If twenty-four-year-old me could see me now, twenty-nine, still in the same oversized grey hoodie, blue nails chipped from typing too hard, vaping cherry flavour like it’s my emotional support system, I’d probably tell her to sit the fuck down. Because holy shit, the stuff I wish someone had shoved in my face before I hit twenty-five? It would’ve saved me so many 3 a.m. voice notes, so many deleted threads, so many “he’s different” texts I cringe at even thinking about now.
Back then I was proper full of it. Fresh out of uni, first proper flat in Hackney, convinced I was the smartest feminist in the room because I could quote bell hooks while drunk on two pints. Dating felt like this shiny adventure. Apps were new and exciting. Men were… mysterious? Complicated? Nah. I was just thick as two short planks about what was actually going on.
I’d sit cross-legged on my bed, bare feet freezing on the laminate, scrolling Hinge at midnight thinking, “This one seems sound.” He quoted a book. He said he cried at the ending of ‘Aftersun’. He volunteered at the food bank. Tick, tick, tick. And then six weeks later I’m crying in the group chat because he’s gone radio silent after I asked him to actually show up for once.
Yeah. Classic Emma.
So here it is. My messy, sweary, too-long-for-a-TikTok list of what I wish someone had told me about men before I turned twenty-five. Not the polite version. Not the one that gets you shares from your liberal auntie. The real one. The one that comes from getting burned, learning the hard way, and finally—finally—stopping the people-pleasing long enough to see the pattern.
Buckle up, hun. This one’s gonna sting a bit.
1. “Nice” is not a personality trait. It’s a starter pack.
God, I fell for this one hard.
I’d meet a guy and he’d be nice. Capital N Nice. He’d hold doors. He’d remember I liked oat milk. He’d say “feminism is important” in the bio and nod along when I ranted about the gender pay gap. And I’d think, wow, finally. A good one.
What I didn’t clock—because nobody ever spelled it out, was that “nice” is the bare minimum. It’s the entry fee. It’s what you do when you want something. It’s not kindness. It’s not respect. It’s just… not being actively rude.
The first proper “nice guy” I dated after uni was this bloke called Jamie. Met him at a protest, funnily enough. He had the right badges, the right vocabulary, the right everything on paper. Six weeks in he starts getting weird about me going out with my mates. “I just miss you, babe,” he’d say, all soft and sad-eyed. Then he’d sulk for days if I didn’t reply fast enough.
I wish someone had told me: watch how he acts when he doesn’t get what he wants. That’s the real test. Not the first three dates when he’s still performing.
Nice guys don’t explode into monsters overnight. They just quietly start keeping score. And suddenly you’re the difficult one for having boundaries.
2. Emotional labour isn’t a trendy buzzword. It’s the invisible tax you’ve been paying since forever.
I used to think I was just “better at communication.”
Ha.
I was doing unpaid therapy for every man I dated. Listening to their childhood trauma at 1 a.m. while I had a deadline the next day. Validating their feelings about their boss while my own period cramps were trying to murder me. Planning dates, remembering their mates’ birthdays, texting “you got this!!” before their big meeting.
And they? They’d just… exist.
I remember this one guy, let’s call him Alex because he still follows me on Instagram and I don’t need the drama, who literally said to me, “You’re so good at this stuff. I’m just not emotional like you.” Mate. You’re thirty-one. You’re not a toddler.
Nobody told me that men are socialised to outsource all their emotional processing to the nearest woman. And that if you’re a feminist who actually cares about feelings? You become a fucking magnet for it.
I started keeping a note in my phone: “things he’s asked me to hold for him this week.” After two months the list was longer than my actual to-do list. That was the moment I realised I wasn’t dating. I was project managing a man’s entire inner life for free.
3. Porn has done more damage to straight sex than we want to admit
Look. I’m not here to shame anyone’s wank bank. But come on.
By the time I was twenty-five I’d slept with enough men to notice the pattern. They all wanted the same thing: the performance. The loud moaning. The specific angles. The “good girl” shit. And when I didn’t deliver exactly like the videos they’d been mainlining since they were fourteen? Suddenly I was “cold” or “not very adventurous.”
One bloke actually got annoyed because I wouldn’t do this weird choking thing he’d seen online. I laughed in his face. He got proper defensive: “It’s just a fantasy, Emma.”
Fantasy my arse. When every sexual script you’ve ever consumed treats women like props, that shit leaks into real life.
I wish someone had told me earlier: your pleasure isn’t optional. And if he gets sulky when you ask for what you actually want? That’s not “bad chemistry.” That’s a red flag with bells on.
4. Love bombing isn’t romantic. It’s a fucking trap
The texts at 2 a.m. saying “you’re the most incredible woman I’ve ever met.” The flowers after two dates. The “I’ve never felt this way before.”
