Men & Dating : The Point Where Tolerance Ends - My personal story - Part 12

“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald

I never wanted to talk about my past.

For a long time, I believed the past should stay where it belonged — behind me — especially if I was finally standing in front of something that looked like possibility. I wanted to be known for who I was, not for what I had survived. I wasn’t asking to be rescued, explained, or psychoanalysed. I just wanted fairness. Decency. Communication.

Instead, I’ve reached the point where silence has become impossible.

When I first started dating, I still believed the world was fundamentally good. Even with difficult childhood moments, there had been moments of warmth — times when the noise stopped, when interference fell away, when love existed without conditions. I carried that belief into adulthood. I looked for the good in people. I expected humanity to show up eventually.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the steady erosion of that belief.

One encounter blurred into the next. Not just incompatibility — but disrespect, projection, cruelty, and emotional negligence. Again and again, men unloaded their unresolved baggage onto me, as though I existed to absorb what they refused to face in themselves. Not one stood out as grounded, emotionally generous, or internally beautiful. Not one radiated the quiet strength that lifts rather than diminishes.

And insults have a way of cutting deeper when you’ve already had to spend a lifetime trying to prove your worth. (See posts like http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/06/my-personal-story-part-6-early.html)

I learned early how easily dignity can be mistaken for weakness. How politeness can invite contempt. How saying nothing, in the hope of keeping the peace, can leave you carrying wounds alone. Words land differently when they echo old messages — the ones that whisper you’re “too much,” or “not enough,” or fundamentally undeserving.

People speak casually about things they’ve never had to live through. They judge tragedies they’ve never stood inside. They call the unbearable “selfish,” as if pain were a moral failing. Suicide, illness, grief — these experiences don’t discriminate, but compassion somehow still does.

I know now how rare empathy really is.

Over time, the pattern became impossible to ignore. Shallow conversations. Emotional immaturity. Aggression disguised as confidence. Men who expected commitment without care and understanding without reciprocity. Men who criticised appearance, crossed boundaries, spoke about former partners with cruelty, or mistook attention for entitlement.

There were moments that were not just disappointing, but frightening. Encounters that left me shaken rather than hopeful. Situations that should never be normalised, yet so often are.

I took breaks. I focused on study, on work, on rebuilding myself. I tried again. And again. Each time with a little less innocence, a little more caution, a little more exhaustion.

I watched years pass while I worked relentlessly toward stability and purpose, while others drifted — avoiding responsibility, living in denial of time, coasting on charm or excuses. “Man-boys,” unprepared for partnership but perfectly comfortable judging women who had done the hard work of becoming whole.

I was told, more than once, that my standards were too high.

So I tried lowering them.

That was worse than loneliness.

Forcing myself into relationships out of fear — fear that this was “as good as it gets” — nearly broke me. There were moments where my body reacted before my mind could catch up. Staying out of guilt. Staying because I didn’t want to hurt someone else. Staying because I’d been taught to be understanding at my own expense. I carried people who never once asked what I was carrying.

There were lines crossed that should never have been crossed. Behaviour that was degrading, disturbing, and deeply destabilising. Situations where I realised I was no longer safe — emotionally or psychologically. When I finally walked away, the relief was immediate, like setting down a weight I’d been told was my responsibility.

It didn’t end there.

Another date. Another warning sign ignored. Another moment where instinct whispered leave and politeness said stay. One dinner I survived out of disbelief alone. Flashing money. Backhanded insults. Performative power. I left knowing, finally, that something was profoundly wrong.

Months later, while recovering from illness, I saw his face on the television. This one was a fraudster. A criminal. A man exposed publicly for deceiving and exploiting others. He did time.

I sat there shaking, realising how close I had come to something far worse — and how easily that danger had passed for “normal dating.” I understood then that what I’d been through wasn’t bad luck. It wasn’t poor judgement. It was systemic.

I wasn’t alone, but that realisation didn’t bring comfort. It brought grief.

Eventually, I tried one last time. Carefully. Thoughtfully. With boundaries. And for a moment, there was hope — real conversations, shared values, gentleness. The sense of being seen rather than assessed.

When that, too, collapsed — not through honesty or dialogue, but through judgement, withdrawal, and humiliation — something in me shut down.

That was the moment my tolerance ended.

Not because I am bitter. Not because I hate men. But because I refuse to accept abuse, disrespect, or emotional carelessness as the price of connection. Because I have already survived enough. Because love should not require self-erasure. 

Because dignity is not negotiable.

I never thought I was asking for the impossible.

I was asking for humanity.

And I will not apologise for finally saying: enough.

 

Alone