Still, to this day, I always that if I developed a crush on a guy, I couldn’t develop a crush on anyone else. So after much consideration, I got serious and chose to love just one boy who would never love me.” (pg. “…I was under the impression that it was proper to only have one crush at a time. Having crushes is hard but also really, really fun.

Or, to put it simply: you don’t need to be in a relationship in order to be happy. You don’t need a man or a woman or a relationship status to be deemed “worthy” of things, especially a joyful life. Whether or not you have a partner doesn’t matter-what matters is that you find joy in everyday life doing whatever you’re doing. You don’t have to be coupled up with someone just because your friends are, or because people put pressure on you to find that person. “To feel joyful about love, you have to feel that you’ve opted into it, not that you’ve been forced to participate in it.” (pg. T his is what I got out of it: Dating should bring you JOY. There are some quotes that stood out to me the most, so I included them too. This book has been broken up into sections within each chapter. I wanted to see if, by understanding the idea of dating, I’ll be more open to it and more open to men and seeing them in a better light.

I wanted to find out if my dating habits were normal or if the thoughts and feelings I had were normal. So when I stumbled upon How To Date Men When You Hate Men by Blythe Roberson, I thought, “oh my god I need to read this.” Not only because I was curious, but because I wanted to see if it would help me get over the “all men are trash” mentality I have–not for the sake of the male population, but for myself when I’m in the dating world. It’s living in fear of being taken advantage of again, emotionally, mentally, physically. It’s a mixture of everything, with overthinking and anxieties and all. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I really like Harry Styles and Timothee Chalamat (as we all do), but when it comes to men that I actually have a chance of dating, I have a hard time. As a woman and as a victim of sexual assault, it’s been hard for me to like men.

How to date a man when you hate a man