9 hours ago
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Magazine|The Trouble With Wanting Men
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/magazine/men-heterofatalism-dating-relationships.html
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The stranger arrived at the bar before I did, as I intended him to, and was waiting for me at a table in back. He had the kind of face I like, and he had been a little difficult to pin down, delayed in his responses, which I also like. The place was loud with the “having fun” sounds people make when they expect to have fun any minute now, so we were leaning in to hear each other. His hair, I thought, would be good to put my hands in.
Listen to this article, read by Kirsten Potter
There comes a time, usually, when a few extra beats of eye contact are enough. We passed through these beats, took each other’s wrists and met across the table, which was wide enough to frustrate kissing in the right way, keeping the rest of us well apart. Back at my place he was a little shy, I thought, or a little out of practice, but I felt he wanted me, which was what I wanted — to be organized and oriented by his desire, as though it were a point on the dark horizon, strobing.
“I was really looking forward to seeing you again,” he texted me the following week, around lunchtime, “but I’m going through some intense anxiety today and need to lay low :(.”
“Totally understand,” I replied, but I didn’t. Feeble, fallible “looking forward” is not longing; a man should want me urgently or not at all. I was about to collapse into a ritual of frustrated horniness (fantasy, masturbation, snacks) when a friend urged me to join her and two other women for dinner.
“Of course he has anxiety,” said one of them, a therapist, who sat across from me at the restaurant. “That’s life. That’s being alive and going to meet someone you don’t know well.”
