I don’t believe in romantic love no more.
And honestly, I don’t feel sad about that. I feel like I survived.
For a long time, I thought there was something about me that needed fixing. Every rejection, every situation that didn’t work out, every time I felt like I wasn’t enough made me look inward and ask what was wrong with me.
Was I not attractive enough? Was I too quiet? Too awkward? Too available? Was I missing something other men understood naturally?
I spent years looking for answers. Trying to understand women, attraction, relationships, and what makes a man desirable. I studied people, watched how they interacted, paid attention to what got rewarded and what got overlooked. I wanted to understand the rules because it felt like everybody else had figured something out that I hadn’t.
I wasn’t completely blind to reality. I just didn’t think I’d have to experience certain things for myself.
I thought being a good man, showing genuine interest, and treating somebody right would count for more than it apparently did. Not that I thought women owed me a relationship for being decent. I just believed that if two people connected, cared about each other, and treated each other well, there was something worth building there.
But life taught me that those things don’t always go together.
You can be attracted to somebody who isn’t good for you. You can treat somebody well and still not be the person they want. You can have somebody act like they want you, give you affection, build routines with you, talk about a future, and make you feel like things are going somewhere—only for the situation to turn into something you never expected.
And you’re left trying to figure out what any of it meant.
That’s one of the things that messed with my head. It wasn’t always a lack of affection. Sometimes there was plenty of affection. There were moments that felt real, moments that made you believe you were building toward something, moments when you didn’t feel crazy for thinking the interest was mutual.
Then things changed.
And when they changed, I found myself doing what I always did: examining myself.
Maybe I moved wrong. Maybe I said too much. Maybe I cared too soon. Maybe I should’ve been less available, less honest about my interest, less willing to show that I actually liked somebody.
Eventually, you start questioning whether being genuine is even a good idea.
You start looking at men who seem to have no problem attracting women and wondering what they understand that you don’t. You notice that the guy who seems less invested can get more attention than the guy who’s willing to show up consistently. You start wondering whether the person who cares less always has the advantage.
And the internet will give you a thousand explanations. Hypergamy. Status. Game. Attachment styles. Masculinity. Dating strategies. Everybody has a theory about why people behave the way they do.
Some of those ideas might explain certain situations. Some are just people turning their own experiences into rules for everybody else.
But after a while, I got tired of studying all of it.
I don’t want to spend my life trying to understand how to make somebody want me.
Because that’s what it started feeling like: an endless attempt to become somebody worth choosing.
If I could just improve this, fix that, become more confident, become more attractive, understand women better, stop making certain mistakes—maybe then things would finally work out. Maybe then I could stop feeling like I was missing something everybody else had.
But what happens when you spend years trying to become desirable and still end up questioning your worth?
What happens when you start treating romantic attention like evidence that you’re finally doing something right?
You can end up building your whole identity around a question that somebody else gets to answer.
And I don’t want to live like that anymore.
Being devoted doesn’t guarantee being desired
One thing I’ve had to separate in my mind is the difference between loving somebody and being wanted by them.
They’re not the same thing.
You can have genuine feelings for somebody. You can be thoughtful, attentive, loyal, and willing to make an effort. You can want to make somebody feel appreciated and safe with you.
None of that guarantees they’ll feel the same way about you.
I understand that now. Nobody owes you attraction because you care about them. Nobody owes you a relationship because you treated them well.
But understanding that doesn’t mean I have to pretend the experience can’t hurt.
There’s a difference between knowing that affection doesn’t guarantee reciprocation and repeatedly finding yourself in situations where the affection makes you believe you’re building something, only to discover that the other person wasn’t looking at it the same way.
And there’s a difference between being a man who loves deeply and being a man who keeps investing in somebody who isn’t giving him the same energy.
I don’t think genuine affection makes a man weak. I don’t think a man should have to act indifferent just to make himself more desirable. But I also don’t believe a man should have to keep proving how much he cares in the hope that somebody will eventually see him differently.
At some point, you have to accept what the situation is showing you.
You can care about somebody and still recognize that the relationship you want isn’t being offered to you.
You can be attracted to somebody and still walk away.
You can acknowledge that what you felt was real without insisting that it must lead somewhere.
And you can stop pursuing something without turning yourself into a person who hates the fact that he ever wanted it.
I had to learn those distinctions the hard way.
I got tired of auditioning
The older I get, the less interested I am in trying to prove myself romantically.
I’m tired of the idea that there’s always another version of me I need to become before I can be enough for somebody.
I don’t want to perform confidence. I don’t want to play games with somebody’s emotions. I don’t want to pretend I care less than I do, or constantly calculate how much interest is safe to show without losing somebody’s attraction.
