Women LOVE Rom Coms, and I’m going to tell you a story about why they love them, and why you should hate them (and why you probably already do without even be consciously aware of it).

Picture the stereotypical 90s or early 2000s rom com plot arc. Camera pans in on a boy and a girl at a high school lunch table, followed by a quirky flashback montage of memories together: teenage-year highlights for our protagonists of happy times spent together. Boy and girl are best friends, just graduating high school after years of friendship and happy memories (none of them sexual or overtly romantic, mind you), and they’re going to different schools for college. Finally, on graduation night, late after the party is over but they’re both still up together talking, friendzoned Billy decides to profess his years-long love to his best friend, hot Jessica.

Billy’s mind races in the moments leading up to him taking the plunge and professing his feelings to Jessica…”I’m no slub, but I didn’t get a ton of playing time as the backup QB, and I wasn’t the most socially aware high school guy because I grew up in the modern American society where I was told as a man I must always repress my feelings, be masculine at all costs, and nobody will watch out for me when I grow up, but all that couldn’t really be true, right? The world isn’t that harsh…right? Jessica isn’t that way…”.

Meanwhile, while Billy shares his feelings and pours his heart out to her, Jessica is thinking along these lines…”I won prom queen senior year and went with the starting QB Brad to Homecoming this spring, because I’m really hot and popular and boys want me. I know for 100% that Billy wanted to ask me though, and I probably would have had a better time with Billy since Brad ditched me for Sydney after they both took six shots of vodka together on the party bus, but it’s fine because I got to fuck Jeff instead and he’s got a bigger dick than Brad so who really won in the end Brad??!! God I’d let them both fuck me at the same time…wait is he still talking? What’s he even saying?? No no no I don’t love Billy, he’s safe and would make a great husband in a few years but I just want to have fun, I mean I got into Ball State (heh) and I need to find myself in college!!!”.

Alas, the past tingles she felt with Brad, and the prospect of all the future tingles she’ll feel in college win out over years of sincere and consistent friendship and consideration shown toward her by Billy, much to his despair when she said no to him for Homecoming, and again when he watched her go into the party bus bathroom with Jeff, and again when she rejects his feelings after the party on graduation night after everyone else has passed out either fucking each other or throwing up drunk.

Jessica has known for many years of their friendship that Billy felt this way about her, and instead of telling him the truth early on that she wouldn’t move forward with a romantic relationship with him, she chose to lead him on, repeatedly using him as an emotional tampon during the many twists and turns her high school dating and sex life took, all of which ended in no commitment from the jocks and popular boys she chose over Billy again and again.

At 18, Jessica is still young and hot, with the whole world of feminism and her fellow promiscuous female friends behind her (and any man with a pulse, heh) cheering her on for every new fuck on the way to female empowerment and self-actualization, so she rejects Billy’s confessions of love in favor of continuing in her “experimental” aka “dating around” aka “finding myself” aka “[insert inane, bullshit, behavior excusing, responsibility avoiding, explanatory slut bingo phrase that’s just a euphemism for being a whore here]” phase as she goes off to college, and her casual approach to sex and dating kicks into hyperdrive. Meanwhile, Billy’s heart is broken, and the world is indeed a cold and cruel place that doesn't care about him from his perspective. Jessica turned out not to be different, after all.

While Jessica’s college experience is a blur of partying, cock(s), and more poor decisions without (immediate) consequences, Billy works hard and applies himself in his schoolwork and personal self-care, working toward building a future career and healthy habits to take care of himself because he finally starts to realize that NO ONE TAKES CARE OF ADULT MEN BUT THEMSELVES-INDIVIDUALLY OR IN WESTERN SOCIETY AS A WHOLE.

While Jessica parties, hooks up with new guys every week at her whim, and does have a couple longer relationships that just don’t end up working out for her, Billy finds that long hours are required of him to do well at his schoolwork, and when he isn’t studying, the place he can quiet his mind and emotions of frustration and rejection is at the gym, so he starts to spend regular time there, mostly keeping to himself but making a few solid guy friends that he remains in contact with for years afterward.

In a typical week of college, Jessica will reject more men than the number of times Billy will get asked out by a woman in his entire college tenure. Billy’s high school insecurities somewhat remain, even though he is doing great in his coursework and starting to really see his body transform from an awkward, somewhat lanky and too-skinny teenage body into the adult male body he will have the rest of his life, provided he stays in the gym a bit and doesn’t eat like teenage boy high on pot at a family Thanksgiving dinner on a regular basis.