I ate that shit up.
I’d be floating around Hackney like some Disney princess who read ‘The Second Sex’ too many times. Then three weeks later? Crickets. Or worse, slow fade.
I didn’t know it had a name. I just thought I kept picking intense guys.
Turned out I was picking guys who knew exactly how to fast-forward the honeymoon phase so I’d get hooked before the mask slipped.
One of them, proper posh boy from north London, told me he loved me on date four. I was twenty-four and stupid enough to say it back. Two months later he’s “not ready for anything serious” but still wants to come over at midnight.
I blocked him so hard my thumb nearly fell off.
5. Red flags I ignored because he was funny and had nice arms
This one’s embarrassing.
There was the guy who called his ex “crazy” on date two.
The one who made jokes about “feminazis” but “not you though, you’re cool.”
The one who got weirdly possessive about my male mates.
The one who never asked me a single question about my work but expected me to listen to his podcast for three hours.
Every single time I told myself the same lie: “He’s just joking. He’s just insecure. He’ll get better.”
I wish someone had grabbed twenty-four-year-old me by the shoulders and said: the jokes are the point. The little comments are the point. They’re testing the water. Seeing what they can get away with.
And I was so desperate to be liked that I let them drown me slowly.
6. Weaponised incompetence is real and it’s fucking exhausting
You know what I mean.
The man who “doesn’t know how” to book a GP appointment. The one who stares blankly at the dishwasher like it’s quantum physics. The one who can code for a living but suddenly forgets how to separate whites and colours when it’s his turn to do laundry.
I dated one guy who genuinely asked me, while I was on deadline, how to make pasta. Mate. You’re thirty. Google exists.
It’s not cute. It’s not “men being men.” It’s strategic. It’s a way of making you the default project manager of domestic life so they never have to carry their weight.
I started calling it out. “You’re a grown adult. Figure it out.”
The reactions were… enlightening.
7. The manosphere isn’t some fringe thing anymore
By the time I hit twenty-seven it was everywhere.
Mates’ brothers quoting Andrew Tate. Blokes on dating apps casually dropping “red pill” shit like it was normal. Colleagues making jokes about “high value women” in the group chat.
And the scariest part? A lot of them weren’t even raging incels. They were just… normal guys who’d fallen down the algorithm rabbit hole.
Nobody warned me how fast it spreads. How it takes decent blokes and turns them bitter and entitled. How it makes them see women as the enemy instead of the system that screwed both of us over.
I lost count of the dates that started fine and ended with some variation of “feminism has gone too far though, hasn’t it?”
8. Therapy-speak is the new manipulation tool
This one really winds me up.
Suddenly every man I met was “doing the work.” He was “healing his inner child.” He was “setting boundaries” (which somehow always meant not texting me back).
One guy literally broke up with me by saying, “I need to prioritise my mental health journey right now.”
Babe. You just didn’t want to put in the effort. Call it what it is.
I wish I’d known earlier that language can be weaponised too. That “I’m working on myself” can be code for “I’m going to keep treating you like shit but now I have buzzwords to justify it.”
9. Your standards aren’t too high. The bar is just in hell
I spent years thinking I was the problem. Too loud. Too opinionated. Too “much.”
Then I turned twenty-eight and realised: nah. The problem was I was still measuring myself against men who couldn’t even meet the lowest fucking bar.
Now? I block at the first sign of weaponised incompetence. I don’t entertain “I’m not like other guys.” I don’t do the emotional labour audition anymore.
And weirdly? My dating life got better. Smaller. But better.
10. Some of them will never get it. And that’s okay
This was the hardest one to accept.
There are men who will read this entire piece and still think I’m “angry” or “bitter” or “man-hating.”
There are men who will nod along and then go right back to the same behaviour.
There are men who genuinely want to be better but haven’t done any of the actual work yet.
And that’s… fine.
My job isn’t to fix them. My job isn’t to educate them for free. My job is to protect my own peace and write the threads that make other women feel less alone.
So here’s what I wish someone had told me before twenty-five:
You don’t have to like every man.
You don’t have to fix them.
You don’t have to shrink yourself so they feel bigger.
You don’t have to laugh at jokes that aren’t funny.
You don’t have to stay “nice” when they’re taking the piss.
You just have to know your own worth.
And once you do? Everything changes.
I’m still single. Still chaotic. Still rage-tweeting at midnight with my blue nails and my cherry vape. But I’m not confused anymore. I’m not waiting for someone to finally see me.
I see me.
And babes? That’s worth more than any man who ever quoted bell hooks on a first date and then expected me to do all the emotional heavy lifting anyway.
See you in the comments. Or better yet—see you in the next thread where we actually talk about solutions instead of just moaning.
Because yeah, men can be disappointing.
But we? We’re fucking unstoppable when we stop settling.
— Emma x
