‘It’s not me, it’s you’: the reason men are giving up on dating is women

According to a new survey, men would rather remain single than have to deal with women’s expectations and their desire to change them – and it’s fuelling a great relationship recession, says Olivia Petter

Some 62 per cent of men believe that ‘women have too many expectations of how men should be in relationships’ (Getty/iStock)

The problem with heterosexual dating has finally been identified – women expect too much of men.

My reading of a new survey – of 2,000 British men and women between the ages of 18 and 45, produced by Equimundo, a US-based non-profit organisation working on international research to engage men and boys as allies in gender equality – is that men have simply had enough of us.

Some 62 per cent of men believe that “women have too many expectations of how men should be in relationships these days”. Meanwhile, 44 per cent remained resistant to change, agreeing that they would have to change too much about themselves in order to make a serious relationship work long-term. Another 41 per cent believed that having a relationship was “too big a financial commitment”.

These are bleak findings, made more so by the fact that a quarter of men said they believed no one would fall in love with them.

But the study’s findings also speak to a wider truth about what it’s like to be a heterosexual woman on the dating scene (hello, it’s me). This inescapable sense of hopelessness means many of us, it seems, are giving up altogether, fuelling the so-called “the great relationship recession” we apparently find ourselves in.

It really is that bad. And I know this firsthand, because my friends and I have all dated men who’ve reflected these views back at us. There was the guy who, after three months, explained he wasn’t ready for a relationship, a week after trying to book a Christmas holiday together. There was one who, four months in, told me I was too demanding of him, an accusation spurred on by my attempt at booking a restaurant for us after his work drinks.

And there were myriad others who, after weeks of dating, would scare at the first sign of any kind of conversation about where “we” might be heading. It was – and is – a pattern so prolific that it has almost become boring when a relationship ends this way. Because all of us always see it coming.

It would be easy to write this off as an epidemic of commitment-phobia and avoidant attachment styles. But as the study shows, there’s a lot more to it than that: 15 per cent of men surveyed said they’ve interacted with an AI or virtual partner. Are men giving up on dating altogether and instead putting all of their demands onto digital women who are programmed to behave and speak exactly how they want?

Perhaps. But I suspect something deeper is going on, not least because more than 40 per cent of the men surveyed said they have thought about self-harm or suicide in the past two weeks, with more than two-thirds reporting symptoms of anxiety and distress.

Yes, dating men can feel difficult. Trust me – I know. And obviously it’s pretty bleak that so many of them think women’s expectations from them are too high; I really didn’t think asking someone to commit to a dinner booking was a stretch too far. But instead of looking at stats like this and weaponising them, or using them as an excuse to shout “Men are trash!” from our windows while waving our bras in the air, I think we should see them as a sign that it’s time for an urgent reset in the heterosexual dating world.

Because single men and women don’t know how to communicate anymore. It’s like we’re all too disillusioned and siloed into our respective social media echo chambers.

On one side, there are memes about men lovebombing you the day before they ghost you, and on the other, there are Andrew Tate videos about why women should clean more. It sounds extreme because it is; dating-app algorithms are pushing us farther apart, ideologically and sexually. It’s making all of us depressed, lonely and deeply frustrated.

Something has to change soon. Otherwise, the future looks grim – and possibly filled with a bunch of AI-generated boyfriends and girlfriends and a smattering of real-life people who’ve forgotten how to talk to one another.