’m crazy, but I wouldn’t make a claim like this without some unbiased evidence. Enter my friend Isabelle: she’s been dating her current boyfriend, Joshua, for well over a year and he treats her perfectly. Super sweet, pays for everything, drives hours to visit her at home, and overall, just loves her. However, before Isabelle was my friend Katie.
Katie had found herself in a situationship with Joshua, months before he’d met Isabelle, and boy were there red flags. He refused to commit and overall, just treated her like sh*t, displaying some stereotypical “evil man” behaviors. So, Isabelle’s loving Joshua is also Katie’s toxic Joshua — funny, right? Joshua only decided to stop being evil because he truly liked Isabelle.
And if you don’t believe me, take the nation’s beloved romance movie, The Notebook, to use as your next “evil man” example. If a girl tells you she doesn’t want a love like Noah and Allie’s, she’s lying straight through her teeth. Everyone (me included) romanticizes the love seen throughout that film — because who doesn’t want a man who endlessly yearns for you over the span of several years? However, after Allie came Martha.
Now, everyone remembers how Noah treated Martha as a “placeholder” until his beloved Allie came running back into his arms. Doesn’t this prove that, even for a perfect-seeming man like Noah Calhoun, there’s always a sense of evilness harboring inside of them that they can unleash on a woman at any given moment?
IMO, all men are evil — whether it’s your boyfriend, your brother, the man who serves you milkshakes at Kline’s, or even your damn pastor. Just because they don’t show their evil intentions upfront doesn’t mean they’re not hiding it deep inside, waiting to unleash their evil behavior on a woman they don’t like enough. If a man ever tries to tell you he’s “different,” he is just straight-up lying.
And honestly, I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that I’m hyper-aware of this. On the one hand, I feel incapable of being truly heartbroken by a man. I’m so “on guard” anytime I find myself catching feelings for a guy, fully prepared for him to turn evil and toxic at any given second. But this is a good thing right? I’m expecting to get my feelings crushed, which, in turn, softens the blow and almost feels predictably laughable when a man does inevitably turn evil.
On the other hand, however, I find that I’m truly incapable of fully trusting a man, knowing that he’ll always end up breaking my heart in the end. Sometimes, I really do wonder how I’m ever supposed to get into a healthy relationship when I can’t possibly fathom the thought of a man having good intentions and not turning evil at some point. I just don’t think it’s possible, and it’s even led to me feeling sorrow for my friends that are in relationships. They just have no idea that at any given moment, their boyfriend could turn miserably evil in the blink of an eye.
And as I write this, I have to admit that I do wonder if these feelings are normal, or if I’m coming off as purely psychotic as a result of being so traumatized by the men from my past. Are you, dear reader, reading this and empathizing, possibly even relating, with my feelings? Or are you concerned, convinced I’ve gone off-the-walls insane? However, given the fact that nearly all of my chapter articles are about a man, this shouldn’t be surprising, right? Don’t blame me — blame my toxic exes and sh*tty boys from my past that led me to be this way.
The purpose of this article isn’t an attempt to convince you to break up with your boyfriend or rid your life of men entirely — it’s to share the realizations I’ve finally come to. After all, you never know when you might end up being somebody’s Martha.