Dating hasn't changed; we have.

Why are men so terrible at texting back (and will they ever change)?

He’s been responding less and less. Five messages yesterday, evenly spaced with little to no content. Today, even less. Your phone dings at 4:00 pm, containing a lackluster response to the incredibly witty message you sent him this morning. You tell yourself to play it cool; don’t respond right away. The mental timer starts, and you start playing the familiar game you’re all too tired of. How long can you go without responding? You go to the gym, text some friends, and scroll through Instagram, secretly hoping he sees your little green dot and realizes he’s not important to you. You cook dinner and post a picture of how healthy you are. You check to see if he’s viewed it. Your goal was to make it to 8:00 pm, but you break and respond at 7:38. The cycle starts over. He gives you less and less, and you think about him more and more, wondering what you did wrong, how you can get him to talk to you like he used to, and what changed between those first few dates, which were so amazing, and now. It always ends the same way.

"I’m just not looking for anything serious.”

Those magic words that all men call upon to dismiss women. It’s a poorly concealed, self-centric way to absolve yourself of any obligation, responsibility, or care for the effect your actions might have on someone else. Maybe you play it cool and settle for a situationship; perhaps you tell him to piss off and block him on all socials. It doesn’t matter; whatever relationship you had is effectively over.

As a woman in my 20s, I feel like this situation has taken over the entire dating atmosphere. My friends (mainly Women) become romantically involved with men who can’t communicate their romantic ambitions to save their lives and are left to shoulder the burden of communication alone. It’s crushing.

So what’s changed? Did the entire fuckboy nation have a covert meeting where they threw their manners and dignity out the window? Unlikely. I present a different theory.

For women, marriage expectations have changed drastically in the past generation. For our parents, the question was less of an “if” and more of a “when,” and for most women, the answer was, “Hopefully, before I’m too old to have kids.” Anyone who doubts that this is still a subtle message being perpetrated to our generation should read the 2008 Atlantic article titled “Marry Him! - The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough,” in which Lori Gottlieb makes an argument for women to settle for the best possible option before it’s too late.

Of course, we’d be loath to admit it in this day and age, but ask any soul-baring 40-year-old single heterosexual woman what she most longs for in life, and she probably won’t tell you it’s a better career or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely, she’ll say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child).

(yes, this is a genuine quote)

The added time crunch of women’s slowly depleting shelf life adds a sense of urgency to dating that’s simply missing for men. When Charlotte from Sex in the City said:

"I’ve been dating since I was fifteen! I’m exhausted! Where is he?"

She spoke to a more profound panic many women begin to feel in their 20s. This same panic makes women more willing to continue to pursue a relationship with someone who might not be “Mr. Right” because maybe he can be “Mr. Good enough.”

But this still doesn’t explain why these relationships are failing. If women are already, to some extent, willing to settle for non-communicative, underperforming men, why aren’t they able to achieve even these sub-par relationships?

In the past decade, we’ve seen a massive shift in women’s expectations surrounding commitment. We support ourselves, handle our finances, own our property, and work through pregnancy and motherhood. Having a man to care for you is nice, but it’s no longer necessary. In contrast, the change in male expectations has been microscopic. Men are still expected to support themselves, handle their finances, own their property, and work through their partner's pregnancy and their journey of parenthood. During an overwhelming push for women’s independence, bringing them out of the kitchen and into the workplace, we seem to have forgotten the corresponding push for men to engage in traditionally feminine tasks. For every girl boss, we need a man who supports her by helping her shoulder the more antiquated social burdens she’s attempting to escape.

If waiting for a text back is as painful as it is, imagine being an 80’s housewife trapped in a suburban house all day, with no cell phone or internet, waiting at least 9 hours for your husband to come at 5:00. Personally, I’d rather die alone. Still, maybe we can find a middle ground.