A Man Wrote Down What He Really Wanted. The Women Tore Him Apart.

There Is No Middle Anymore. Being Different is a Crime.

If you are easily offended just skip the whole article and leave an intense comment on this photo only for my entertainment. Namaste.

A man wrote down exactly what he wanted.

He was conservative. He was religious. He voted right.

He said all of this in his bio.

When the app asked what kind of relationship he was looking for, he answered. He named the setup he wanted. He named the role he hoped to play and the role he hoped she would play.

He did not pretend.

In a world where we believe everyone should pretend and then get angry at them for ghosting and love bombing us — he didn’t.

I was listening to a group of women rip him apart for it.

The conversation moved fast. He was a misogynist. He was looking for a maid. He was probably looking for a TRAD wife who also worked full time and brought income he could not provide. Even his desire for a wife made him evil. There was nothing wrong with the analysis, exactly.

Some of it was probably accurate. We can safely assume that many men still don’t calculate the labor of householding into the equation of searching for a wife.

What stayed with me was the energy of it.

He had filled out the form. He had told the truth as he understood it. And the women who did not want what he wanted were not declining the offer and moving on.

They were prosecuting him — in a way we see as normal.

I have a female friend who is in a relationship with another woman. One of them is more masculine — way more. She handles the money. She handles the major decisions. The other is softer. I was there for a tense moment once. The softer partner offered a suggestion. Something gentle. Something tentative. The masculine partner cut her off and said, this is my lane. The tone was not warm, but it wasn’t unkind either. I felt there was room for push back if needed. But overall it appeared they were both happy in the dynamic.

If a man had done this exact thing to a woman, he would have been called controlling. He would have been called dismissive. Someone in the friend group would have started keeping a list of his behaviors. The friend that likes to “tell it like it is” would send an aggressive text coded as care.

But, because they are both women, no one said anything. We sat there and watched a familiar dynamic play out without any of the usual alarms going off. I honestly believed the less dominant partner was happy to let it go and not put effort into owning that area. Maybe I was wrong. The point is she would have to be the one to share that she felt controlled in her relationship in order for her partner to be ripped apart by her friends.

I have been criticized from both ends. It has been so odd over the last eight years post divorce to never quite be landing where one camp or another believes I would be the happiest. It’s strange to think that people would feel entitled, even at times on this platform, to prescribe my personal happiness or values to me.

Male partners have told me at times I am not open-minded enough. Somewhere in my past I didn’t have enough single time I think to develop the histories and habits most people have by my age. I am also pretty introverted, so I am not sure those things were on my menu.

Female friends have told me I am not dominant enough with men. I might make a gentle ask or express a big feeling but I am unlikely to drag Todd off a hill he intends to die on. If asking isn’t enough I just eventually let things go the way they are going to. If it implodes I am unlikely to fight it.

I don’t want things I have to beg and bargain for anyway.

The criticism never arrives from the same axis. It just arrives.

Many educated women I know consider having children a kind of cumulative loss.

It’s even how they talk about their own kids — like they are a scheduling issue that conflicts with other better things they want to do solo.

Time you do not get back. Body you do not get back. Career investment you do not get back. Friend trips missed. Money wasted.

When they are too polite to say it directly — the math shows up in how they describe other people’s lives.

I have three kids. I cannot imagine not having had them. I would have had more if the timing and the resources had lined up. The idea that this is an unfashionable position, in my demographic, in my education bracket, is a thing I have had to make peace with.

The red pill men on the other side of this are mostly in pain about their mothers.

We all know this. I especially know this because I have done the work. I have sat with enough of them. They have constructed elaborate philosophical systems out of one or two formative wounds. They sell the systems to each other. The systems do not produce relationships.

They produce a specific kind of loneliness that calls itself freedom. These men are prey to the porn industry selling fantasy that keeps them spending their attention and the bro industry selling dreams of young, submissive foreign wives who they can buy 10 years off of. It’s actually a hollow and dark hole so few men climb out of.

So here is what I am circling.

What does the middle even look like? Can you maintain any friendships and live inside of it?

Is it still feminism if you want him to lead in some big areas. Is it still feminism if you want to soften when your partner comes home. Is it ok if you want to cultivate a contrast between family tone of voice and work tone of voice? Are you in the club if you read the conservative man’s honest profile and decide he is not for you, instead of deciding he is the enemy.

Is there room, anywhere, for women who want something more traditional, who want kids, who want a man with a clear role, and who also want their own minds and their own lives and their own work.

The pendulum does not seem to allow it.

You either commit to the dismantling or you are the problem.

You either commit to the reclamation or you are a feminist demon.

The middle has no constituency.

The middle has no representatives. The middle is where most of the women I actually know are living, in private, while saying the right things in public. Coming to my sessions with things they can’t say outloud.

Extreme views are so limiting — they make almost no room for being human.

I want someone to stand up and say that the loaded guns we are pointing at each other are not making us better partners or better people or better parents.

I want someone to say that a man can want a traditional setup and not be a danger. That a woman can want something her friend group disapproves of and not be a traitor. So I will say it. If it’s ok to commit your entire life to very open ended, poly style relationships or even androgyny where friend and family-ish and co-worker roles wash together in a unrecognizable blend of sometimes connections…

It’s also ok to not want that for yourself.

The man on the dating app was not for the women in that group chat. He’s not for me either. But he is very, very clear on that. That should have been the end of it. Somewhere out there is a woman who read his profile and felt her shoulders drop. I hope she finds him. I hope they have a quiet life on their own terms and don’t lose each other through the lens of our constant media cycles claiming everything human about us is wrong.

I do not think wanting that, for either of them, makes me less of anything.

I write primarily to support my small business. You can meet with me about 1–1 coaching or join my self study courses for men and women using these links.

*Christina Lane is a somatic coach, writer, and founder of Radiance and Embodied membership communities. She writes about the interior life of modern relating at christinalanecoaching.com and in the Somatic Sunday newsletter. She publishes first person essays from men in Mutual Terrain and writes from a more feminine voice on Substack. Christina also owns a tutoring company Connected Tutors and is a parent to three teens.*