In the last six months I have felt my attraction for men dwindle. I have come to find my interactions with them exhausting, invalidating, and wholly triggering. I often feel that just being in the same room with them will zap my energy, and I find myself often having to talk myself out of an emotional slump after interacting with them. In the last 6 months I have experienced the following from men:

  • gaslighting
  • triangulation
  • racial fetishization
  • duplicity
  • violent sex
  • lack of empathy
  • mate guarding (even though these men feel that it is okay for THEM to seek multiple partners)
  • body/body hair shaming
  • being compared to ex's
  • being shamed for not playing the role of the "cool girl"
  • anxiety
  • depression
  • porn sickness
  • trying to convince me coerce my friends into a threesome
  • being consistently talked over
  • told I have not experienced hardship in 2022 as a WOC, "Because it is not 1960...."

I feel that I will never have the optimism I once had for relationships. It is depressing. I find myself often crying myself to sleep. I am in therapy, but I do not have much hope that I will ever heal, that I will ever feel whole. How do you all deal? It is beyond overwhelming.