I don’t want to treat dating like a job interview where I’m trying to convince somebody to select me over the other candidates.
And I definitely don’t want to spend my life comparing myself to other men, wondering why they get chosen while I have to keep examining what I did wrong.
Maybe some people enjoy dating. Maybe they enjoy the chase, the excitement, the uncertainty, and the process of figuring each other out. That’s their business.
I just know what this process did to me.
I spent too much time looking at myself through the imagined eyes of somebody who might want me. I gave too much meaning to whether I was desirable, whether I was somebody a woman could see herself with, whether I was the kind of man who could inspire those feelings.
I wanted to be chosen so badly that I sometimes forgot I was allowed to choose, too.
I could decide that a situation wasn’t right for me. I could decide that somebody’s behavior wasn’t what I wanted. I could decide that being wanted under certain conditions wasn’t worth the trouble.
But when you’re focused on proving you’re enough, you don’t always ask whether the situation is enough for you.
You’re too busy trying to win.
I don’t want to play that game anymore.
Maybe romance was never the dream I thought it was
We’re raised around romantic love like it’s one of the main things a person is supposed to achieve.
The movies. The music. The stories about finding your person. The idea that somewhere out there is somebody who will see you, understand you, choose you, and make everything feel like it finally makes sense.
Then come the expectations that follow: get married, have children, build a household, create the life everybody recognizes as successful.
It’s presented like a natural progression. Like if you work on yourself, meet the right person, and do things the right way, you’ll eventually arrive at that life.
Romance movies can start feeling like propaganda when you’ve spent years measuring your life against the promise they sell. Not because every love story is fake, but because the cultural message can make a particular kind of life feel mandatory.
And I started questioning whether I actually wanted all of it or whether I’d spent so much time believing I was supposed to want it that I never gave myself permission to imagine something else.
I already know what it feels like to want something because I believe having it will prove something about me.
I don’t want to build another life around that feeling.
I don’t need a romantic relationship to validate my existence. I don’t need to get married to prove I’m a successful man. I don’t need to find somebody who chooses me to make my life meaningful.
There are other things I want out of life. My own peace. My freedom. My time. The ability to pursue my interests and build something for myself without feeling like I’m falling behind because I don’t have a particular kind of relationship.
I want to experience life without constantly evaluating myself according to whether I’m desirable to somebody else.
And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
I feel like I survived that version of myself
When I look back, I don’t hate the person I used to be.
He wanted to be loved. He wanted to experience something real. He wanted to believe that if he worked on himself and learned how to navigate relationships, things could eventually fall into place.
I understand why he thought that way.
He didn’t know everything I know now. He hadn’t experienced everything that changed how he looked at people, relationships, and himself.
I can’t fault him for wanting something that almost everybody around him was taught to want.
But I don’t want to be him anymore.
I don’t want to keep revisiting old situations in my head, trying to find the exact moment things went wrong. I don’t want to keep examining myself for flaws every time somebody doesn’t want me. I don’t want to carry the assumption that if a relationship doesn’t work out, there must be something about me I need to correct.
Sometimes people aren’t right for each other. Sometimes attraction isn’t mutual. Sometimes people change their minds. Sometimes their behavior creates expectations that they ultimately don’t fulfill.
And sometimes you never get an explanation that makes the experience feel worthwhile.
I can acknowledge all of that without turning it into another assignment to fix myself.
I don’t need to become bitter toward the person I used to be, either. That version of me was trying to figure things out with what he knew at the time.
He wanted to be chosen.
Now I want to be free from feeling like I have to be chosen.
That’s the difference.
Romance isn’t for me anymore
I don’t know what other people will make of this. Some will say I’m jaded. Some will say I haven’t met the right person. Some will think I’m speaking from hurt and that I’ll change my mind eventually.
They can believe whatever they want.
I know what I’ve experienced. I know how much time I’ve spent thinking about this. I know how much energy I’ve given to trying to understand it all.
And I know that I no longer want romance to be a goal in my life.
I’m not sitting around waiting for somebody to prove me wrong. I’m not secretly hoping that the right woman will show up and make me believe in everything again.
I don’t need that kind of ending.
Maybe somebody else can find a relationship that gives them everything they want. Maybe other people can experience romantic love without losing themselves in the process. I’m not saying nobody can have that.
I’m saying I don’t want to spend my life pursuing it.
I have things I want to do. I have my own interests, my own ambitions, and my own life to live. I want to put my energy into those things without the constant background question of whether somebody wants me.
I spent years trying to become somebody worth choosing.
Now I just want to live without feeling like I have to be chosen at all.
I don’t believe in romantic love no more.
Not because I’m waiting to be convinced otherwise.
Because I’m good with leaving it behind.
I’m choosing my own peace.
— Bo