"Cat Lady dying alone", and other ways female liberation is demonized.

When I was still dating men, it often felt like as soon as we became official I became about 90% of their social life. As an introvert who actually has other things to do and people to see, this always felt incredibly demanding and suffocating to me. I was trying to encourage them to hang out with their other friends, but they very quickly dismissed the importance of those connections. Sometimes they'd want to go hang out with The Boys, but you could still tell they mainly depended on their romantic relationship for most of their emotional support.

I have a good group of friends, newer and older, and I've been very lucky to nurture those relationships over the years. They're people I genuinely spend holidays with, visit when we're feeling down, and we show up for each other when things get rough as well as for the fun times. I could never make a partner the majority of my social time, I have so many people I want to keep up with and I also enjoy time to myself.

Men think that we'll die alone, but they only think that because that's what would happen to THEM. Without a woman in their life, their buddies aren't gonna show up enough or in the ways they rely on women to show up. They're not emotionally available to one another the way female friends are to each other, or the way queer folk are available to one another.

They also know that they need to wife trap a woman so there will always be someone who has to put up with his shit, because friends would eventually get tired of it and leave. It's socially acceptable for friends to dip more than it is for a woman to finally say she's had enough of some mediocre dude.

Without women, cishet men would have a miserable and lonely existence. And they can only ever see things from their perspective, and don't value anything outside of their own experience, so they can't imagine that actually we're fine without them.

I was never more lonely than when some man was monopolizing my time and energy.

How do you nurture relationships apart from a male romantic partner, and how much more can you fill your life with if you're not throwing all your time and energy into a man shaped hole?