They Told Women To Date Like Men. Now No One’s Falling In Love.

Fast forward to 2025, and the same interaction now feels like a political statement. Should he pay? Should she offer? Should they split? Everyone’s trying to perform equality, which, if anything, just feels like performative equality. No one’s enjoying the evening, and both walk away feeling slightly weird.

Somewhere between hookup culture and dating apps, modern romance lost its romance. The spark is gone. Instead of feeling warm, giddy, and excited, it feels clinical and cautious. It’s made us suspicious of men, and quietly suspicious of ourselves.

Having Sex “Like a Man”

In the very first episode of Sex and the City, the show revolving around the sex lives of a friend group in New York City, the main character Carrie Bradshaw, inspired by her friend Samantha, attempts to have sex “like a man”—no attachment, no emotions, no commitment, and no further expectations.

You didn’t have to watch the show to know that it went on for a couple of seasons filled with lots of sex scenes, but ironically left girls with this cautionary tale: women can’t have sex like men.

For some reason, twenty years later, we seem to be testing that theory again. We’ve entered an era of hookup culture and “situationships” (which, frankly, should be a slur) where it’s suddenly not cool to want commitment or exclusivity before intimacy. Sex is supposed to be casual, no big deal. A proper date or dinner isn’t even required.

Women have convinced one another that casual sex is normal—empowering, even. It’s positioned as a rebellion against centuries of supposed double standards. Detachment is framed as strength. Matching men’s indifference supposedly makes us equal and allows us to control our emotions. But if we’re honest, it’s faux liberation.

The more we try to perform detachment, the more we erode our feminine spirit.

Biologically, women can’t have sex like men. During intimacy, oxytocin floods the female brain (the beloved “bonding hormone” that also connects a mother to her child), wiring her for attachment and trust. Men, on the other hand, experience a surge of prolactin and testosterone, which brings release and detachment. Hence, the “post-nut clarity” that lets them carry on with their day while we wait anxiously for a text back. It’s impossible to have a masculine response; our hormones simply don’t work that way.

Since we’re not biologically built for this, we try to fake it. Don’t save his name in your phone. Be slow to reply. Never seem too eager to meet up. And if you really want to level up, have a “rotation.” That way, you won’t get attached to any of them.

The more we try to perform detachment, the more we erode our feminine spirit. We are meant to love, nurture, and care. It’s our instinct and our beauty. Denying that pulls us somewhere dark. Slowly, women condition themselves to feel nothing at all. You can’t go through a long period of forced numbness and then expect to flip the switch back on when you finally decide you’re ready for something real.

“Should We Split the Bill?”

Sex isn’t the only place where we try to force equality. We’ve taken it to the literal point of splitting the bill. The modern dating scene seems obsessed with math. The “split the bill” debate has become the hill everyone dies on, each side convinced that their version of equality is the correct one.

He insists on paying, and she’s offended because she doesn’t want to feel indebted. She offers to pay, and he’s deflated because he feels emasculated. And just like that, the spark dies somewhere between the entrée and the card machine.

Equality was never meant to strip dating of its grace. It wasn’t supposed to make romance feel bureaucratic. But in our pursuit of fairness, we’ve turned love into an audit. We’re so focused on logistics that we forget to notice chemistry. Instead of asking, “Do I feel safe with him?” or “Do I like who I am when I’m with him?” we’re calculating receipts. What’s left are two people too busy protecting their pride to let connection unfold naturally.

There’s no point denying that it feels unnatural. There’s no polarity, no tension, no play. Women want to be cared for, and men want to provide. It’s instinctive. And when you remove that dynamic entirely, it starts to feel less like a date and more like a business lunch.

The ATM Era of Dating

Then there’s the other extreme: women treating men like walking ATMs with biceps. You’ve seen it—it’s the “if he wanted to, he would (fly you out)” crowd. The “I’m not dating unless he’s a six-foot-four finance bro with a Tesla and trauma” crowd.

If you’ve decided the 50/50 approach isn’t for you, the alternative seems to be total objectification of men as money machines, though it’s usually rebranded as seeking “high-value provider men.” In this new marketplace, a man’s worth is measured solely by his net worth.

This narrative is pushed heavily by self-proclaimed “dating coaches” online who encourage young women to pursue wealth above all else. “All men cheat,” they say, “so you might as well cry in a Bentley.”

There’s a sliver of truth to the sentiment. Men are natural providers, and knowing a man can take care of you brings a sense of safety and security. That’s a healthy dynamic. But the “money first” mindset mistakes biology for materialism.

Social media only intensifies it, glamorizing luxury dates and designer gifts as proof of devotion. But when every gesture is filtered through status, sincerity gets harder to spot. The tragedy is that when we objectify men as ATMs, they inevitably objectify us back—as accessories, as distractions, as something temporary. And both sides leave emptier.

When everything becomes a transaction, you start to forget what it feels like to be loved.

It’s just as unromantic as splitting the bill. You can’t buy chemistry, and you can’t force intimacy. And when everything becomes a transaction, you start to forget what it feels like to be loved. The reality is far less romantic than the endless carousel of roses and Van Cleef sets on Instagram would have you believe.

Dating is supposed to be whimsical. Finding someone you truly connect with should feel a little bit like magic. But the magic disappears when everything becomes a political statement or a commercial exchange.

The idea that we should “date around to figure out what we like” sounds harmless, but in practice, it’s made us desensitized. Swiping through people the way we browse for clothes doesn’t make us more selective—it just makes us numb. And then we wonder why we don’t feel a spark.

If modern dating has taught women to hate men, it’s only because it’s taught us to distrust ourselves first. We’ve been told that softness is foolish, that vulnerability is dangerous, that wanting to be loved is a sign of weakness. But suppressing those instincts hasn’t made us stronger. Despite all the noise, most of us still want something beautifully simple: to love and be loved without irony. To feel safe enough to be soft again.

Maybe equality was never about splitting the bill or acting like men. Maybe it’s about remembering that balance doesn’t come from sameness but from complement. The feminine doesn’t need to compete with the masculine; it was designed to dance with it instead. Because when women stop pretending to be unfeeling and men are allowed to be devoted again, romance finds its way back.