After four years plus a “victory lap” (read: failed a few courses and needed extra time) in college, Jessica (barely) graduates with a Communications degree, but can’t for the life of her hold down a steady job or a steady romantic relationship in the years following college. Billy, on the other hand, double majored in STEM and World History with a minor in Spanish, started at a great salary with benefits doing widgets and writing code at a Fortune 100 corp, and what do you know, all that hard work and gym time during college has paid off, and Billy is looking much more manly than he did all those years ago at 18 when he professed his love for Jessica when, several years after college is over, they run into each other back in their hometown, which Billy moved away from and never looked back, while Jessica returned to because she had no other option.

It’s been almost a decade since high school graduation, and at 28, Billy’s sexual market value is underpinned by a solid fucking floor comprised of an education, great early-career experience at an internationally-respected corporation, a consistent routine of self-care for his physical and mental health, and the ability to commit to long-term goals requiring hard work to realize. His seed funding is secured in the form of his degrees and disciplined approach to life, his future value is apparent, and with continued hard work and discipline, Billy can take himself public at virtually any price he wants at any time in the next couple of decades, at a minimum. He largely dealt with his insecurities and hang-ups by redirecting his emotions into productive physical and mental output, so now he’s much more charismatic in social settings, and every near- or post-wall women’s Good Man/Beta Provider Radar (TM) just lights the fuck up within 500m of this guy.

Billy at 28, now has the range of choice in women that hot Jessica had in men from 18-24. However, now at 28 herself, Jessica begins to be inexorably confronted by the reality of her undisciplined, feelings first, actions without consequences mindset and behavior, coupled with the fact that her biological clock is ticking, ticking, ticking. She has no steady job, possibly a kid or two by that point (with the fathers nowhere to be found), and just can’t figure out why she can’t get a man to commit to her. She used to have so much interest coming inbound from men, and she always mistook that interest in a short-term fuck (which she consistently signaled she preferred, by indulging in so regularly), also meant interest in a long-term relationship with her. She always assumed she could just decide when she wanted to switch from short-term pleasure to long-term commitment, but that hasn’t ended up being a possibility for her, and now she’s getting realllllly worried. Come to find out, if the cow gives the milk for free, why the fuck would anyone buy one? Who knew? Not Jessica.

Her finances are a mess, her life is out of control, she is possibly raising children in a fatherless household (all but guaranteeing a lower expected outcome for those children’s lives), and the consequences for her actions are staring her in the face for the first time in her life. She knows she’s going to blink first if she has to deal with them alone, and she’s terrified of doing that. So, what does she do when she sees Billy after all these years? Leave a man-who she rejected unequivocally-alone to happily pursue the rest of his life without her, as she chose to do to him a decade earlier? No, no. There are no rom coms without “happy endings”, albeit only happy for the woman protagonist and all the women audience members. Instead, Jessica gets emotional, wildly overreacts to his basic, platonically-intended friendly greeting and pleasant surprise (and perhaps slight disgust) at seeing her after so long, and so begins the last 20% of the rom com, the whirlwind feelings and emotions part of the film where the majority of the shitty music in the entire soundtrack plays in the background (bonus points if the same song that played at the opening of the movie when they were pictured happily together as friends is brought back; double bonus points if either one of them sings it to the other and/or they sing it together; triple bonus points if the Tinder date you’re watching the rom com with in the hopes of getting laid after starts crying when they sing together-spoiler alert, if you made it that far into the movie, you probably aren’t getting laid). Billy and Jessica will fight and yell at each other a few times because of some stupid shit Jessica says or does, and yelling at each other makes Billy confused, which is exactly where Jessica wants him.

Ultimately, somehow (it’s never logical because if rom coms were logical, Billy would’ve noped the fuck out and never even engaged with Jessica again after the initial high school rejection), Billy is thrust right back into his high school emotions and feelings for her, even tricking himself into feeling that maybe he even loved her all this time like she’s lying and telling him that she did (bonus points here if Jessica’s friends/family help gaslight Billy into believing this lie; double bonus points if they justify her shitty behavior toward him and in life generally with one of the slut bingo phrases from above).

In a matter of 15-20 minutes of screen time, Billy goes from all the upside potential and choice in the world as far as his value and options on the sexual marketplace are concerned, to actively choosing to return to this woman who rejected him when he was his most emotionally vulnerable with her, a woman who chose the CC over him for over a decade after that rejection, and a woman who is obviously now only choosing him for his ability to provide for her. He will never be her priority or more than a wallet that carries a human doing around outside the wallet's spot in his pants pocket.

The movie will end with a happy moment, like a rushed proposal or even a flash forward to the weddings vows, or a funny “wedding moment” accident that everyone has on their wedding day, etc. Roll the fucking credits and cue the female waterworks at how "beautiful" the movie was. My eyes can't roll any further back in my head.

Here’s the epilogue: Billy has effectively just opted into beta bucks slavery for a woman who will not prioritize him and does not consider him a prize until she divorce rapes him around age 35-37, taking his biological child(ren) away from him (the step-kids never saw him as dad), as well as half his assets, the house, and the family dog that he rescued, trained and took care of more than anyone else in the home (she doesn't even like the dog, she only does it because she knows it will hurt him). Everything that he could provide for her, but not himself at all, is the only prize Jessica was interested in. Billy is big sad now. Is it any wonder men’s suicide rates are higher than women’s?

Hollywood will never make that epilogue, by the way, but it’s on full display in the real world with examples happening to men all the time. You probably even know one or two personally. There are many that participate in these communities precisely because this cinematic experience, or some elements of it, ring true and hit close to home, and to find solace those men sought meaning and a place to try to learn and understand how what happened to them could have happened in the first place.

Women LOVE rom coms because it validates the fantasy they have and that later-wave(s) feminism reinforces of actions without consequences (ONLY FOR WOMEN), authority in life without responsibility (ONLY FOR WOMEN), and getting to have their CC cake and eat it too (heh) with landing a beta provider who’s hopping on the grenade that is her mess of a life at the end of her fertility window after years of loose living and flexible...morals, with no hope of ever being her priority or her prize except to the extent she can extract resources during a marriage and through a divorce, and certainly an absolute guarantee that he will not be getting anything close to her best years out of her, while his are still yet to come and will give an outsize benefit to Jessica and any children she brings with her. This is a happy ending for women because it further convinces them of the lie that feminism sold them, that they can have their cake and eat it too, while not doing any of the baking beforehand, sharing any of the cake with men, or cleaning up the dishes afterward. They really think that these days, they should be served their cake on a silver platter, with someone forking it into their mouths, while they put "just a few extra pounds" in their dating profiles along with 5+ year old photos. Their entitlement is at an all-time high, but this bubble is starting to burst.

This community here wouldn’t exist if all men were like Billy. Fortunately, many of us are either opening our eyes through research and field observation, or else having our eyes forced open by the women in our lives and/or in popular media, whether their actions are toward us directly or toward other men in our lives.

I didn’t realize why I have inherently hated every single rom com I’ve ever seen in my life, even when it has actors/actresses that I like in other movies, until I made this connection. The women in rom coms invariably make poor decisions repeatedly for which they do not face consequences, typically reject a sincere and vulnerable man’s earnest pursuit of her at least once if not multiple times, figure out years later that they had the shot(s) at being with a good man and blew it (“he was right in front of me all along” “all this time and it was you” “[insert wall-approaching female epiphany exclamation here]”), and then she’ll still get bailed out anyways by a guy who’s childhood and/or teenage insecurity doesn’t allow him to see that he could do better and absolutely deserves so much better, even after all the work he did on himself and his life for years after her initial rejection.

Just because women LOVE rom coms, doesn’t mean you have to accept the man’s role in the movie. Don’t be like Billy. Break the mold that society, feminism and women everywhere are desperately trying to force you into and make you believe that it is the honest, good, respectable, and honorable thing to do. Just say no to rom coms and the gynocentric fantasy they reinforce as not only possible, but romantic, fulfilling and desirable, for women everywhere, which men should be willing AND eager to agree to provide.

In an egalitarian society, nobody is obligated to anybody else, so men no longer owe women anything, and men don’t have to take responsibility for women’s lives and poor decisions with no commensurate reciprocation, namely the submission to that man’s authority in exchange for the liability a man accepts by engaging in a relationship with her and taking responsibility for her person and her baggage. Don't let a shitty rom com trick you into thinking otherwise.